Editing Going steady (section)

==From playing the field to going steady==
[[File:Young_adult_romance_novels.jpg|right|thumb|Going steady was a theme in adolescent and [[Young adult romance literature|young-adult novels]] of the 1950s and 1960s.]]
Before World War II, high school and college students generally dated multiple people, colloquially called "playing the field". [[Dating]] patterns involved variety and competition, and multiple partners were a signal of popularity. Sociologists characterize this form of dating as "competitive".<ref name="spurlock" /> In 1937, sociologist [[Willard Waller]], based on a study at Penn State College, described it as a "Rating and Dating Complex" in which males and females were rated in popularity by themselves and their peers on characteristics such as having money and good clothes, belonging to the best sorority or fraternity, and dating the "right" people,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Waller|first=Willard|date=1937|title=The Rating and Dating Complex|journal=American Sociological Review|volume=2|issue=5|pages=727–734|doi=10.2307/2083825|issn=0003-1224|jstor=2083825}}</ref> although later researchers question whether Waller's observations reflected as widespread a pattern as he implied and note that some individuals chose to pair off exclusively before it became the style.<ref name="gordon">{{Cite journal|last=Gordon|first=Michael|date=1981|title=Was Waller Ever Right? The Rating and Dating Complex Reconsidered|journal=Journal of Marriage and Family|volume=43|issue=1|pages=67–76|doi=10.2307/351417|issn=0022-2445|jstor=351417}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Krain|first1=Mark|last2=Cannon|first2=Drew|last3=Bagford|first3=Jeffery|date=1977|title=Rating-Dating or Simply Prestige Homogamy? Data on Dating in the Greek System on a Midwestern Campus|journal=Journal of Marriage and Family|volume=39|issue=4|pages=663–674|doi=10.2307/350473|issn=0022-2445|jstor=350473}}</ref>

Steady dating began to supplant casual dating in the 1940s.<ref name="spurlock" /> During the war, there was a rapid move away from "competitive" dating (having the most and best dating partners) and toward committed relationships (going steady).<ref name="spurlock" /> There is speculation that the emphasis on early marriage during and after WWII was linked to the impulse to go steady.<ref name="bad" /> Some historians credit the shortage of male partners during the war; however, the end of the war did not end the practice, and going steady became even more pervasive after the war ended.<ref name="weigel" /> Going steady was a frequent theme in [[Young adult romance literature|popular teen novels]] of the time.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Edwards|first=Margaret A.|date=1957|title=Let the Lower Lights Be Burning|journal=The English Journal|volume=46|issue=8|pages=465|doi=10.2307/808421|issn=0013-8274|jstor=808421}}</ref> High school students were expected to enter committed heterosexual relationships or become socially marginalized.<ref name="spurlock" /> Sociologist Wini Breines characterizes it as "a routinized sexual system that controlled and punished female spontaneity and ensured that young women followed the prescribed steps to marriage".<ref name="breines">{{Cite book|title=Young, white, and miserable: growing up female in the fifties|pages=[https://archive.org/details/youngwhitemisera00wini/page/110 110–126]|last=Breines|first=Wini|date=1992|publisher=Beacon Press|isbn=0807075027|location=Boston|oclc=24376633|url=https://archive.org/details/youngwhitemisera00wini/page/110}}</ref>

A study in the 1950s found that three-fourths of the girls and more than half of the boys in grades 11 and 12 had gone steady, many for a year or longer.<ref name="spurlock" /> A 1959 ''Ladies' Home Journal'' article was titled "If You Don't Go Steady, You're Different".<ref name="bad">{{Cite book|title=Bad girls: young women, sex, and rebellion before the sixties|pages=111–142|last=Littauer|first= Amanda H.|date=2015|isbn=9781469625195|location=Chapel Hill|oclc=917093638}}</ref> A study in the 1980s of high school in Connecticut found 81% of girls and almost 70% of boys had gone steady.<ref name="spurlock" /> Daly, in the 1951 ''Profiles of Youth'', quotes a high school principal: "In this school, a girl either goes steady or she doesn't date at all. And after two or three dates with one boy, she's considered going steady whether she wants to or not."<ref name="profile" />