Did you know that dating, as we think of it, didn't really exist until the 1920's?
At that time, most people wanted marriage and children. Marriage was expected and necessary, due to economic and social demands. It was pretty normal for a partnership to be planned, long before a prospective couple were of marrying age. Romantic feelings towards each other were a bonus, but not necessary or even expected.
Typically, a young man would be chosen by the girls family to court, or "come calling" on her when the time was right.
These meet ups would take place at the young woman's home, always with her parent's present. She may have danced or played the piano to entertain her suitor, while her mother set out refreshments and her father engaged the prospective groom in polite conversation.
When the First World War ended, many things changed, especially for women.
Women won the right to vote, and started working outside the home. Motion pictures became all the rage, imparting notions of love and romance. More people had cars, making it easier to socialize without a chaperone at dance halls, sporting events and speakeasy's.
The older generation lived in horror at the thought of all the rampant promiscuity that was surely going on. There was certainly more opportunity for it, and unlike their parent's generation, boundaries weren't nearly as defined as they previously were. But enjoying more freedoms than their parents did, didn't eradicate all the values the younger generation grew up with.
Dating for fun and companionship became more common, and could even increase one's popularity. But for all the talk of the new sexual liberation, dating in the 1920s still had its limits.
As long as you were in a committed relationship, it was considered perfectly fine to kiss or even caress, but that's as far as that went. Of course, some still took the risk, but it was a huge leap of faith that could ruin a girls reputation forever if her partner decided not to marry her.
But this was the very beginning of women starting to make important decisions for themselves, and about themselves. The ability to leave the home and go on a date without parental supervision was revolutionary.
Thankfully today, we're free to do what we like and be with whoever makes us happy. We can even do things out of order. We live so much longer now, that it's become an unusual feat for our unions to last forever.
Nowadays, we've got an app for that. Things certainly have changed over time, and I'm not convinced all of it is good, but that's just my penny worth of thought. Love has always made the world go 'round, and any way you slice it, most of us wouldn't exist without it!
