Social Change

The other day we visited an old friend, who, at 84, is even older than I am.  He told us that one of his granddaughters, a sophomore at a prestigious university, is no longer with her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend had told her that he was uncertain about his sexual identity and wanted time to sort things out.  Our friend also told us that the same granddaughter, writing a paper on contraception, had asked him “Grandpa, what method of contraception did you and Grandma use?”  He didn’t tell us how he answered her, but he did say that he was taken aback by her question just as he was surprised by her former boyfriend’s openness.  My wife and I agreed, as did our friend, that we could never have asked our grandparents that question. 

We didn’t discuss the change in attitudes towards homosexuality, but the change would have been hard to foresee when we were college students, at a time when most gay men were closeted, when homosexuality was seen as shameful by the general public and by many gay men themselves.  The idea that men could marry each other, had it been floated then, would have seemed bizarre.  Now, when the Times publishes the wedding announcements of gays and lesbians, we take such marriages in our stride.

We agreed with our friend that today’s openness about sexual matters is probably healthy, if unthinkable when we went to college.  I remember the parietal rules of my youth, when you had to return your date to her dormitory before one am on a Saturday night, earlier during the week.  I don’t recall the penalties for violating these rules except that they were severe.  Female colleges acted in loco parentis in preserving their students’ virginity.  (No one seemed to care about the men’s virginity except, of course, the men themselves, who were eager to lose it.) Nowadays, male and female students share the same dormitories, sometimes even the same suites.

True, back in my day, young women could and did lose their virginity before one in the morning, but the parietal rules by and large kept libido in check.  As for me, I was often glad to have a respectable excuse for bringing my date back to her dorm, concluding our time together, which, as often as not, was stilted, uncomfortable, and joyless for us both.  I thought I was grown up when I went to college, but clearly I wasn’t.  I thank whatever gods may be that I no longer have to suffer through those dates.  No doubt my dates, old ladies now, are grateful too.  In any event, the changes in mores implied by the stories our friend told us about his granddaughter were unimaginable when we were young.  It’s hard to believe that our grandchildren will see social changes as great as these, but they probably will.


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