Eric Behm
Professor Justin Smith
English Composition 101
12/10/14
Institution of Marriage The idea of two people spending the rest of their lives together used to be an extremely common occurrence. Not to say that it has changed completely, but the odds of a new marriage lasting more than 15 years is now less than half, and the cause of this might not be the regression of the belief in the institution of marriage, but the growth of options and the pursuit and belief in true happiness. In the past 50 years, much has changed in our perception of marriage. With the Sexual Revolution that occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s, women became independent by gaining control of their sexuality and sought higher education, higher paying jobs and
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These clubs expanded throughout the 1960s, opening locations from New York to Los Angeles and further. (Farber, p. 30) There was a massive increase in sexual encounters between unmarried adults during the Sexual Revolution. Men and women sought to reshape marriage by instilling new institutions of open marriage, mate swapping, swinging, and communal sex. In addition, the growing number of marriages resulting in divorce--and the consequent lessening of the stigma attached to divorce--provided another opportunity for men and women to engage in non-monogamous sexual activity. With the relaxing attitude towards sexuality and the introduction of birth control, casual sex between adults was becoming very popular. The development of the birth control pill is often suggested as a cause of the Sexual Revolution. The creation of birth control actually came from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s social reform policy called “The Great Society”, which was mainly set to eliminate poverty and racial injustice. The FDA licensed “The Pill” in 1960 as a means to eliminate poverty cause by overpopulation. (Bailey, p. 828) The pill was extremely popular and had over 1 million users by the year 1962. With the wide adoption of birth control, women now became free to express their sexuality without the worry of unplanned pregnancy.
The role of women in marriage in the 1950’s was often to stay at home doing housework and
Referring to the late 1920s and early 1930s, women were seen as the common housewife. This image was depicted across many media platforms. The customary role of women, was to be in charge of running the household. This included polishing, vacuuming, dusting, dishes, laundry and other tasks which needed to be maintained on a weekly or daily basis. It became a full day workload, keeping her constantly busy as if she were employed. It was required for the women of the household to be prepared for anything her husband or family desired. Housework was typically expected to only include maintenance, however, this was not the case. Cooking, cleaning, and overall upkeep was all to be completed by the wife, while the man of the house brought in the money.
Women had the stereotype of being the homemaker which is a person whose main job is to take care of her family, home and children. Women were assumed to be homemakers with the primary responsibility for the children (Blair and Lenton 1). Traditionally, the job of a stay at home mother is done by women who have had to make them self’s approachable for marriage, stay at home, take care of the kids, cook and clean. Society benefited economically from high marriage rates because that led to an increase in production of family related goods, home construction, and furnishings. It was frown upon if women did not get married young, and a virgin. Women needed to get married in order to have unprotected intercourse because premarital sex was considered sinful. In the 1950s professional jobs were still largely closed off to women even after they had taken over the workforce when men left for World War II. It was common for companies not to want to hire women, and if they did provide employment for them they would pay them less than men. During that time there were too few women American lawyers, doctors, and engineers. Working women did not have a great salary, and were denied opportunities to advance. Their employers assumed they would quit their jobs as soon as they knew that had become pregnant. If women did work, they were stewardesses, secretaries, nurses and teachers. In addition, many women faced pressure from their families to stay home, and not work at all outside the home. In the 1950's, society encouraged, and pressured women to marry young because of the well-defined roles of that time. Women’s jobs were to serve as a homemaker and mother, so it was not deemed necessary for them to pursue a college degree. Most women were married after high school, and fell into their traditional gender roles right away. As stated in the American Journal of Sociology, “Women were
Modern, contemporary society’s mindset on marriage has shifted considerably over the years. Some research has noted the increase in early sexual experiences, greater acceptance of cohabitation and the increase in narcissistic tendencies, are complicating and muddying the ideals of what marriage means to people today. Research done on this subject resulted in several studies that found that spouses who did not believe that marriage would last forever, were less likely to commit to the relationship financially and were more likely to have extramarital affairs.
In years past, the American Dream for most young girls’ is to grow up and be married to Prince Charming and to “Live Happily Ever After!” Although this may be expected - it is rarely fulfilled. Marriage is the legal and binding union between a man and woman. Yet when couples marry, they vow to stay by their partner’s side ‘till death do us part.’ Currently that vow seems to have little or no value in today’s society. The current statistics for survival of marriage are quite grim. The divorce rate in the United States is somewhere between 50 percent and a startling 67 percent. (KSL News) One contributing factor the growing epidemic of divorce is the parting of different family
In the mid-1800s American women united to participate in social reforms movements more than ever before. This movement’s involved: struggle to abolish slavery, outlaw alcohol, and ban child labor among others (Rupp, 1987). Despite the failure of the women's movement to attain one among its primary goals, the passage of the ERA , the movement overall accomplished an excellent deal. For several women activists, management over their bodies was a central issue in the campaign. Women needed to be liberated to explore and control their gender, while not being judged by society. An oversized a part of management during this arena concerned having access to birth control, or contraception ways (Fishman, 1998). The contraception pill, associate inoculant,
In the 1950s, birth control pills were introduced in the United States (Windsor, 2002). Over the past seven decades, the pill has changed the American women’s lives in several ways. The pills have allowed women to delay marriages, invest in their career development, and secure well-paid jobs in areas that were previously dominated by men. The pill has also improved family relationships and prevented abuse and marriage dissolutions. This paper explores the history of birth control methods in the US and how the pill became available on a large scale to women. The paper further examines how the pills has given women the freedom to advance their careers, strengthen the marriage relationships, and participate in the workforce.
The treatment of the male gender role is altogether different from that of the female gender role, and this issue has turned out to be important. Gender roles were extraordinarily changed in the 1950s, with the men returning from war and taking their occupations back. Females had, throughout World War II, taken men’s occupations while they had been away at war. After the war, numerous women needed to keep their occupations. Instead, a considerable amount of them got to be spouses and moms as the men returned from the war. For example, the male spouses were away at work for most the day while the wives would need to do a decent measure of the manual work around the house. The type of chores could have been cleaning, cooking, or other tasks the female spouses handled. These adjustments in the home might not have been viewed as positive but rather they were for women. Ladies truly advanced in the fifties with finding new openings for work and discovering their place in the world. Therefore, two articles explain further in detail about the
Muscle tension increase, heart rate quickens, nipples harden, erection of mans penis, lubrication of vagina
The authors state that “In the face of poverty, however, pregnancy became not simply a duty or a blessing, but also a curse leading some women to rebel” (199). This led to a heightened discussion on reproduction morality all across the country. As a result of this huge debate, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the establishment of the birth control pill. Because of the pill, a famous Warren court case known as Griswold v. Connecticut ruled in favor of Griswold permitting married couples the right to use birth control. Today, there are still remaining challenges concerning female sexuality.
The roles and expectations for women in the 1950s differed in many ways from today’s society. “Society placed high importance and many expectations on behavior at home as well as in public” (Colorado.edu). In the 1950s women were considered “housewives”. Women’s sole purpose was to maintain the home, take care of the children, provide meals, and be obedient wives. “Good wives” listened to their
b. Transnational trafficking of W – transportation of W from one country to another, usually for the purposes of prostitution
Although societies with rigorous rules such as the ancient Greeks practiced the use of birth control and the invention of modern contraceptive methods---such as condoms, diaphragms, and douches---have been around since the early 1800’s, birth control still did not prevail in the twentieth century and was highly controversial. Margaret Sanger gave people a new and radical ideology stating how birth control helped women in many more ways than their sexuality. Sanger published many literature pieces about her opinions on options and freedom for women in society. Several other women and doctors acknowledged her argument by broadcasting it during the Progressive Era. When the 1920’s came around,
Advertisements in the 50s started to glamorize being a house wife sending out the message that a woman’s role was in the home smiling, arms loaded with cooked food or women cleaning the house and portraying that the women in the advertisements were happy and content with this role in the home (Google Books, 2017)). A smiling house wife who was cooking and cleaning was a “Normal American Women’(1950s.weebly.com, 2017)) women in the 1950s were perceived as nothing more than the homemaker. It was quite unheard for a woman to go to college and receive an education, they were expected to be a stay at home wife and nothing more, they were seen as dedicated housewives who’s only goal in life were that of pleasing their husband. Society in the 1950s believed that women should not work as this would involve leaving the house and not placing attention on her family((Google Books, 2017)). Men in the 1950s had complete control over their wives with the
Born to a socialist father who was also an early advocate of women’s suffrage, from him Margaret Sanger inherited her political pluck. This woman spent her life helping women take control of their own bodies and be educated; she is responsible for the plight of women in being able to reversibly prevent pregnancy through the use of a drug she pushed to get created known as “The Pill”. Margaret Sanger was over 80 years old when the first pills became available and by the end of the 1960’s there were many millions of women using the new form of birth control even though the Catholic Church and some states considered it vulgar and obscene and outlawed the use in preventing pregnancy. Ultimately this progressive change in thought and culture to women being able to control their own fertility and therefore be able to work outside the home; this also created a counter culture “sexual revolution” where women felt freer to express their own sexuality without the fear of becoming pregnant – while others saw this a moral decay of individuals and family. Conclusively the majority of people are happy with the results of Margaret Sanger work to provide women with a safe and healthy choice in preventing pregnancy but other are happy that only part of her philosophies were adopted by
A survey of 14000 adults states in ‘A Guide to Family Issues: The Marriage Advantage’ that marriage was a pertinent factor contributing to happiness and satisfaction with forty percent of the married individuals being happy as opposed to 25 percent of either single or cohabiting individuals. The same study shows that ninety eight percent of never married respondents wished to marry and out of those 88% believed that it should be a lifelong commitment. Even though, divorce rates are rising numerous researches show that young people aspire to have a lasting marriage.