As the United States shifted from an agricultural economy to one predicated on industry and a service economy, many young women and men left small towns and farms to look for work and a new life in cities. The rise of communities of single women and men presented new models of how individual’s lives might be led. It also generated new structural models of public socializing that had an enormous impact on urban culture. This paradigm shift in American culture had a major effect. A society that defined the ideal relationship—and the only proper, moral sexual relationship—as reproductively
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