Article ID: CBB686896153

“Advanced Marriage Technique”: Sex as a Perfectible Skill in Mid-twentieth-century American Marriage Manuals (2021)

unapi

While earlier marital advice literature treated sexual intercourse as a matter of conditioned instinct, marriage manuals in the mid-twentieth century portrayed it as a skill, and one that was rarely cultivated adequately. The didactic, quantified, objectively examined and rule-bound approach to sex promulgated by these manuals parallels other ways in which Americans subjected their personal and intimate lives to the tutelage of experts. Anxieties about the stability of marriage and family life were both heightened and salved by the authoritative tone of scientific authority used in these books.

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Authors & Contributors
Berco, Cristian
Bittel, Carla
Cantor, David
Drucker, Donna J.
Gathorne-Hardy, Jonathan
Green, Christopher D.
Journals
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Gender and History
History of Science
History of the Human Sciences
Journal of Early Modern History
Journal of the History of Biology
Publishers
Rutgers University Press
Berghahn Books
Indiana University Press
Johns Hopkins University
Manchester University Press
Routledge
Concepts
Sex
Marriage
Social sciences
Medicine and society
Self-help; self-care
Sexuality
People
Kinsey, Alfred C.
Beach, Frank Ambrose
Fischer-Dückelmann, Anna
Galilei, Galileo
Gantt, W. Horsley
Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
19th century
21st century
Early modern
Places
United States
Canada
China
Spain
Institutions
Carnegie Institution of Washington
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