Mary Louise Adams shows how, during the postwar years in Canada, the sexual and social activity of young people was ‘normalized,’ and how this discourse on sexuality articulated contemporary concerns about family, security, and the role of the state.

Mary Louise Adams is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies and the Department of Sociology at Queen's University.

'The trouble with "normal" - and with "heterosexuality" - is that they're usually assumed. Here, however, in this major, trouble-making contribution to the new history of heterosexuality, the "normal" and the "heterosexual" are explicitly questioned, their mode of production historically specified. Here, the "idea" of heterosexuality, "the discourse" about it, and the particular historical system of erotic, gendered relationships called heterosexuality, are shown to be socially produced, not natural. Mary Louise Adams proves a most able, enterprising detective of sex.'