The New Morality

While men have always been known to sow their "wild oats" before marriage, the moral concept of prenuptial chastity denied this privilege to women. With the revolt of youth, however, and the emancipating enthusiasms of the new morality, this condition has changed. The "sowing of wild oats" is no longer the particular prerogative of the man.

It is not only that girls are beginning to sow their wild oats, however, that is important, but that they are usually forced to conceal it from their elders by device and subterfuge that lead to personal detriment and harm. Certain forms of sexual expression, nevertheless, that once were forbidden, have now become customary instead of exceptional. Kissing, for example, which once was supposed to begin only with the gesture of betrothal, has now become a promiscuous pastime. "Necking" has become an accepted practice. The modern dance, of course, has stimulated these open liberties in conduct. The automobile has given to them the convenience of expression that the fire-side parlor, with parents vigilant behind door or curtain, would never have permitted.

The one man in America who is best equipped to disclose the nature of this phenomenon is Judge Ben Lindsey. Lindsey was judge of the Juvenile Court in Denver for a period of twenty-six years. In this court he achieved one of the most unique experiments in America. He made this court into a laboratory for moral advice and instruction. His attitude was not that of a legalist, but a humanitarian. Youths came to him because they saw in him a friend and not a jurist. They confided in him because they trusted him. What they would have trembled to confess to their parents, they frankly told this sympathetic adviser. There was no camouflage about their confessions.

Lindsey, anxious to be conservative and not extreme, maintains that at least from fifteen to twenty-five percent of these girls unquestionably include the sexual act within the category of their relations with men. That this statement is guilty more of exaggeration in the cause of caution than that of fact is borne out by other revelations and conclusions in Lindsey's book. The assertions of youths themselves, when they attempt to estimate the extensity of the new freedom among the groups with which they are intimate, makes such a small estimate seem absurd. After all, Lindsey was confronted only with those cases that resulted in disaster or distress. The myriads of cases that did not terminate in difficulty or catastrophe, of course, never came to the knowledge of either Lindsey or the world. It is only fair to Lindsey to add, however, that he admits this fact, and in the following paragraphs, quoted from his book, The Revolt of Modern Youth, he states that he has at hand certain figures which "indicate with certainty that for every case of sex delinquency discovered, a very large number completely escape detection. For instance, out of 495 girls at high-school age — though not all of them were in high school—who admitted to me that they had sex experiences with boys, only 25 became pregnant. That is about 5 percent, a ratio of one in twenty. The others avoided pregnancy, some by luck, others because they had a knowledge of more or less effective contraceptive methods—a knowledge, by the way, which I find to be more common among them than is generally supposed.

In another place Lindsey is even more definite in his calculations:

"Consider, for example, that for every one of those 769 girls of high-school age whom I helped in the biennial period of 1920 and 1921, there was at least one other girl whom this court knew nothing about and never reached. That, surely, is as conservative an estimate as can be asked. And yet, conservative as it is, let us see where it leads. It involves a minimum of 1500 girls of high-school age (not necessarily in school) in Denver as having indulged in some kind of sex delinquency. It involves the assumption that 608 of them were actually in school. Assuming that there are about 3000 girls, then, attending the high schools of Denver, that figure 608 would represent about 20 percent over the period of two years, or 304 for each year, 10 percent per annum. It would mean that one high-school girl in every ten, or ten in every hundred in our high schools, have their feet set on more or less perilous paths, are subjecting themselves to regrettable risks, and are in need of guidance and, counsel for one reason or another.

"Let me repeat that these are minimum figures, and that they include only the ages of 14, 15, 16 and 17. They do not include the ages 18, 19, 20 where there is doubtless a larger percentage of such delinquency. Let me remind the reader also of my conviction already stated, for every sexually delinquent girl we deal with there are an unknown number, possibly a much larger number, who escape our attention."

"Very good, we found from our own records that of 495 girls we dealt with who confessed to illicit sex relations only 1 in 20 encountered pregnancy. In that case, 100 pregnancies, taken care of by us, implies, on a ratio of 1 to 19, at least 1900 escapes from pregnancy; and 200 pregnancies would imply 3800 escapes from pregnancy. And that among the girls of high-school age, some in school and some out of school, in a city of 300,000 population. And these figures, let me say again, represent a minimum below the level of probability and common sense. The number of cases is certainly very far above what even these figures indicate."

The decay of modern marriage and the development of these new morals are intimately related. The growth of freer sexual relations on the part of youth has reduced the purely biological necessity of marriage for women as well as men. The sacredness of marriage has naturally vanished under these conditions of chaos. The new morality has brought us to a new cross-road in the history of morals in our civilization.

Material of interest in connection with the problem of the new morality has been gathered by Katharine Bement Davis. Dr. Davis has often been cited by editorial writers as an opponent of Lindsey, and her statistics grossly exaggerated by them in an endeavor to prove that the old morals are unshaken. Certain of the questions asked in her questionnaires, from time to time, we shall find of exceptional interest and importance. Among the 1,000 women included in the study of one questionnaire only 375 are cited as having allowed "spooning with their fiance before marriage; 9208 allowed themselves to be kissed; and 389 allowed no liberties at all. Only seventy-one of these women had had sexual intercourse prior to marriage.

Thirty-five of them had sex relations only with their fiance, twelve had intercourse with one person only, sixteen with more than one person, and eight did not specify the person involved. Of the sixteen who had had intercourse with more than one person, ten possessed information as to contraceptive technique, two had no information, and one did not reply at all.10 Of these sixteen, six were college graduates, one a Master of Arts and one an M.D. Two had several years of college education; three were high school graduates, three had one or two years in high school, one had only advanced to the eighth grade, and one had had private tutoring.

The great number of these women who only allowed themselves to be kissed previous to marriage, and the greater number who did not allow any caress at all, might seem to indicate a conventionality of behavior on the part of women that would deny the triumph of the flapper and the rise of the new morality. An examination of these women, from the point of view of age, however, does not confirm this conclusion. The majority of them were in their thirties and forties when they answered this questionnaire in 1921 and 1922, and, therefore, do not represent the new generation which has become conspicuous by revolt. They represent the generation that immediately preceded. Even this generation, it is apparent nevertheless, did not represent in very perfect manner the closed-in morals of their Victorian ancestors. In the matter of abortions, for instance, we find that 93 of these 1000 women had abortions, one of them having had as many as eight and nineteen of them having had two. And while only seventy-one had sexual intercourse before marriage, one hundred and sixty-three of them had homosexual relations with physical expression, and 381 had practiced masturbation. In many other ways also, different and more subtle questions would have shown that if these women do not represent the modern generation, there was to be found, even in their attitude, an emphatic sign of the revolt that has burst upon us with the youth of today.

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