The trouble with normal
Subtitle: postwar youth and the making of heterosexuality
By: Mary Louise Adams.
Series: Studies in gender and history ;; 7
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
Subjects: Youth -- Canada -- Sexual behavior.; Youth -- Canada -- Social conditions.; Heterosexuality -- Canada -- History -- 20th century.; Sexual orientation -- Canada -- History -- 20th century.; Sex instruction -- Canada -- History -- 20th century.; Hétérosexualité.; Jeunes adultes -- Canada -- Comportement sexuel.; Jeunesse -- Canada -- Comportement sexuel.; Jeunesse -- Canada -- Conditions sociales.; Canada -- Social conditions -- 1945-; Canada -- Conditions sociales -- 1945-
Description: In this study, Mary Louise Adams explores discourses about youth and their place in the production and reproduction of heterosexual norms. She examines debates over juvenile delinquency, indecent literature, and sex education to show not why heterosexuality became a peculiar obsession in English Canada after the Second World War, as much as how it came to hold such sway.

Drawing on feminist theory, cultural studies, and lesbian/gay studies, The Trouble with Normal is the first Canadian study of 'youth' as a sexual and moral category. Adams looks not only at sexual material aimed at teenagers but also at sexual discourses generally, for what they had to say about young people and for the ways in which 'youth,' as a concept, made those discourses work.

She argues that postwar insecurities about young people narrowed the sexual possibilities for both young people and adults.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references: p. [197]-214.
Includes index.