The great Ethel Hays depicted a sad event.
Dating was actually a fairly new thing. Up until just after World War One, men had called upon the household of girls they were interested in. They did not "take them out", save in quite controlled circumstances. The increated entry of women into the workplace and higher education, however, began to change that.
Perhaps oddly, the term "date" or "dating" came from the underclass, and it came from prostitution. This shows that at first the practice of dating wasn't completely accepted as respectable, but by the mid 1920s it had really entered its own. As a cultural institution, it really picked up about that time and remained very strong through the 1950s, when it began to change, although it still was a mainstay of relationships in its traditional sense well into the 1990s. One big change during that time is that it actually became more conservative as an institution for quite awhile, as early on, in the period depicted in this cartoon, there was no expectation of exclusivity in a dating relationship.
Last edition:
.jpg)
