linguistic:translation
In North American society

According to Terry Gould 's The Lifestyle: A look at the erotic rites of swingers, swinging began among American Air Force pilots and their wives during World War II before pilots left for overseas duty. The mortality rate of pilots was so high, as Gould reports, that a close bond arose between pilot families that implied that pilot husbands would care for all the wives as their own – emotionally and sexually – if the husbands were lost. The realities of the demographics and basing of US Army Air Force (USAAF) pilots and crew suggest that this arrangement did not evolve during WWII, instead evolving later. US military personnel in WWII were not accompanied by their families (and many, especially in the USAAF, were single) – the giant military bases where families live while accompanying a deployed soldier, sailor, aviator, or Marine are mostly Cold War creations. By the time the Korean War ended, swinging had spread from the military to the suburbs. This phenomenon was usually referred to as wife-swapping.