The reason why some of us aren't babydaddies turns 50.
 

(CBS) This week is the 50th anniversary of the pill, a medical breakthrough that has changed society and the sexual landscape forever.

It still has critics, but 100 million women around the world use it to control when and how many times they become pregnant.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards told CBS News, "The invention of the birth control pill revolutionized life for women in America. It's completely changed women's options."

The Pill promised to free women from biological bonds, and it did just that.

In the 1950s, women made up about a third of the workforce. Today, women hold nearly half of all U.S. jobs. In the 1950s, American women on average had 3.8 children. Today, that number has dropped to 2.1.

Richards said, "It made them able to pursue high education, pursue careers and plan the size of their families, which was something they could never do before."

For the first decade after its creation, the pill could only be legally prescribed to married women. However, even with that condition, it was condemned by the Catholic Church and many conservatives.

Historian Ellen Chesler, author of "Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America," said, "It was really considered immoral to suggest that women's primary role should not be that of wife and mother, but rather that women should have rights to experience their sexuality free of consequence, just like men have always done."

Gloria Steinem, a longtime leading feminist, said on "The Early Show" Thursday that sexual acceptance with The Pill was the subject of her first piece in Esquire magazine in 1962.

"I ended up saying that the problem was the acceptance of women's sexuality, as much as the women's ability to control it. Were there enough liberated men to go around to the newly liberated women? Which turned out to be kind of prescient."


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The title of this thread is a thread in and of itself. LOL.

Haha, I'm pretty sure whatever madmax is calling himself will show up and make some silly racialist comments.

LOL. That's one of the topics.

I was thinking more along the lines of "where's the condom?"

i had to read it twice to understand it. but that could be because i'm on my nth glass of crown royal & coke w lime :o

where is my glass?

I wonder how many woman take it for reasons unrelated to pregnancy, like endometriosis, PCOS, dysmennorhea, regularity, acne, cramps, being able to skip a month for vacation, and so on. I don't know a lot of women who take the pill/path/ring just for birth control, and many use condoms anyway because of STDs and a back up barrier method.

"The reason why some of us aren't babydaddies" ... interesting way of putting it. It's also the reason why some of us aren't babymamas, the reason why some of us haven't had to seek (or had our partners seek) illegal abortions and suffer through the complications thereof, and the reason why some of us don't have more children than we can support financially and psychologically.

Me!


Ironically, a few of my friends who are pregnant now, were on BC when they got pregnant. Reminds me of the Friends episode when Ross & Joey find out that condoms are only like 97% effective lol.

Welcome to Sex Ed!

The video that I watched earlier discussed how the pill marked the symbolic end of women being relegated to barefoot and pregnant status.

If you've ever seen the TV version of David Halberstam's book The Fifties, they talk about The Pill in one of the episodes. The impetus for it was married women and women in underdeveloped children who didn't want to have any more kids - NOT for a sexual revolution for young single women. One of the unintended consequences was that the daughters started taking Mom's pills and replacing them with aspirin, leading to a very surprised Mom when she subsequently got pregnant.

^^ Oh snap!

The pill only permitted for married women for the first decade or so. Interesting shift in norms.

I wish I could find the videos from the 50th anniversary story that I saw earlier. It showed the first sitcoms ever and how they referenced the pill.

But, when they talk to some gynecologists they are told that disclaimer is only a disclaimer and it only applies to a small % of Pill-antibiotic cases.