Prisoners of the pill
by Carolyn Moynihan
Women are losers in the modern sexual relationships market. What will it take for them to break out of this dilemma?
Mother’s Day in the United States (and some other countries) had an ironic twist to it this year: the powers that be chose to observe May 9 as the fiftieth anniversary of the public debut of the contraceptive pill, the twentieth century’s chief weapon against motherhood as a serious vocation.
Articles marking the occasion have been largely celebratory in tone, reminding women that their lives have been powerfully transformed — for the better — by the pill. We have been liberated from biology to extend our education, engage in paid work, carve out public careers and achieve financial independence. Hooray.
True, there has been the odd complaint about this wonder drug. “I hate the pill,” declares Geraldine Sealey at Salon. “Hormonal contraception, which covers birth control pills and nearly every other highly effective method on the market, murders my libido.” Still, she can’t stop herself patting contraceptive pioneers such as Margaret Sanger on the back.
The Wall Street Journal wonders why, at this late stage of the game, almost half of US pregnancies — about 3.1 million a year — are unintended. It turns out that a lot of people who are having sex but don’t want a baby are not responsible enough to use contraception. How surprising. Then there are all the women who miss taking their pill — so many that Princeton’s birth control expert James Trussell says we should forget the pill and steer women towards long-acting contraceptives such as implants and IUDs. (Women may be liberated, you see, but they can be, er, not smart.)
Fail-safe birth control is not the only thing the era of the pill has not delivered. Elaine Tyler May, author of a new book on the pill, admits that ending poverty, curing divorce and eliminating unwed pregnancies were “promises the pill could never keep”. Indeed, all those things have flourished during the past 50 years and societies have stopped even trying to encourage marriage and discourage divorce. Poverty is the only thing that has not been rationalised, but then its link with contraceptive culture is not even recognised.
Still, we are meant to rejoice that women have the world at their feet, because, even if their contraceptive device or their willpower fails, there is always abortion to ensure that they can keep their job, if not their husband. All in all, then, women should be happier than they were when their energies were largely consumed by looking after a husband and three or four kids.
Declining female happiness
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And having more unplanned babies reduces poverty how? What is preventing women who want to be “largely consumed by looking after a husband and three or four kids” from doing so? What is wrong with women who aren’t interested in that kind of life from wanting and achieving the kind of life that will fulfill them? Why is the fact that birth control sometimes fails an indictment of birth control itself? Doesn’t that mean someone should make a better birth control? How has the freedom gained from birth control by women who don’t want to be full-time mothers affected the ability of those who do want to be full-time mothers from doing so? Could women’s declining happiness have anything to do with the fact that men have not changed (and have even refused to do so) even as women have been liberated by feminism? Could it have anything to do with the fact that women are shouldering an unfair share of the responsibility for children and home even as they have moved into the labor force and that men are not moving to pick up the slack? How about the fact that the world of employment has not yet evolved to allow women to be both mothers AND successful employees? That employment is still set up for a full-time male breadwinner supported by a female housewife even as those jobs are being filled by female employees who don’t have a “wife” at home to accomplish the work that needs to get done there as well?
See, in my mind, the pill HAS actually made life better for many, many, many women by allowing them more freedom and opportunity. Not every woman wants to be a stay-at-home wife and mother, nor should every woman have to be such. And the answer to female unhappiness (at least heterosexual female unhappiness, anyway) is not sending them all back to the kitchen and the nursery. It is getting men to evolve, as women have, into more well-rounded human beings, and it is getting them to get off of the couch and away from the football game and contribute more to the jobs of keeping house and raising children. It is about finding a fair distribution of labor again, and in changing employment policies and practices to accommodate the needs of working parents, whether male OR female.
The pill has made my life easier. I’m regulated, my cramps are considerably less severe and only occur on one day of my cycle instead of 2-4 days, and risk of pregnancy is virtually zero since I also use condoms. I think the problem is, people are irresponsible, and “in the heat of the moment” very very stupid. Many people don’t take the time to read directions, or follow through with directions, and this is true across all of society in nearly any and every social situation. Perhaps an over all encouraging of responsibility would increase the positive effects of birth control overall.
As for the whole declining female happiness thing, enh. Comparing the happiness of the average woman today vs the average woman of more then 50 years ago is apples to oranges. I do agree with Heidi that a disproportional amount of housework and child raising falls to women, society needs to encourage men to step up and do the dishes and be a parent, and men need to actually do it.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/10/15/ehrenreich_women_happiness
One of many links to articles which analyze the “declining happiness” claims, providing much needed perspective.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004987.html
Another link worth a look…but only if one posesses a liberal sense of humor.