The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality (Studies in Gender and History)

The 1950s were a time of social stability, innocent childhood and adolescence, and family values. NOT. The benign world of Father Knows Best and My Little Margie may live on in cable reruns, but Mary Louise Adams points out in The Trouble with Normal that growing up in the 1950s was anything but a comedy. Adams, a professor of health education, explicates quirky sociological markers--popular sex advice books for teens, health education documentaries, social tracts against juvenile delinquency, and comic books--and argues that midcentury teens were under enormous social and political pressure to "be normal" and conform to the most narrowly defined sexual and personal standards. The Trouble with Normal approaches this material seriously, but has a breezy writing style and Adams's quotes from "Growing Up and Liking It" and "Facts of Love and Life For Teenagers" are both entertaining and chilling.