-It was written into the Puritan Bible that a man has duty to God and to his wife was to pleasure her. That was called due benevolence.

-It's also about economy and possession. You know, children were property, and children were laborers. Sowas not just about making Christians. It's also about economic success.

-Sex within a marriage is so encouraged and the man was under obligation to pleasure his wife so much, so refusing sex to his wife or impotence were grounds for divorce. In fact, you could be excommunicated for not having sex.

-From here and forever, you are banished.

-However, though it was considered inappropriate to have sex outside the marriage, a third of brides actually were pregnant on their wedding day.

-For our young people, which are sexually active, then when it came out as pregnant, and then they would say we were already married, and a sort of reactively to maritalize that premarital sex.

And while most Puritans did not condemn premarital sex, they did attempt to prevent it.

-The Puritans did create a device called bundling board, because most people live in one room. And there was one large bed they would all sleep in. And so any visitors would be staying in this bed as well. So the bundling board was essentially like a large cutting board, and it would be placed bewteen the young woman and the young man to block their ability to engage any carnal, sexual experiences. So you can imagine, you have mother and father and then a young man and then there's a board, and then the daughter. However, cutting boards were not very effective. And inhibitting and carnality,they were pretty easy to climb over.

Behind the bundling board, the Puritan population almost doubled, leading one to ponder how all that sex took place in one bed after mom blew out the candle.