PREFACE:

THIS BOOK is written for young people and the adults who care about them, as a guide to dating and the relationships between sexes.

When thousands of questions from youth were collected and analyzed as background for Facts of Life and Love for Teen-Agers, two of the most frequently asked questions were: (1) How do you get a date? and (2) What do you do with a date when you get one?

Since the publication of that book, I have continued to meet with young people in widely different settings—from the men at Princeton to the girls of the Indiana Sunshine Society; from Oberlin to South Carolina State; and with young people of both sexes in national and state-wide 4-H conventions, local and area YMCA, YWCA, and church youth groups, high school and college students, as well as out-of-school youth in many large and small communities in every section of the country.

In each instance, the most valuable part of our work together in discussing boy-girl relations was the full, frank, and free participation of the young people themselves. As they raised the questions they wanted to discuss and then considered them with me as consultant, much of value came to light.

Since 1950 more than 17,000 questions about dating have been collected from these sessions and analyzed for content as a basis for this book. Some thirty research studies, listed in the back of this volume, and a considerable amount of clinical evidence have been brought to bear upon the questions youth ask about dating. Where no specific data are available, the range of attitudes and opinions of youth themselves is incorporated with the general points of view that appear most frequently among them, their parents, teachers, and leaders.

Joy Duvall Johnson has collaborated in the preparation of this book from the initial content analysis of the mass of youth’s questions to the actual writing and polishing of the material itself. As senior author, I assume responsibility for its content; at the same time I credit Joy for the faithfulness with which she reflects the point of view of youth, so close to her own generation.

This book, then, belongs to young people. It has come from them. It is directed to them. Our task as reporter and interpreter is done if the book serves not as a set of answers, but as a stimulus to further questioning; not as a directive, but as a guide. That is the spirit in which it was written.