When 'Petting Parties' Scandalized The Nation

Two flapper women — with their dates — sit on a bed in Chicago, circa 1928.
 
To some social observers, petting parties of the 1920s were a natural, post-First World War outgrowth of a repressed society. To others, the out-in-the-open hug-and-kissfests were blinking neon signposts on the Road to Perdition.