How shall I tell my child

A curious collection of books and other interesting things about sex education and marital life

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[howshallitell-blog]

The Sexually Promiscuous Male, Benjamin Morse, Monarch Books, 1963

After the success of the Kinsey Report, the publishers wanted to make money out of this genre and launched the fictional medical case study book.

This is one of the first examples of fake sex studies. The Contents are: The Satyr; The Latent Homosexual; The Woman Hater; The Narcissist; Male Promiscuity - Normal and Abnormal; The Seven Year Itch; The Dangerous Years; The Mistress Keeper; The Sowers of Wild Oats; The Occasional John; The Wife Swappers; Social Pressure and Male Promiscuity; The Effects of Male Promiscuity; and A Word to the Ladies

Benjamin Morse is the nom de plume of Lawrence Block.

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Open Marriage, Nena O'Neill and George O'Neill, M. Evans Company, 1972

Part anthropological survey, part marriage manual, "Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples spent more than 40 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. It has been translated into 14 languages and has sold more than 35 million copies worldwide, according to the company's Web site.

Open Marriage was never intended to be a guide for swingers. Indeed, the book embraced marriage. Its purpose, the authors wrote, was simply "to strip marriage of its antiquated ideals and romantic tinsel and find ways to make it truly contemporary."

Trained as anthropologists, the O'Neills devoted other passages to the ethnography of marriage. In keeping with the growing feminist consciousness of the period, they stressed women's need for meaningful lives.

Three of the book's 287 pages explore, ever so tentatively, the elastic properties of marital fidelity. Forever after, those pages were all anyone seemed to remember about "Open Marriage."

(New York Times)

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Where do babies come from? Both illustrations appear in the May 1957 issue of Sexology: Sex Science Illustrated Volume 23 Number 10.

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Liberté, egalité, sexualité, Michel Meignant, Laffont, France, 1973

"There is no good sexual life if there's no freedom or equal rights".

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Sex and the Mysteries, John M. Haffert, Ave Maria Institute, Washington, 1970

John M. Haffert (1915-2001) was the co-founder of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima. The book is a Catholic sex guide presented through the mysteries of the Rosary. It is highly collectible.

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Sex Education Booklets, Father & Son Welfare Movement, Sydney, Australia, 1967

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11 Weird Books That Really Exist

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All the joys of marriage will be yours if you know the true facts about sex! 1950s advertising.

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The Art of Dating, Evelyn Millis Duvall with Joy Duvall Johnson, Association Press New York, 1968

Here are the answers to such important dating questions as these:

How do I get a date? What will we do tonight? What can I talk about? How late is too late to get home? How do I know when I am really in love?What do I do about necking? Petting? Intimacies? Will I loose him if I say “no”?

The Art of Dating will help you avoid awkward moments. It can be your key to popularity.

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ARE YOU READY FOR MARRIAGE? A game of MAKE-BELIEVE.

Are you, as a new bride, mature enough to make the kind of wife your husband desires? Will you help him in his career - or hinder him? Will you build a happy home - or a broken one? That's what you want to know and here's your answer in this thought-provoking quiz.

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La sexualité du célibataire, Marcel Eck, Editions Universitaires, Collection "Je", France, 1974

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Sex and Hypnosis, L. T. Woodward, Monarch, 1961

This is a fake essay about sexuality written by science fiction writer Robert Silverberg.

Published by Monarch, Lancer, and Belmont in cheap paperback editions, the basic modus operandi of Woodward’s dozen or more books was to write titillating soft-porn stories and compile them as actual psychiatric case studies.

From the back cover:

“A frigid and frustrated woman who is now able to respond fully to her husband’s embrace… A once practicing homosexual who is now happily married and the father of a family… A desperate, impotent man, now amazingly restored to his full sexual power… A young wife who had her baby painlessly , but fully conscious and with no anesthetic… These are some of the people whose intimate stories are told in this book…People whose emotional frustrations and physical sufferings were relieved by the amazing new science of medical hypnosis — which brought them normal sexual satisfaction when every other treatment faile

[kevinweeks]

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Sex, Marriage and Birth Control, by Rev. Alfred Henry Tyrer & Dr. Robert L. Dickinson, 1943, Canada

Originally released in 1936, this self-help book of marriage and family advice was a huge success in Canada were it was published with over 320,00 copies sold. This copy is the tenth edition published in 1943. The content is very progressive. From the index: Concept of Ideal Marriage; The Physical Side of Marriage; Intercourse and its Frequency; Techniques of Conception Control; The Love-Play; The First Night; Different Positions for Intercourse; Coitus Reservatus; Self-Stimulation (Auto-Erotism); The Frigid Wife; Temporary Impotence

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Art of Kissing, Devendra, Delhi, 1950

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As the U.S. Naval Academy gears up for Commissioning Week and the Graduation Ball, what better time to post some vintage dating dos and don’ts from  Midshipmen Wrong and Right?

Courtesy of our colleagues in the National Archives’ Motion Picture Preservation Lab we present How to Succeed with Brunettes (1967), a film produced by the Navy that demonstrates proper dating etiquette for officers. Part of a recent accession of military instructional films from the Defense Visual Information Center (DVIC), the somewhat dated film features wonderful music, evocative of its era, and a fair bit of comedy, both intentional and unintentional.

via Media Matters: Don’t Shut Your Date in the Door: Military Dating Dos and Don’ts

Be sure to check back - we’ll be posting more vintage Dating Dos and Don’ts over the next few days!