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The birth control pill arrived on the market in 1960. Within two years, 1.2 million American women were on the pill. By 1964, it was the most popular contraceptive in the country. Looking back, Americans creditor blamethe pill with unleashing the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The pill is widely believed to have loosened sexual mores, including the double standard that sanctioned premarital sex for men but not for women. But, according to historian Elaine Tyler May, this idea is largely a myth. As May explained to a Stanford audience, the pills impact on the sexual revolution is unclear. What is clear is that the drug had a far greater impact within marriage itself.
women did not want to appear always sexually ready. For those who did seek birth control prescriptions, access was often difficult. Many doctors were either unwilling to prescribe the pill to unmarried women or were prevented from doing so by state law. (Some women got around these rules, for example by wearing a fake engagement ring.) Many college-age women did not feel comfortable going to their hometown family doctor for a prescription but also did not have an on-campus source for birth control pills. By the end of the 1960s only 45 percent of college health centers offered prescriptions for oral contraceptives. Given these limitations, many young women, including those who participated in the sexual revolution, did not utilize the pill.
the pill, she throws away her voluminous maternity dress and declares her liberation. But her newfound freedom does not lead to sexual promiscuity, rather it enhances her marriage. With effective birth control, she invites her husband to a night of worry-free sex, promising, Oh daddy dont you worry none / Cause mamas got the pill. Rather than unleashing a sexual revolution, the pill increases this womans enjoyment of married life. May believes that the pill was and remains an important tool for women to limit their fertility and to gain greater control over their lives. But without the feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the pill would have been simply one more form of birth control. After all, other effective contraceptives such as the diaphragm and the condom had been available for years before the pill was approved in 1960. While the pill was arguably more convenient than these methods, it was not inherently revolutionary. The revolution came under the influence of the womens movement, when the pill became one among many strategies that women used to achieve self-determination.
Country singer Loretta Lynn summed up the importance of oral contraception for married women in her 1975 hit, The Pill. The humorous song tells of a young wife who resents her husbands nights out on the town, while she herself is tied to the home by constant pregnancy and childbearing. With access to
Elaine Tyler May is Regents Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Minnesota and the author of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (2010). Her talk at Stanford was presented by the American Studies Program and cosponsored by the Clayman Institute, the Program in Feminist Studies, and the Department of History.
Founded in 1974, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University creates knowledge and seeks to implement change that promotes gender equality at Stanford, nationally, and internationally.
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