# In olden days, how common was it for people to enter marriage with literally no clue what sex was? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 26, 2023, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395 "2023-02-26T13:22:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2023, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/202 "2023-03-12T22:45:26Z")
Ah. I didn’t hear of any such thing being done by the Girl Scouts when I was one, in the early 60’s, so it might have depended on where you were. Or it might have been done only for older girls – risking that menstruation would start before any information had been given. My parents put a book on my bookshelf, so I was forewarned – but the friends I was later told that I shouldn’t have shown it to apparently had no access to such books, because they really really wanted to see that one. It’s possible that their parents did inform them about menstruation in time; I switched schools, and don’t know. At the school I switched to everyone seemed to know about it; but I was the youngest student there. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2023, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/203 "2023-03-12T23:10:52Z")
Girl scouts in my school were 4th-6th grades. That was probably early enough for most girls. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2023, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/204 "2023-03-12T23:33:21Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > And it was kind of funny when our 7th grade math teacher (who, I swear, looked exactly like Paul Drake) was telling stories from his USAF days and “… (this one guy) really pulled a boner …” the tension of everyone in the room trying not to snort or just break out laughing was almost audible. [“So! They laugh at my boner, will they?! I’ll show them! I’ll show them how many boners The Joker can make!”](https://www.cbr.com/i-love-ya-but-youre-strange-the-great-batmanjoker-boner-war-of-1951/) ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/205 "2023-03-13T01:39:47Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Girl scouts in my school were 4th-6th grades. That was probably early enough for most girls. Yes; I agree that 4th grade will get most girls in time. (6th sometimes won’t.) My 4th-6th grades didn’t say a word about it; nor did my Girl Scout troop. As I said, I don’t know whether they (either the schools or the Scouts) got around to it later. But the book I was discussing was for girls 10 through 14. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/206 "2023-03-13T02:00:17Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > I might offer my own realization. My mother sat me down to explain “the facts of life”. I was absolutely astonished. I said, “But… but that’s fucking!” I had the same disconnect at a younger age with much less knowledge of sex, but I understood the basics of intercourse. I also had these kids’ encyclopedias with a very clear description of fertilization (they confused me, to be honest, because the images were 2-d and they looked like dinner plates to me. I saw the zygote stages as circles with various foods on them.) But I never connected the two things. Until I finally got up the courage to ask my Mom, “Is sex illegal?” I just figured because everyone was unwilling to talk to children about it that it must be they were trying not to get in trouble. She was like, “No! How do you think I got you?” Then she explained to me that these two things were the same process. Lightbulb. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/207 "2023-03-13T02:54:13Z")
On the other hand, no one told my MIL about menstruation, and when she got her first period she thought she was dying. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/208 "2023-03-13T03:11:53Z")
When I was a Cadette Girl Scout in the late 1970s, our troop went to the local chapter of the American Cancer Society, where we watched an age-appropriate film about Pap smears and breast exams, and later had a model of a female chest with breast lumps in it, so we could get an idea of what they would feel like. Every person I’ve told that to has said something like, “I was in the Girl Scouts, and we never did anything like that” but what a Scout leader does with their troop is going to be influenced by their own life experiences. Our leaders were a husband and wife who, before I met them, lost a child to cancer, so obviously this was very personal for them. (And I have sent money to St. Jude Hospital, because I know she got some of her treatment there; they were not able to cure her, but she did have 6 extra years thanks to them, and lived a normal life for much of that time.) The Girl Scouts have recently encountered controversy for introducing sexuality education that some parents have felt was inappropriate. I’ll let people who may know more, say more, but when the Boy Scouts got in trouble for their stand on gay Scouts, I wondered what the Girl Scouts’ stance was on lesbians, and the answer was this: They didn’t have one, and unless an event was explicity females-only, men could attend as long as an adult woman was on site. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/209 "2023-03-13T03:16:34Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > On the other hand, no one told my MIL about menstruation, and when she got her first period she thought she was dying. When my kids were in middle school some parents withheld their kids from the heath sessions on sex ed, for cultural or religious reasons. My wife and I speculated the scenario you describe would happen to those girls. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/210 "2023-03-13T03:21:38Z")
My BFF’s son works at a zoo, and he told a story about two gorillas mating in full view of some guests, and several middle-aged women observed that the female looked awfully bored with the whole thing, and said she could relate. A while back, a Facebook friend whom I met through her mother said that her son, who was then probably about 5 or 6 years old, wanted to know why the birds kept jumping on top of each other out in the yard. She replied, “Oh, it’s just something they do in the springtime.” I PM’ed her to tell her one of her mother’s stories about things she and her brother had done as youngsters, and one of them, in the mid 1980s of course, was finding scrambled porn, probably the very softcore Playboy channel or the like, and hollering, “Mommy, there’s some naked people fighting on TV!” Mom replied, “They’re not fighting; change the channel” and then called the cable company the next day to get it blocked. She didn’t remember that incident, but I told her that her mom probably did! One of my neighbors around that time was a cable guy, and he said that the REAL reason the system took those channel out was not that they didn’t have enough subscribers to turn a profit, but because that profit was eaten up by the fact that the cable guys were spending 3/4 of their time dealing with people like my own parents, who caught my then-teenage brother doing the same thing, only on purpose. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/211 "2023-03-13T04:32:43Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > On the other hand, no one told my MIL about menstruation, and when she got her first period she thought she was dying. Exactly why I thought my Girl Scout Handbook should have mentioned it. Even if in 1947 they couldn’t bring themselves to mention sex and/or human reproduction. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/212 "2023-03-13T08:04:12Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > When my kids were in middle school some parents withheld their kids from the heath sessions on sex ed, for cultural or religious reasons. My wife and I speculated the scenario you describe would happen to those girls. As in the opening minutes of _Carrie_. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/213 "2023-03-13T08:49:29Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > no one told my MIL about menstruation, and when she got her first period she thought she was dying. Oh, she is definitely not the only one. Product of Texas Catholic school “sex ed” here. Which was 1a. useless and 2b. way too late even if it wasn’t a complete dumpster fire in the first place. ETA: yep, totally thought I was dying when I got the first one. Didn’t understand, and mostly was horrified that my mother was gonna yell at me about the mess in my undies. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/214 "2023-03-13T08:53:17Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@puzzlegal](#): > > > > On the other hand, no one told my MIL about menstruation, and when she got her first period she thought she was dying. > > Exactly why I thought my Girl Scout Handbook should have mentioned it. Even if in 1947 they couldn’t bring themselves to mention sex and/or human reproduction. It certainly seems like it’s something girls urgently need to know about. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/215 "2023-03-13T08:54:47Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > ETA: yep, totally thought I was dying when I got the first one. Didn’t understand, and mostly was horrified that my mother was gonna yell at me about the mess in my undies. Yikes. That sounds just awful. Monthly bleeding is bad enough without that, too. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/216 "2023-03-13T13:00:21Z")
I did know about menstruation, but mine didn’t start until I was about fifteen. By that time, I was firmly convinced there was something wrong with me, and since it didn’t look quite as I expected, told my mom I needed to go to the doctor. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/217 "2023-03-13T16:56:59Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > My BFF’s son works at a zoo, and he told a story about two gorillas mating in full view of some guests, and several middle-aged women observed that the female looked awfully bored with the whole thing, and said she could relate. Back in the late '90s my first wife and I were at the zoo in Saint Louis, MO. A distinctly midwestern proudly socially conservative town. Lots and lots of good Catholics living down in the city where the zoo is. It was a weekend and there were lots of families and lots of teens at the zoo that day. It gets cold there, so the primates are kept in indoor arenas (think giant terrariums) that separate the animal habitats from the humans with large glass window walls. We’re walking through the crowded primate house and come upon a clutch of 8-10 pre-tween/tween girls pressed up against the glass staring silently / awestruck at … something. No adults nearby; whoever they’d come with was elsewhere. I’m taller than most of them are, so I edge up to the back of their crowd & peer over the top. There’s a ~3-foot tall male monkey sitting “Indian style” just inside the window facing out and he’s masturbating to beat the band. For his scale his penis is longer but narrower than a human’s would be. But otherwise very similar. His technique is exactly what a human male would use. The girls were fascinated. Nobody said anything. I backed off before they noticed me. As I’m telling my wife a few feet away what was going on a couple of 40-something women walk up to the crowd of girls, let out a shriek, and herd the girls away in evident horror. That’s chaperone horror; the girls were just disappointed the show had ended. It would be really neat to live in a world where no humans were squeamish about sex. I almost can’t imagine how different it would be than the one we do live in. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/218 "2023-03-13T17:16:06Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > > [@Nyvaak](#): > > > > It was a lot more enlightened, but not an iota more informative in the early '70s when I was a tenderfoot. > > > > “Some boys cause these emissions themselves. While this will not hurt them, nevertheless they should not do something if they are worried it will cause them harm.” > > Here’s the 1967 version. > > > [@](#): > > > > From Boy to Man. > > > > At the age of 13, 14, or 15 (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) you not only grow, but numerous changes take place in your body. Your voice changes. Hair appears on your face, in the armpits, around the sex organ. Your sex organ increases in size. > > > > All these changes are caused by the function of the sex glands or testicles. They produce fluids or secretions that have a great effect on your development. > > > > At times the glands discharge part of their secretions through the sex organ during sleep. This process is called a nocturnal emis- sion or a “wet dream.” It is perfectly natural and healthy and a sign that nature has taken care of the situation in its own manner. > > > > There are boys who do not let nature have its own way with them but cause emissions themselves. This may do no physical harm, but may cause them to worry. Any real boy knows that anything that causes him to worry should be avoided or overcome. > > > > If anything like this worries you, this is not unusual—just about all boys have the same problem. Seek the correct answer to any question which bothers you about your development from boy to man. But be sure to get your in- formation from reliable sources—your parents, your physician, > > your spiritual adviser. > > … I joined the Boy Scouts in 1975, and as I vaguely recall, the _Scout Handbook_ at the time had very similar if not identical phrasing. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/219 "2023-03-13T17:37:25Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The girls were fascinated. Excellent choice of word there! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/220 "2023-03-13T17:52:08Z")
Thank you. I almost wrote “snake-fascinated” but was aiming for a more highbrow tone. Using “snake-fascinated” might have been an example of coming on too strong. Or overstretching a point. Or … 😉 ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/221 "2023-03-13T19:08:11Z")
I have a friend who worked at a zoo for a while, in the giraffe enclosure. Anyway, some people came up to another employee and told them, “The monkeys are all ‘playing’ with each other! There are children here, and you need to tell them not to do that in public.” Great, we’ll put up a sign telling them to get a room. Someone here told about being at a rodeo, and one of the horses got an erection, and their son, who was maybe about 8 years old, kept wanting to know why the horse’s peepee was doing that. They weren’t comfortable telling him in public, and explained it away by saying that it was just something that sometimes happens to horses. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395.md?page=12)