‘Education not Fornication?’ Sexual Morality Among Students in Scotland, 1955–1975

Abstract

Students of the period were often assumed to be at the forefront of liberalisation in sexual behaviour. Their sexual proclivity was alleged to be increasing across the 1960s and 1970s, with rising rates of abortion and sexually transmitted diseases noted among the student population. Concerns regarding the sexual morality of students were raised across the UK, including in Scotland. These were often focused on young women, for whom the problem was supposedly new and particularly worrying and transgressive. In this chapter, this rhetoric of growing permissiveness among a liberal student population is considered against the evidence of personal testimony, including oral history and memoirs, and data from contemporary surveys exploring patterns of sexual behaviour, the use of contraception and abortion, in order to explore the degree of liberality in student relationships and conceptions of sexual morality. In reality, of course, the student population was not a cohesive group. Students were subject to varying degrees of freedom and supervision, in part according to whether they stayed in halls, rented accommodation or lived at home. Those who lived at home, and those who combined work and study, were more embedded in the world of their home community and perhaps less likely to encounter new social groups and ideas among their student peers. The degree to which the behaviours and ideas of the student population differed from those of young people at large must be considered, alongside the question of how far ‘permissiveness’ spread across the UK, since Scotland has often been considered a particularly moral and religious country. Although changes in patterns of sexual behaviour are clearly evident, so too are continuities, including the specific classed and gendered meanings that were attached to sexual morality which remained remarkably resilient throughout this period and beyond.