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<p>Emerald: I think you are right. that is how I remember things, too. Yes, we all used to hear about those “loose girls” (that none of us ever hung around with) that had reputations of “being easy”, but most girls were not “easy”. (Wow, that descriptive word seems to have gone away since it sounds like many, many teens are “easy” (i hope not!).</p>
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<p>That’s funny, because my grandmother (gross, I know) once mentioned in passing that her and my grandfather used CONDOMS back in the 50s. </p>
<p>I know that Massachusetts had some pretty awfully backward laws, but it oftentimes depended on the state you were in. Plus, the contraceptive market, even in the 50s, was generating around $200 million a year, so it had to be legal somewhere.</p>
<p><a href=“Wow,%20that%20descriptive%20word%20seems%20to%20have%20gone%20away%20since%20it%20sounds%20like%20many,%20many%20teens%20are%20%22easy%22%20(i%20hope%20not!”>quote</a>.
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<p>Maybe I hung around with the good crowd, but I still have female and male friends who are virgins well into their 20s.</p>
<p>
You misunderstand the history. Contraceptives of one sort or another have been around for ages. The first legislative attempts to regulate them were in the 1970’s. Birth control was essentially popularized by the efforts of Margaret Sanger who began actively advocating their use in about 1912, and remaining active promoting family planning and birth control until her death in 1966. She was the president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation from 1952-1959. </p>
<p>Connecticut had a law on the books prohibiting the dissemination of information about contraceptives and distribution of birth control devices; at the time of the Griswold case, Connecticut was the ONLY state which prohibited use of contraceptives. </p>
<p>In 1961, the Connecticut Birth Control League, set up a birth control clinic in New Haven, under the directorship of a Yale professor of gynecology – the clinic was opened in order to set the stage for a test case. Estell Griswold was the executive director of the Birth Control League at the time.
See: <a href=“http://www.ppct.org/who/ppchistory.shtml[/url]”>http://www.ppct.org/who/ppchistory.shtml</a>
<a href=“http://www.answers.com/topic/birth-control[/url]”>http://www.answers.com/topic/birth-control</a></p>
<p>My parents were married and lived in Connecticut, 1949, and had no problem getting birth control; I believe that my mother simply went to a doctor in New York to obtain a diaphragm. </p>
<p>I live in San Francisco. Marijuana is illegal. If I wanted to obtain medicinal marijuana, it would be quite easy – there are about 40 pot clubs in the city, and plenty of doctors willing to write “prescriptions”. Just because a law is on the books somewhere does not mean that the conduct covered is not occuring – in fact, the opposite is true – laws are usually passed as an attempt to stop something that is already going on. In the case of laws regulating sex or drugs, the effect of such laws is generally counterproductive – it simply spawns a bigger network of law-violators to distribute whatever it is that can’t be distributed legally.</p>
<p>Jlauer, re your post #217 – I can assure you that back in my dorm days, there were no guys “trying” to get women drunk to have sex with them – the women were drinking all by themselves and much of the sex play was initiated by them. I was around plenty of horny college guys, but I never had a problem with anyone trying to push me to do anything I didn’t want to do – I just think that the guys who wanted casual sex simply gravitated to the girls who were most willing, which wasn’t too hard to figure out.</p>
<p>The irony of it all is that my daughter will be living in an all female dorm next year, probably experiencing a much more conservative environment than I did. The down side of attending a woman’s college… though co-ed living will be available to her after her freshman year. </p>
<p>I think the problem with this thread is that you are relating your personal experience of then vs. now, and obviously you grew up and attended high school college in a more conservative environment than I did. I was attending a large university in California a few years after Summer of Love - it was a rather wild and open time, with lots of experimentation with drugs going on as well as everything else. I also was probably living in one of the most animal-house like dorms on campus, which was something of a deliberate choice on my part. So our different recollections probably stem from the reality that we had different experiences. You perceive a change, I perceive more of the same.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed something interesting. Two parents on this thread who grew up in the same decade could’ve had very different experiences as far as sexuality goes and not be wrong.</p>
<p>Just like my friends, for the most part, weren’t the freewheeling sex addicts that seem to be the commonly cited example of “today’s youth.”</p>
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Mine either, especially in high school. And even in college, the vast majority of sex stories I hear are in the context of a long-term relationship.</p>
<p>mollieb,</p>
<p>What’s funny is that I heard about these easy girls and guys who were just sleeping with every thing that walked, but I’ll be damned if I knew a single one of them. </p>
<p>Isn’t it possible that maybe a lot of the “stories” are just big fish stories, told to satisfy the giant (yet frail) egos of so many high school students?</p>
<p>The change is in both women and men. Girls today are overly infatuated with the empowerment theory as well as the independence theory. Girls going off to college consider themselves adults, they dcide they can do whatever they want and thats what they want to do. Girls who lived sheltered lives growing up are more likely to get out into the world and find themselves surprised. They bcome caught up in what they never had and it can prove quite troublesome. With men as well as parents get younger and younger they teach the wrong values through example. younger parents are morelikely to give their kids condomns, and tips, and wrongful advice at a much younger age then your parent’s did you. The birds and the bee’s talk has pretty much gne out the window don’t you think. Today your either raised teaching abstinence from a religious point of view or your simply taught how to protect yourself in the act.Promiscuity isn’t always the youth’s fault. Over the years its’ becaue overly acceptable and therefore more prominent.</p>
<p>I don’t think parents are getting younger
I had my first when I was 24 and I was often the youngest parent.
In my group of friends I have the oldest kid , and some of them were in college!!! when Kennedy was shot ( I was in 1st grade!)</p>
<p>My parents pretty much didn’t tell me anything about sex- I did find out about menstration when I was in 6th grade- both from a “kit” that my mother sent away for and then hustled me into my room for me to open it by myself & through films that were shown in the classroom a short time later. Neither mentioned anything about sex though.
I got that from reading my parents copy of “Story of O” and " Valley of the Dolls" at about the same time :eek:</p>
<p>What is the independence theory? Or the empowerment theory? are they bad things? Are they all about sex, or perhaps, independence and empowerment reach other realms…</p>
<p>And when you consider that so many people these days are waiting to have children, I was 28, and many are know in their 30s, how it plays out will be interesting</p>
<p>Oh please, haven’t any of you read Mary McCarthy’s The Group (published 1963) about going to college in the 1930s? It talks about orgasms, birth control, one-night stands, the whole bit. </p>
<p>Plus que ca change, plus que c’st la meme chose. (Voltaire, mid-1700s) (The more it changes, the more it stays the same.)</p>
<p>I’m quite sure every generation manages to shock and horrify its very forgetful elders. Personally, my children are quite conservative compared to my husband and myself. I’d give details but they know my screen name ;)</p>
<p>I’m in complete agreement with dmd77.</p>
<p>I came of age in the late 70’s/early 80’s and middle schoolers were having oral sex then too. Of course, it wasn’t every kid, just like it isn’t today. I think most of the news articles and TV specials on teen sex are quite sensationalistic. Today’s kids seem very responsible and goal-oriented on the whole in comparison with my generation.</p>
<p>“younger parents are more likely to give their kids condoms, and tips, and wrongful advice”</p>
<p>Actually, I think the problem in our generation was that parents ignored the sex issue all together. So we found our own sources of “wrongful advice”. One of the big advantages of today’s potential openness is that parents can talk to their kids about sex, and give advice that is thoughtful, helpful and practical.</p>
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Exactly. They lived in CT, so they went to New York to get a diaphram… because it was illegal in Connecticut!!! (Rolls eyes.) </p>
<p>Contraceptives were certainly not available then to the extent they are available today. Also, as everyone knows, diaphrams have a higher failure rate than condoms or the Pill. Hence more pregnancies for the same activity.</p>
<p>You would have to be mental to suggest that contraceptives were always legal in the US. Not so - hence the court cases. Eisenstadt, in fact, was about the fact that they were only legal for married couples - which would fall squarely under the question of whether or not umarried people had access to birth control.</p>
<p>You would also have to be mental to suggest that illegality has no effect on how easy it is to obtain something. I can walk to my local CVS and buy condoms; I would have no idea how to buy marijuana. None of my friends use it. I would also use any other alternative to it, because, frankly, illegal drugs are something that I have issues with. There are many people who do not use illegal drugs for precisely that reason.</p>
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Yes, but they could also have gone to the Birth Control League clinic in New Haven – the one that had been operating all along in flagrant disregard of the law. The Griswold case didn’t arise because the clinic had been shut down or its owners jailed – it came up because the operators had been fined – I think something like $100. Factually, it was a deliberate test case: they wanted to be fined. </p>
<p>Contraceptive devices were widely used and widely available in the US at least since the 1870’s.</p>
<p>Obviously the pill was not available because it had not yet been invented.
My kids knew how to get marijuana when they were 12. The “illegality” always made it easier, not more difficult, to get – instead of having to go to a store, a middle school kid buys from another middle school kid. When I was in college I needed to leave campus to get alcohol, but the marijuana dealers lived in my dorm. </p>
<p>As far as condoms being “illegal” – I believe that they were issued to men in the military during World War II.</p>
<p>PS - History of the laws going up to Griswold:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nfprha.org/latest/griswoldbackground.asp[/url]”>http://www.nfprha.org/latest/griswoldbackground.asp</a></p>
<p>which directly contradicts what Calmom says. At one time, 30 states had laws against the use of contraception. Hard to correlate that to this time, when condoms are free on college campuses.</p>
<p>That still goes to show a HUGE difference in availability from then until now. Yes, Griswold was a test case, but the fact was, it was still illegal and enforced. Ergo, it is mental to compare pregnancy rates from then and now as a reasonable proxy of sexual behaviour. Absolutely mental, because there is no comparison of pregnancy when the Pill and condoms were not widely available to this day and age. Basic statistics and basic science - minimize variables when you are comparing things. Account for differences. Above study did neither.</p>
<p>(On a side note, it’s very sad how little people understand statistics and experimentation. People throw a fit if you ask them to do math or science at the college level, but think that Shakespeare should be a must. We’re left with a lot of eloquent people who don’t know the diffrence between correlation and causation; a bunch of very literate types who have no idea what makes a good study or how to run a controlled experiment.)</p>
<p>Areisathena, I happened to be ALIVE at the time of the Griswold case and in college at the time of the Eisenstadt case, so I know how easy it was to get contraceptives then. I used my parents as an example because they went to college in the 40’s, and they used contraceptives… even in the one state where there was an existing law on the books prohibiting their use.</p>
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<p>Calmom…</p>
<p>your last statement “you perceive a change, I perceive more of the same” is strange to me. “More of the same” IS a change… and it is the change that I have been suggesting all along. I have said that there has always been sex in college. I have said that while there were girls who engaged in one night stands, none of my friends did. The change is that we now have more girls engaging in one night stands than before. That is more of the same. </p>
<p>BTW… I, too, went to a large UC school; I didn’t go to some conservative college.</p>