Thank you kanicbird. Finally an answer I can get behind.
And yet, oddly enough, the birth rate has been steadily declining during that same period. So, if anything, the percentage of women forced into marriage or sent off to convents in the 1950s was likely a good deal higher than 37%.
How is that possible when the statistic clearly says that the number was 5%?
That about says it all right there.
For one thing, your little study doesn’t say a thing about how many of those women not included in the “unmarried” category were coerced into marriage, aka “shotgun weddings”. And every study I’d ever heard of before now puts the greatest rate of unmarried pregnancies in the 1950s. In other words, conveniently before your little study starts counting them, but during the sex-is-evil period you think was so cool.
I’d sure like to see those studies because the evidence I have always heard contradicts what you just said. Believe me the cite I found wasn’t convenient. I tried finding statistics in the 50s.
Sorry for my math error. I’m still not convinced that 2% is unreasonable. The number will never be 0. You do know that abstinence has a failure rate, too, right?
As for my other questions, let me sum up:
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Evidence suggests that the number of unplanned pregnancies is falling.
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Evidence suggests that abstinence programs don’t work.
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Evidence suggests that most unplanned pregnancies occur among women living below poverty line.
You have not addressed any of these issues, as far as I can see.
You have not explained why freer access to abortion is an unacceptable solution to unplanned pregnancy, aside from an unsupported assertion of the ‘suffering’ of the unborn.
You have not explained why free access to birth control for those below the poverty line wouldn’t work as well as access does for those who can afford it.
Most damningly for your argument, you have not demonstrated that urging abstinence would result in a lowering of the incidence of unplanned pregnancies in a practical sense. (On paper, obviously, it’s the simple solution. In practice, it hasn’t ever worked.)
You’ve never once addressed the men’s role in preventing unplanned pregnancies.
You’ve never acknowledged that sex outside of marriage and unplanned pregnancies are not a post-sexual revolution phenomenon.
To sum up, I find your assertions completely unsupported and unconvincing. But have fun storming the windmills!
Teenage pregnancy rates were just as high in the 50’s, but in those days, teenage girls were married off when they got pregnant so they won’t show up as “single.” Neither will the pregnancies that went unreported because of the girls went off to “vist an aunt” for a few months, or had illegal abortions, or self-aborted or miscarried.
Well too bad, I say. Life is life, and if you want to make 100% sure you don’t have babies that 1) get sterilized or 2) don’t have sex.
Your statistic is for births by unmarried women. It says nothing at all about premaritial sex. If, as has been contended here, a significant portion of marriages prior to the sexual revolution were held to cover up an unexpected pregnancy, those numbers would not be reflected in your statistic, as those would be births to married women.
Please let Whitney be wrong about the children.
Well with statistics like that it’s a wonder anyone knows ANYTHING about the 50s. How do you know that the teenage pregnancy rates were JUST AS HIGH in the 50s as they are today. For all you know they could have been higher than they are today. Even if the 5% number is too low, the real world number of girls getting pregnant while they were single would probably not have even doubled. Yet you want us to think that the number would increase 6 fold!
If the statistics of the time were so skewed then we have no choice but to go with what the people of the time tell us. And they tell us that they didn’t engage in sex as much as young people do today. Sure there were shotgun weddings and there were some cases of pregnant girls disappearing for a few months. But it was rare and I don’t think you’ll ever be able to show any evidence to the contrary.
According to Alfred Kinsey’s land mark studies on sexuality in 1948 and 1953, between 67 and 98% of men (depending on socioeconomic status) had premarital sex. 50% of all women, regardless of socioeconomic status, had premarital sex. As your cite showed, 50% of women at the time did not have children out of wedlock. Obviously, not every sex act leads to conception, but certainly the number of pregnancies resulting from premarital sex had to be higher than the 5% you found in your cite.
Okay, I concede on that issue. Half of the women in the 50s engaged in sex at least one time before they were married. What is the number today? Much higher. But what is important is what the Kinsey studies don’t address: how promiscuous those women in the 50s were compared to women (and men) today. Sure they had sex before they married, but how often did they have sex? Did they engage in sex with every man (or woman) they dated? I really doubt it. Did they even date men as often as women (and men) do today? I don’t think they did.
Again, women aren’t more fertile just because they have more than one partner.
I’d really appreciate it if you figured out exactly what you’re complaining about. Is it high birthrates? Is it premarital sex? Is it abortion? Is it lack of admiration for sex?
Because the only impression I’m getting is that you want the sluts to keep their legs crossed, but you’re trying to come up with a plausible attack.
One more issue not discussed is the number of single women NOT under the thumb of their parents having children out of wedlock. This number has also increased.
Yes, that’s it. Sluts, both male and female, need to keep their legs crossed. But really that’s a generalization. Most people don’t consider a couple who is in a committed sexual unmarried relationship to be sluts
And yet, the birthrate is much lower. Conclusion: contraception works.
You didn’t answer my question about a 100% effective birth control.
Is this really about birth control and the birth rate?