# Who Won the Sexual Revolution? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 2, 2011, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593 "2011-11-02T04:58:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/141 "2011-11-13T19:00:26Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Er, cites must come WITH rational discussion. > > NDD made an argument, with specific claims. > Cites were demanded. > NDD provided cites, none of which on their face appear to offer any support to the claims he’d previously made. > He was called out on that, and invited to connect his cites to his prior argument. > > At this point you jumped in, with some completely random multi-post blather about brewskis. I submit it is you who does not understand the context of the discussion, and equally, you who are engaging in Have a look again: **New Deal Democrat** , in post #113, stated “•living with their married biological parents places kids at the lowest risk for child abuse and neglect, while living with a single parent and a live-in partner increased the risk of abuse and neglect to more than eight times that of other children” [http://pediatrics.about.com/od/child...buse\_stats.htm](http://pediatrics.about.com/od/child...buse_stats.htm) The citation supports the claim. No-one has discussed this, and Wendell kept saying, “I can’t find the cite” NOT “this citation is inferior because of blah, blah, blah…” New Deal made a claim. Wendell disagreed and demanded citation. New Deal made four citations in post #113. No-one has discussed the content of the citations. When someone cites, if you wish to debate, you no longer talk about its appearance, prima face, you read the citation. You handwave the citations away because of what an url looks like without even reading it? Now, the above repeat of one of New Deal’s citations I have read all the way through in a careful manner. I find the source to be credible, and it does indeed support New Deal’s claim. Now, please have a look at the other three cites, read it at least far enough to see whether his claim is supported or not, and if you have some complaint that this does not actually support his position, say why you believe that does not support him. You have to actually read the cites, not just dismiss them because the url doesn’t reveal the information you would have if you merely clicked on it. No-one has discussed the content in a meaningful way, and Wendell’s response instead was to pretend post #113 is invisible and he can’t see any citations provided by New Deal. This is just plain ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2011, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/142 "2011-11-13T21:02:22Z")
Most of New Deal Democrat’s statistics are of the form “Trend X happened and trend Y happened, so that implies that trend X caused trend Y.” This is well known to be a logical fallacy. It could be that trend Y caused trend X. It could be that trend X and trend Y were both caused by trend Z. It could be that they are just randomly related. In particular, New Deal Democrat’s statistics are mostly saying that among families where children are raised by anyone other than a married hetrosexual couple, the children tend to have some given problem Y. (Here problem Y is some given bad thing with the child. I’ll use Y as a filler marker for all the various problems that have been claimed to be caused by failure to be raised by married hetrosexual partners so I don’t have to constantly repeat the names of all the various possible problems.) This doesn’t necessarily mean that the lack of having a married hetrosexual couple caused that problem. It could be, for instance, that mentally and psychologically unstable people tend to not get married before having children (or to divorce soon afterwards) and that the real cause of problem Y is that being raised by unstable parents tends to cause problem Y. It could be that mentally and psychologically unstable parents often pass on the genes that cause their unstability and the children, being unstable too, tend to have problem Y. The rate of marriage is distinctly lower among poorer households than richer household these days in the U.S. Furthermore, this formerly wasn’t true. There didn’t use to be any difference in the rate of marriage according to income in the U.S. It could be that what causes problem Y among children is the poverty itself. It would be useful to compare the rate of problem Y in other countries than the U.S. I’ve been told that in northern Europe, where couples tend to get married less often than in the U.S., children tend to have less of problem Y than in the U.S., despite more often being raised by nonmarried couples. I don’t know if this is really true, but it has to be checked out before one makes an unchallengable statement about what causes problem Y. This is the problem with claiming that failure to be raised by married hetrosexual partners is what tends to cause problem Y based on a single statistic. It’s necessary to make a much more complicated argument. You’re going to say now, “Look, I don’t have the time to write a book about this subject, which is what it would take to prove what really causes problem Y.” And you’re right that it would take a book to prove what’s really going on. That’s the difficulty of arguing about subjects this messy in GD threads on the SDMB. They are too complicated to resolve in just a single thread. ---
**Author:** ![Troppus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a587f6/32.png) [@Troppus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troppus)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/143 "2011-11-13T21:43:35Z")
Reading through the “reliable sources” supplied by \*\*New Deal Democrat \*\*in post 113, it appears that a few of the claims are unsupported. The quoted statement from the Wiki link “Studies have found that not biologically related parents (like stepparents) are up to a hundred times more likely to kill a child than biological parents.” was apparently pulled from thin air and has no supporting reference, footnotes, or studies noted. The report quoted from the Mesa Community College website appears to be a freshman student paper with only two references in the bibliography, and no footnotes or page numbers for the statistics claimed. (I’m guessing it’s a freshman paper because the document is not well-written and does not follow either the MLA or APA format.) The NC Times article quote from Dr. Brad Wilcox of UVA is simply a value judgment with very spotty supporting stats. See these two comments from the same article (underlining mine): “Of the 500 or so deaths caused by physical abuse, the federal statistics don’t specify how many were caused by a stepparent or unmarried partner of the parent.” “Existing U.S. data on child abuse is patchwork, making it hard to track national trends with precision. The latest federal survey on child maltreatment tallies nearly 900,000 abuse incidents reported to state agencies in 2005, but doesn’t delve into how abuse rates correlate with parents’ marital status or the makeup of a child’s household.” And finally, the [About.com](http://About.com) article cites this study: National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. Child Maltreatment 2007 which also includes stats which counter **NDD** ’s claims such as this (underlining mine): “In the 22 States that reported living arrangement data, approximately 26 percent (25.5%) of victims were living with a single mother. Nearly 20 percent (19.1%) of victims were living with married parents, while approximately 21 percent of victims (20.9%) were living with both parents, but the marital status was unknown.” The sources provided consist of: an unsubstantiated claim from a Wiki page, an apparent student paper from a community college, and two sources which contain studies which are admittedly lacking in hard data concerning the relationship of the adults living in the household with abused children. The subsequent argument about the provided stats is a huge waste of time if no one checks the sources for validity. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/144 "2011-11-14T01:13:41Z")
> [@David42](#): > > Have a look again: > > **New Deal Democrat** , in post #113, stated “•living with their married biological parents places kids at the lowest risk for child abuse and neglect, while living with a single parent and a live-in partner increased the risk of abuse and neglect to more than eight times that of other children” > > [http://pediatrics.about.com/od/child...buse\_stats.htm](http://pediatrics.about.com/od/child...buse_stats.htm) > > The citation supports the claim. No-one has discussed this, and Wendell kept saying, “I can’t find the cite” NOT “this citation is inferior because of blah, blah, blah…” No, it does not. It provides a summary with no data or numbers. Not a valid cite. I don’t bother looking at someone’s cites beyond the first if the first is completely useless. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/145 "2011-11-14T01:55:04Z")
Based on [this](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheFifties) TVTropes Useful Notes page on the Fifties, nostalgia for the sexual mores of that time seems inappropriate: > [@](#): > > As for sex? Surprise — They had it. Most sociologists today acknowledge that the ‘sexual revolution’ really began immediately post-WWII; having lived through years of deprivation, people were now more than ready to live in the moment… they just didn’t talk about it, at least not in public, which is what people really mean when they speak of the sexual repression of the era. Later generations’ rebellion was actually about being able to openly discuss sexual matters, which over the decades (as the rebellious kids’ recollections replaced their parents’) got Flanderized into ‘everybody back then slept in twin beds!’ — a sitcom trope enforced by Media Watchdogs that was considered a bit much even back then. ◦ However, if you wanted to cohabitate publicly with the opposite sex, lawfully wedded (not to say holy) matrimony was the only option that wouldn’t get you run out of town. Thus the average age of marriage was much lower than it is today, and the average couple dated only for a few months before marrying. It wasn’t considered right to wait for a long time unless the man had to complete university or a military obligation — otherwise, well, the longer a couple waited, the more likely they were to get impatient and start precipitating the situations mentioned below. > > ◦ A number of women ended up pregnant before their wedding day — or out-of-wedlock entirely — largely because they didn’t have very good contraception. The father in any instance could make an ‘honest woman’ of the girl if he loved her and/or thought it was the right thing to do (and many did), but there really wasn’t a lot of pressure on him to do so from society at large because pregnancy out of wedlock was largely seen as the woman’s fault. The supposition was often that the woman deliberately became pregnant to “trap” an unwilling man into marriage against his will, and it was a lucky man who could avoid this by leaving town. > > ◦ If a woman became pregnant out of wedlock and no man in sight, she had only two realistic options: an expensive, often dangerous back-street or overseas abortion, or a discreet disappearance for a few months with a plausible cover story, at the end of which the child would be adopted and none would be the wiser. Often, girls under 18 had to go through the latter option against their wills, so as not to ‘ruin their lives’. Girls and women of color had even fewer options; they usually couldn’t afford an abortion and charities usually wouldn’t help them with adoption — white babies had the market cornered. > > ◦ It was taken as obvious that marriage would last unto death, and most often it did. Divorce rates in the Fifties seem almost phenomenally low compared to more recent years, although whether this was due to people taking their specific relationships more seriously, or whether they were simply more conditioned to marriage as a concept, is still debated. While much easier to obtain than of old, divorce was still socially quite risque, and if children were involved the assumption was that the couple would, and should, make every effort to stay together for them. > > ◦ Large sections of the populace (especially women) had no idea of the existence of homosexuality, and especially lesbianism. The average person thought he’d never met a gay or lesbian person, even if he had. Gay men were generally considered to be creepy predatory pedophiles, and probably Commie-loving traitors too. This tended to be less blatant in more sophisticated and/or media circles, but otherwise it was dangerous to appear ‘arty’. (A classic example is the victim in Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table: ‘Every healthy Englishman who met him longed earnestly… to kick him’.) Meanwhile, it was commonly believed that a lesbian could be turned straight through rape. > > ◦ All that said, the common subversion [Seemingly Wholesome Fifties Girl] isn’t really any more accurate, at least not for women (men weren’t as thoroughly tracked). Though of course there were many people in Real Life who acted like that, they were nowhere near as common as many 1970s+ portrayals of 1950s-era teenage life would have you think. The 1950s era was not, as often portrayed, just modern behavior with more hypocrisy, there really was significant differences between 1950s sexual behavior (especially for high-school aged people) and today’s. Less than 15% of women who came of age (18 years old) between 1948-1955 had had premarital sex by the time they were 18, less than 25% for those between 1956-61. The median age for for first premarital sex for men and women turning 15 in 1954-63 was 20.4 years old (it would be a bit older for women alone), by comparison for marriage for the 1950s, the average age was only 20.3. The Sexual Revolution of the (late) 1960s to 1970s of course changed all of this, with people having more premarital sex and doing so younger. > > ◦ The 1950’s had the highest instance of teen pregnancy in history, according to the CDC. The only explanation for that is that sexual activity amongst teens was far more common than we believe. Most of those types of statistics rely on data that has been collected through simply asking the subject a question and recording their answers, assuming that the answers are truthful. Chances are, they are not. It’s likely, in fact probable, that the teenagers LIED about whether or not they were sexually active. They certainly do today, and there is no reason to believe that it was any different in the Fifties, when the stigma was much greater. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/146 "2011-11-14T13:18:07Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > No, it does not. It provides a summary with no data or numbers. Not a valid cite. > > I don’t bother looking at someone’s cites beyond the first if the first is completely useless. The citation of [About.com](http://About.com) wouldn’t go far with me except it also cites its sources, which you can view in PDF. I agree the [About.com](http://About.com) article is a mere summary. Nevertheless, New Deal Democrat didn’t specify where in the link you could find any credible citation. He did quote the article itself, which summarizes. What does it summarize? The studies cited at the bottom of the article. Read those studies and then tell me **New Deal Democrat** did NOT point us in the direction of evidence backing up his claims. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/147 "2011-11-14T13:33:07Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Based on [this](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheFifties) TVTropes Useful Notes page on the Fifties, nostalgia for the sexual mores of that time seems inappropriate: > > “If a woman became pregnant out of wedlock and no man in sight, she had only two realistic options: an expensive, often dangerous back-street or overseas abortion, or a discreet disappearance for a few months with a plausible cover story, at the end of which the child would be adopted and none would be the wiser.” > “The 1950’s had the highest instance of teen pregnancy in history, according to the CDC. The only explanation for that is that sexual activity amongst teens was far more common than we believe.” I’m entirely willing to accept the idea that people have always “fucked like rabbits,” to pardon the expression. I think it’s a no-brainer that _the reason_ there was a higher “teen pregnancy rate\*” is because there was a lower teen abortion rate. \*(a somewhat misleading term, today. There are many abortions and those aren’t counted in the “teen pregnancy rate;” as I understand it, abortion records are private medical records, whereas birth certificates have fewer restrictions around them. What we really have is a teen mother’s birth rate is this not so?) ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/148 "2011-11-14T15:18:37Z")
> [@David42](#): > > The citation of [About.com](http://About.com) wouldn’t go far with me except it also cites its sources, which you can view in PDF. I agree the [About.com](http://About.com) article is a mere summary. Nevertheless, New Deal Democrat didn’t specify where in the link you could find any credible citation. He did quote the article itself, which summarizes. What does it summarize? The studies cited at the bottom of the article. > > Read those studies and then tell me **New Deal Democrat** did NOT point us in the direction of evidence backing up his claims. If someone cites those studies, with a page number reference, sure. I am not interested in carrying either NDD’s water or yours. ---
**Author:** ![NY\_JEW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e9a140/32.png) [@NY\_JEW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NY_JEW)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/149 "2011-11-21T00:35:03Z")
In Europe its starting to look like the Muslims, and In America Hispanics. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/150 "2011-11-21T01:02:17Z")
> [@NY\_JEW](#): > > In Europe its starting to look like the Muslims, and In America Hispanics. And the Mormons. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/151 "2011-11-21T03:40:11Z")
> [@NY\_JEW](#): > > In Europe its starting to look like the Muslims, and In America Hispanics. > [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > And the Mormons. What exactly does the sexual revolution have to do with differential reproductive rates in human populations more inclined to conservatism (and thus less likely to have been affected by it)? ---
**Author:** ![NY\_JEW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e9a140/32.png) [@NY\_JEW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NY_JEW)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/152 "2011-11-21T10:18:41Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > What exactly does the sexual revolution have to do with differential reproductive rates in human populations more inclined to conservatism (and thus less likely to have been affected by it)? with the exception of a few sub demographic whites (Orthodox jews, Mormons, Amish ext.) the amount of children being born to the avg white family is much less then replacement value, due to things like Birth Control and the like. Groups more inclined to conservatism are less effected by the idiocy of the sexual revolution. So when they become the majority in the country the country would be tilted more towards there culture as opposed to the current one. (which is not to say that would be a bad thing I happen to think it will be a mixed bag where there will be much god and much bad) ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593/153 "2011-11-21T10:52:54Z")
> [@David42](#): > > I’m entirely willing to accept the idea that people have always “fucked like rabbits,” to pardon the expression. > > I think it’s a no-brainer that _the reason_ there was a higher “teen pregnancy rate\*” is because there was a lower teen abortion rate. > > \*(a somewhat misleading term, today. There are many abortions and those aren’t counted in the “teen pregnancy rate;” as I understand it, abortion records are private medical records, whereas birth certificates have fewer restrictions around them. What we really have is a teen mother’s birth rate is this not so?) I wonder to what degree those were early in a young marriage. Get married right out of high school, have a pregnancy quickly, and have the first kid by the time you are 20. When they say “teen pregnancy rate”, does that automatically assume an age of under 18? Or would that include 18 and 19 as well? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-sexual-revolution/601593.md?page=7)