This may be of interest - the relation of the pill to sexuality--P.T.
The Big Lie About the Little Pill
By JOSHUA M. ZEITZ
Published: December 27, 2003 in the New York Times
The recent recommendation by two advisory committees that the Food and Drug Administration should legalize over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill seems likely to intensify the culture wars that have dominated public and political discourse over the years.
Opponents of the emergency contraceptive, known as Plan B, say they are concerned that among other things, widening access to the morning-after pill will encourage sexual promiscuity, particularly among young people. It was this apprehension that led Dr. W. David Hager of the University of Kentucky to join three other committee members in voting against the recommendation. Dr. Hager said he worried that Plan B was no less revolutionary than the birth control pill, which he claims ushered in "a new day and age for the expression of sexuality among young people.
Dr. Hager's argument is a common one. Legalized by the F.D.A. in 1960, "the pill" has been widely described as starting a revolution in sexuality and morals. But that is based on a misunderstanding of the history of America's sexual revolution and the pill's role in it.
Before 1960, the story goes, the natural constraints of human biology held Americans to strict standards of sexual discipline; after 1960, and after the pill, Americans threw off the shackles (or, depending on one's political perspective, the civilizing influence) of sexual propriety. Ever since, we've been either slouching toward Gomorrah or, as Clare Boothe Luce once famously announced, living in an age when the "modern woman is at last free as a man is free, to dispose of her own body, to earn her living, to pursue the improvement of her mind, to try a successful career."
That's a lot of power for one little pill. In truth, this narrative is flawed. Though the pill surely made contraception easier, and while it gave women more power and responsibility in family planning, it hardly created a sexual revolution. American sexual habits had been changing long before the pill found its way onto the market. Early sex surveys revealed that about half of all women who came of age in the 1920's admitted to engaging in premarital sex (defined as coitus), a figure that held steady for women in later decades.
Americans were also practicing birth control long before the pill. As early as 1938 a poll commissioned by The Ladies' Home Journal found that roughly four of every five women approved of using birth control. Just over two decades later, on the eve of the pill's legalization, 80 percent of white women and 60 percent of nonwhite women reported practicing some form of family planning.
Even the heightened sexual permissiveness of the 1960's can't be attributed to the pill. Throughout the better part of the decade doctors generally prescribed the first oral contraceptive, Enovid, only for married women, who made up the drug's largest market share in its early years. As late as 1971 only 15 percent of unmarried women age 15 to 19 used the pill. Even in recent times, only about 23 percent of women age 15 to 24 report using it.
The pill, then, did not create America's sexual revolution as much as it accelerated it. And that revolution had been a long time in the making.
Over the course of the 19th century the average number of children born to married couples dropped to about four from about seven. Americans probably weren't having less sex. Instead, couples - particularly those in the growing middle class, whose families no longer required legions of children to work on the farm - were practicing birth control. They were coming to view sex as an activity that wasn't merely procreative, but also central to pleasurable and loving marriages. In the early 20th century many Americans began experimenting with sex outside of matrimony - partly because they could. By the 1920's a majority of Americans lived in urban areas where they enjoyed greater anonymity and social freedom. Meanwhile, a growing leisure culture provided a host of places - from dance halls to movie theaters - where men and women could meet.
At the same time, as an educated work force became increasingly important to the vitality of America's advanced economy, more young people (75 percent by the 1920's) attended high school, creating a new heterosocial peer culture. In the early 20th century more young women also entered the work force, where they came into increased contact with men and enjoyed a limited amount of financial and social freedom that could translate into a loosening of sexual mores. This was particularly the case in the early 1940's, when millions of women (and exempted men) mobilized for war production, and 16 million of their husbands and boyfriends enlisted in the armed services. The resulting demographic and social upheaval created an explosion of sexual freedom.
Finally, the ever-rising influence of consumerism and advertising after 1900 chipped away at the Victorian-era culture of asceticism and self-denial, in effect legitimating the pursuit of pleasure. In a world where Americans were encouraged to "find a road of happiness the day you buy a Buick," other activities that made people happy - like sex - seemed less taboo than in prior years.
Though many young women from the 1920's onward engaged in premarital sex, they probably did so with the intention of marrying their partners. The revolution in morals was tame by later standards. Nevertheless, women and men were steadily redefining the boundaries of romance and sex long before the pill appeared.
The history of America's encounter with the pill helps inform today's debate over Plan B. Oral contraception was a vital development in women's reproductive rights and health, but it didn't cause a revolution in morals and behavior any more than Plan B is likely to sexualize a nation of young people who are already sexually active. Surveys suggest that more than 75 percent of young people have sex before they turn 20, yet only about one-fifth of sexually active high school girls use the pill. None of this minimizes the importance of either the birth control pill or Plan B. Technology has always been an important catalyst of historical change. But America's sexual revolution was a long, complicated phenomenon. No pharmacist can stuff it into a bottle. Cultural critics shouldn't try to do so, either.
Joshua M. Zeitz, a lecturer in history at Cambridge University, is writing a book about flappers and American culture in the 1920's.
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