To allow the balance to tip one way will upset one group of people, and allowing it to tip the other way to far can cause devastating harm in the relations with the others. .
Also, the role of what a person is known for spread from these years. As they put it a girl became rather she was "generally known whether she was a first-night petter,- (91). I know that as I was growing up in the small town of Ennis. Whether or not a girl would "put out- or not, or at least how far around the bases you could get. A girl's reputation became the top subject that guys wanted to talk about. I sat and listened to hundreds of stories on what some guy had done with this girl at the party on Saturday night. The guys always knocked me because I came from a good Christian home and was a virgin until half way through my senior year, a thing these days that is almost unheard of. All you hear these days is how good a girl looks and what you would "do to her- given the chance. These days you still hear of the few girls who are waiting until marriage to give up their virginity. However, I already know two girls that said this just three months ago at the start of college that have reneged on their decision and given in to the peer pressure. In the twenties "Dating and petting were, moreover, distinctly marriage-oriented - (91). I believe that Emma Goldman may have put it best in her lecture at the Bellman house when she said:.
All men, with few exceptions, have sexual life before marriage but the insist that their wives come to them in that state of absurd ignorance of the own bodily functions and consequent lack of exercise f them, which they denominate' purity. I doubt if there is a solitary man in this audience "a married man "who has not had premarital intercourse with women."" (108).
However even back then, "virginity in a bride was no longer and absolute prerequisite for most men, it was still considered desirable- (91).