1950-1979
Postwar prosperity and the sexual revolution
The era of going steady, the sexual revolution, and everything in between. Discover how postwar prosperity, feminism, and the pill transformed courtship rituals and relationship expectations.
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Why 1950s experts thought wives cheated (and what they got wrong)
How a 1950s sex manual mistook constrained strategy for female pathology Chapter Six of Sex Vices in America bears the title “Why Wives Are Unfaithful” — but what it actually describes is something broader and stranger. Lawton and Archer are less interested in affairs per se than in the various…
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Costly signaling and fidelity
In 1953, Shailer Upton Lawton framed a husband’s moral code as mate insurance. A wife who invested heavily created the conditions for him to want a firm moral code and develop it himself. Without that ongoing investment, Lawton argued, husbands became vulnerable to any of the psychological reasons that lead…
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The 1973 dating manual that predicted Tinder: costly signals in action
Andrew DuBrin’s The Singles Game, and the application of management theory to dating advice In 1973, while the rest of America preached free love and “going with the flow,” a management professor in Rochester, New York, was doing something deeply unfashionable: treating dating like a business problem. Andrew J. DuBrin…
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Punch cards and perfect matches: Harvard’s 1965 dating revolution
50 years before Tinder’s swipe-based dating dynamics, Harvard students sparked the digital dating revolution with punch cards, algorithms, and a quest for campus romance. This was the beginning of the dating revolution. In the winter of 1965, two Harvard undergraduates had an idea that would change courtship forever. Or so…
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The quirky world of 1950s dating advice: beyond the viral laughs
A few years ago, the internet erupted with laughter over a 1958 McCall’s magazine article titled “129 Ways to Get a Husband.” Sparked by a Wisconsin woman’s Facebook post of her rummage-sale find, the list quickly went viral on platforms like Bored Panda, Psychology Today, and Reddit. Articles lampooned its…
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Sexual Behavior in the 1970s
Attitudes, practices and data from the “Me Generation” Our very liberal attitudes toward sex have their origins in the “swinging sixties,” but it was during the 1970s that a more outlandish sexual culture emerged. While “sexual liberation” first manifested itself through pop icons and the developing culture of concert-driven, drug-fueled…
About the author
Andrew King
Author of Costly Signals: The Evolution of Dating Advice. PhD researcher with 500+ dating guides from the 1800s to today. Why do we take romantic advice from strangers? I have answers.
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Whether you’re a journalist, podcaster, or an event organizer, I’d love to hear from you. I speak on modern dating, evolutionary psychology, and the surprising history of dating advice.
© 2026, Andrew King