Sexual discourse and social planning: Youth, sex and the Canadian Youth Commission in the 1940s

Between the years 1943–47 a group of social planners called the Canadian Youth commission undertook a project to study the situation of young Canadians. They were interested in discovering the post-war concerns of youth and in promoting social welfare schemes to ensure that the post-World War Two experience would be a better one for Canadian citizens than that of the post-World War One period. To better assess these opinions and attitudes the CYC interviewed a representative cross-section of approximately two hundred Canadian young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. The CYC asked these youths to reflect upon questions pertaining to the areas of health, education, recreation, employment, family life, religion, behaviour standards and citizenship. From these interviews a picture of 1940s sexual youth discourse emerges.; The sexual discourse of Canadian youth in the 1940s was premised upon the ideals of marriage, monogamy, respectability, a set of clearly defined gendered responsibilities and an internal regulatory system of peer-evaluation. This discourse profoundly affected the appearance of post-war social organisation. The sexual ideologies of youth influenced the actions of Canadian social planners in the realms of education, health and recreation. It also directed the manner in which young Canadians would arrange their lives in the era of post-war reconstruction. The sexual discourses of youth in the 1940s had directive implications for the idealized image of the Canadian post-war family, the appearance of strictly delineated gender roles and the societal preoccupation with normalcy that emerged in the 1950s.