ABSTRACT
In the literature of the period male and female role behavior and relationships between the sexes became rigidly defined and were subject to prescribed expectations. During the war many women had taken on such jobs as welding and truck driving and had learned to make decisions for themselves. Boy-girl interaction was codified into the intricate ritual known as dating, and every adolescent was expected to participate. The main body of Facts of Life and Love is devoted to the minutiae of the dating ritual. Dating received warm approval throughout the fifties literature, which described the ritual in varying degrees of detail. The overwhelming uniformity of the sex education books of fifties seems to indicate that they were an accurate reflection of current sexual attitudes. Despite Alfred C. Kinsey, the sex education books of the postwar years continued to project a view of normal and acceptable sex behavior that the researcher's finding had largely invalidated.
