Standing in the Sunshine - Sex & Family

...I experienced something afterwards that I call PMZ, which means postmenopausal zest.

– A New Zealand woman on the advantages of getting older

Keep yourselves healthy and physically fit...and be careful. If you can't be careful, be clever.

– Nancy Sutherland offers advice to young New Zealand women

You saw the springtime, you saw the mating season, you saw cows being born, you saw the bulls, you saw the stallions, you saw the roosters, you saw everything like that, so we weren't screwed over in any shape or form about the mating game.

– Waireti Walters on her rural upbringing and sex education

I think contraception's really important and I think anybody that has sex without it regularly is incredibly stupid.

– A young woman in 1993 sums up her attitude to contraception

Girls do not always wait for an advance to be made. It is unfortunate that in many cases girls by immodest conduct have become the leaders in sexual misbehaviour and have corrupted the boys...

– Excerpt from the 1954 Mazengarb Report into 'sexual impropriety' in Lower Hutt

What I would like her to try and remember: that her body is beautiful. And she has to cherish that body.

– Mihi Edwards on her hopes for young wāhine Māori

...the Americans, they quite bowled the New Zealand girls over by their mixture of cheekiness and a kind of old-fashioned courtesy. They wooed the girls with flowers and compliments, so different from the Kiwi male who wouldn't be seen dead carrying a bunch of flowers, of course.

– Mary Dobbie on the arrival of American marines in 1940s New Zealand

I was supposed to be sent off 'up north for a while' and not admit to anybody that I was pregnant — you just didn't do it. Mothers sent their sons across the Tasman to avoid being 'got at' when there was an unplanned pregnancy, and daughters were sent away in disgrace.

– Denny Anker remembers the repressive sexual and social climate of post-war New Zealand

Mother couldn't say the word 'constipation' and meet your eyes. You would have to look out the window...

– Nancy Sutherland on the silence about bodily functions and sex in 1940s and 50s New Zealand