Colonial America VS. Modern America

We all know today that sex happens everywhere around us, it literally happens all the time.  Believe it or not sex happened just as much back then as it does now.  You may be asking how?  All the people back then were all strict religious prudes.  But that is an assumption that is obviously inaccurate.  Now yes people were more religious, but did not follow the church’s rules as much as the church would have liked. 

People say that there is so much sex specifically premarital sex, and we all know that all colonial people waited for marriage for their first time right? WRONG!  In many marriages the woman was pregnant during her wedding.  Now one reason for this may have been because if you were the youngest of your siblings you might have to wait until they were married before you could marry.[1] 

                In my opinion we have become less open sexually, yeah we see it all the time, but how often do we feel comfortable when we see a penis in sex class, we cannot even look at an ancient classic statue without snickering to ourselves because they are naked.  I’m pretty sure this would have been frowned upon back in the colonial era.  Nothing is really funny about seeing someone naked.  We all laugh because we are uncomfortable, people back then approached sex differently, and that’s why we think that they are so different from us today.

                Something that is really rare, at least in modern day America, is arranged marriage.  That is something that happened often in the colonial era.  This lead to disloyalty among spouses, for there was no true love.  If you did want to marry for love you had to sit down with the family and explain how it would be beneficial for them to give you their daughter.[2]  For example Money.  This is much different from today all you really need to do is talk to your lover’s father and ask permission.  Some people do not even ask the father anymore. 

                Things have drastically changed in many ways from the colonial era to now.  But in many ways we were the same when it comes to sex.  In the end we are all hormone driven people with a sex drive, just living in different time periods

-Nathan Brown

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[1] Gardner, Andrew. "Courtship, Sex, and the Single Colonist." http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday07/court.cfm (accessed January 31, 2014).

[2]Gardner, Andrew. "Courtship, Sex, and the Single Colonist." http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday07/court.cfm (accessed January 31, 2014).