Title: The trouble with normal
First published: 1997
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.
Subjects: History, Conditions sociales, Youth, Social conditions, Comportement sexuel, Jeunesse, Sex instruction, Jeunes adultes, Sexual orientation, Heterosexuality, Sexual behavior, Hétérosexualité, Heterosexualite, Young adults, Sexualite, Human Sexuality, SELF-HELP, Geschichte 1945-1960, Sexual Instruction, Jugend, PSYCHOLOGY, Sexualverhalten, Modern, Heterosexualitat, Youth, sexual behavior
Places: Canada
Time periods: 20th century, 1945-
LC classification: HQ27 .A233 1997