(This article was published in the NEWS CHRONICLE on Tuesday July 24th 1934. It was obviously of interest to my Uncle Jimmy for the clip is included in one of his two books on holidays. I have reproduced it because I find the change in attitudes interesting. Also, of more morbid interest on the reverse of this article is much of a report on the death of the notorious gunman John Dillinger. - Jim.)

HOLIDAYS, before the war, were spent by many of us sedately by the seaside, well chaperoned by our families. To do anything else in July or August was considered to be rather unconventional and, as far as girls were concerned, definitely unladylike.

To-day holidays are taken in a much more adventurous spirit. Modern youth uses the holiday to get out and about, to see new places and people, and to be right out-of-doors. Young men and girls clad in shorts and bright-coloured shirts spend their holidays hiking across the countryside, sleeping at little inns or at the Youth Hostels. They explore the Thames in small boats. They cycle incredible distances.

When they want more sophisticated amusements they turn to pleasure-cruising or back again to the seaside resorts, with their new dancehalls and cinemas, their "dreamland pleasure parks" and palatial swimming pools.

This new holiday is already beginning to take the place of the family holiday. Nowadays many girls and men spend their holidays together. The idea that they should include a chaperon in the party never enters their heads.

There has indeed been a rapid change in the relationships between the sexes, and many people have not yet been able to decide whether they approve of this new freedom, especially when it takes the form of "mixed holiday parties." Yet it has all developed very naturally.

For some time past girls have been spending their holidays with other girls without a chaperon. Once a girl has left school and gone to college or begun to earn her own living she no longer plans her holiday in terms of "where is the family going this summer?" Instead, she finds out where she wants to go herself and then looks round to see which of her friends she would like to go with. If the friend she chooses happens to be a man, she is not very much perturbed.

The demands of her job often make it impossible for the business girl to it in her holiday plans with those of her family. This forces her to look for other companions. Also her ideas of the ideal holiday may not coincide with those of her family. So girls have got used to the idea of travelling abroad without their parents, and no one makes any comment when they stay at hotels by themselves. Girls also feel independent and able to spend their holiday as they wish, for in most cases they are paying for them with their own earnings.

Many parents grasp the reality of this holiday problem and encourage their daughters to find friends to go away with. When, however, these modern girls suddenly announce that they are going to spend their holidays with a mixed party at a holiday camp, or have decided to go to Norway with a boy friend, there is a certain amount of consternation in the family.

But I am beginning to wonder if parents are right in objecting to these unchaperoned holidays. I think perhaps they are being rather unnecessarily frightened about their daughters' reputations and public opinion.

Girls to-day have much more chance of getting to know and understand their men friends than their predecessors had. In the old days a gir1's opportunity of meeting men depended largely on how often her mother could entertain. It was not considered proper for a girl to become acquainted with men outside the home. All that is changed. Girls now make their men friends without the help of their families.

Instead of the family picnics and excursions and tea parties, to which shy young men were invited by the parents, the modern girl gets to know her man by going out with him in his two-seater, by spending the day on the river with him. She goes dancing with him at the roadhouse, sits with him in the cinema.

She discusses frankly with him many subjects that would have made her parents blush. She is used to having views of her own on all kinds of social and moral problems. She is sensible and level-headed. She is able to take care of herself.

Many of us have got used to this free-and-easy mixing between men and girls. In fact it would seem rather ridiculous if the chaperon did reappear. No one now makes a fuss if a girl has a mixed party in her bed-sitting-room. Parents do not think a young man's intentions are dishonourable because he calls for their daughter in a sports car in which it is obviously impossible to place a chaperon; nor are they unduly worried if she remains out until after eleven o'clock.

It is because of all this freedom that the unchaperoned holiday has developed. Those who find that they do not approve of it may also criticise the present relationship of the modern girl and man; but I think before they condone or condemn they ought to understand the modern girl's point of view.

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