Marriage Guidance: Kissing and Telling

Deborah Cohen opens the archives of the Scottish Marriage Guidance Council, founded in 1946, and finds that couples in the postwar years were more than happy to air their dirty linen.

A soldier on leave in 1942 weds his fiancé in a Berkshire churchPity the bewildered data protection officer. What to do with a populace that cherishes privacy even as it engages gleefully in self-exposure?

The modern preoccupation with both telling all and protecting our privacy is often taken to be something new and puzzling. But it is neither so paradoxical nor so new, for it predates both the social media revolution of the early 21st century and the loosening sexual mores of the Swinging Sixties. It was a cultural shift before it was a technological one. It started in the 1930s and was in full swing by the 1950s. Let us observe the phenomenon by cutting the plastic bands strapped around the postwar case files of the Edinburgh marriage guidance centre and peering at their contents.

To continue reading this article you will need to purchase access to the online archive.

Buy Online Access  Buy Print & Archive Subscription

If you have already purchased access, or are a print & archive subscriber, please ensure you are logged in.

Please email digital@historytoday.com if you have any problems.