Not wanting to get married
1951
Jean talks about the expectation and pressure to be straight, get married and have children, like other girls her age. She turned 16 in 1951.
"I grew up in very deprived
circumstances, very working class home, back streets of Birmingham and
I should say that all of my peer group girls were married by about
sixteen because they were pregnant. That’s why people got married then
because they were pregnant, it wasn’t much to do with love or anything
else, and I knew that I didn’t want do any of that. I didn’t want to be
married and I didn’t want to have children. I used to think to myself 'I’d quite like to be a widow' without any of the stuff in between. All
the kudos about being a young woman then was about marriage and that
was the expectation. So I wouldn’t have thought I was gay".
Contributed by: Jean Turley, 72