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Teenage Intimacies offers a new account of the ‘sexual revolution’ in mid-twentieth century England. Rather than focusing on ‘Swinging London’, the book reveals the transformations in social life that took place in school playgrounds, local cinemas, and suburban bedrooms.
Based on over 300 personal testimonies, Teenage Intimacies traces the everyday experiences of teenage girls, illuminating how romance, sex and intimacy shaped their young lives. The book shows how sex became embedded in ideas about ‘growing up’ and explores how heterosexuality influenced young women’s social lives and vice versa. It offers new explanations of why sexual mores shifted in this period, revealing the pivotal role that young women played in changing sexual values, cultures and practices in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
'Teenage Intimacies is written in an accessible style while maintaining its scholarly rigor. The author skillfully unpacks the nuanced relationships between sex and intimacy, peer judgement and social support, and parental relationships and teenage independence... This insightful and readable account of teenage intimacy provides key interventions into the histories of sexuality and sexual culture, adolescence and family life, and gender in postwar Britain.'
S. Makowski, CHOICE 2026
'Charnock takes her readers with her through the joyful (and sometimes miserable) “messiness” of teenage intimacies and the complexities that young people navigated on their journeys to adulthood. The strength of the book is the way it not only foregrounds individual experiences and the broader historical context but also
conveys the historical significance of interpersonal relationships situated in particular social worlds. The result is a rich and readable social and cultural history.'
Ruth Beecher, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
Introduction: Sexual Histories
Part I: Growing Up
Chapter 1 – Becoming Sexual
Chapter 2 – Sexual Presents & Imagined Futures
Part II: Relationships
Chapter 3 - Boyfriends & Sexual Partners
Chapter 4 – Friends & Peers
Chapter 5 – Parents & Family
Conclusion