The rule of moderation in late nineteenth-century American sexual ideology.

Late nineteenth-century America, characterized by intense mobility and change, produced anxious social orphans who were cut off from many traditional ties, left almost completely ungoverned and unprotected by the state, and set adrift in the complex new cities. Family and church could no longer provide stable bases for support and moral direction. Many people, in their search for individual and social blueprints, turned to less immediate advisors, purchasing in great quantities advice books and pamphlets written primarily by physicians and popular health and science writers. This essay deals with the ideological range and boundaries of that portion of "advice literature" which dealt with sexuality.