To think contraception has been a greater liberator to men than to women?

[Macrodatarefiner]

And for sure, it is a great liberator to women too. Just on balance, men seem to get the better benefit. AIBU?

Well they are. How many times have you seen on here that it is the woman's choice to have an abortion or carry on with the pregnancy? If she makes the choice to carry on the man does have responsibilities whether he lives up to them is not as clearcut.

Do you think the man should be allowed to make the choice?

Right, so women should wait until they are married before they have sex, then only have sex as many times as they wish to have children. Or, if they don’t want children and don’t feel they should be pressured into it to prop up the economy (despite other options available such as immigration), then they can never have sex at all.

Who is writing these comments? Is it Donald Trump bored on the loo after too much MacDonalds?

Too true
I remember being sent to the herbalist with a note asking for women's gold tablets when I was about 11 in the early 60s. Mum gave me money and told me not to tell dad. I had no idea I was helping her to end a pregnancy or if these tablets were a con. There was no baby though.

Except they did. It's not as though we don't know what the reality was of life pre-modern contraception options. It's not as though men didn't still drift from woman to woman. It's just that they used to leave behind a trail of pregnant women, often young, many of whom ended up having backstreet abortions or in mother and baby homes, giving up babies for adoption or, tragically, at the bottom of a river.

The 'shame' for women was always far greater than for men. Men could just disappear, deny all knowledge, etc. Men from wealthier backgrounds might have been sent abroad after getting a servant girl 'in trouble', but rarely were they expected to marry below their station.

It’s wild how some posters seem to think that state of affairs is somehow better for women, and more feminist.

There’s a glaring modern example of the realities of criminalizing contraception and abortion - Ceaușescu’s Romania:
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/workshops/010623_paper25.pdf

A short boom in the birth rate until people quickly adapted and the birth rate declined. See the skyrocketing maternal mortality rate (and deaths from illegal abortion were recorded under this definition), and the infamous orphanages.

Also worth considering is the fact that 45% of abortion worldwide occur in countries where it is illegal, and contraception is hard if not impossible to obtain:

https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/worldwide-estimated-25-million-unsafe-abortions-occur-each-year

Women’s desire to control their own fertility isn’t dependent on the availability of contraception. The advent of safe and reliable birth control is, and always was, a response to that age old desire.

I don't think there's anyone in this thread who wants to get rid of contraception though? I don't think even Louise Perry who's the poster child for this argument thinks that. The dispute is more about whether the accompanying social change to a more "casual" sexual marketplace has been better for women or men. With the implicit question being "is there a way to get back to a more "committed" model while keeping condoms on the shelves", not "is it time to ban Durex".

(It's probably worth noting that I don't think that social change is entirely due to the Pill: the modern welfare state greatly reduces the cost to an individual woman of being a single mum as well, which in turn means there are now a lot more around - 1 in 4 vs 1 in 20 in the 70s, I think I've read. There are probably other factors that drove it as well.)

With the implicit question being "is there a way to get back to a more "committed" model while keeping condoms on the shelves"

Yes. Better sex and relationships education which empowers young women to explore their own sexualities and not simply how they relate to sex in terms of the person they’re having it with. Continued movement away from the idea that a woman has only “made it” when she has a man: there’s a currently running thread in Relationships where an OP, essentially, doesn’t want to settle and a whole lot of responses essentially boil down too “well, you can be like me who knew that sometimes you have to compromise and have a fab DH or like my poor sad eternally single friend who won’t…” as if being single is the worst thing in the world. Not teaching our daughters that sex is something that women gatekeep to give to deserving men, but something that’s a mutual decision. Parents modelling strong, respectful, happy relationships at home; and having the courage to end ones which have become dysfunctional and destructive, so our children don’t grow up with poor relationships as their norm.

Not far off...

Fair enough, but perhaps men who don't want children shouldn't be having sex with women who do. Imo there is too much of a disconnect between sex and pregnancy, one was designed to result in the other. So many men seem unwilling to take responsibility for contraception, yet they often seem shocked when pregnancy happens, and usually blame the woman.

You could argue that it benefits children the most. It makes it more likely that at least the mother wanted them. And it makes it more likely they will be part of a smaller family unit and get more parental attention rather than having loads of siblings.

Men’s fertility is less limited than women’s, which is where men may benefit in this scenario or indeed where women are perhaps at a disadvantage. Yes it’s great that women can enjoy casual sex through their 20s and onwards but when they find themselves wasting months with men who are just really after the odd booty call when they are looking for a life partner it means that their window of fertility is reducing.

I’m not saying anyone is proposing that, the point is that the reality is that the desire to prevent pregnancy has always been a fact of life, and a world without reliable and freely available contraception isn’t a pleasant one for women in particular.

That the birth control revolution has benefited men does not negate the greater benefits for women. Men haven’t died through lack of access to birth control. Women have, and indeed still do.

It wasn’t ‘designed’, and pregnancy isn’t the sole purpose of sex. It can be an outcome of sex, whether desired or not.

Due to biology women have always born the burden of pregnancy.

There has been "one under development" since i was a teenager. Im 52 this year

How far off?

Maybe, but that would involve having that conversation from the off - which isn’t something I’d be up for personally.

I think the separation between sex and pregnancy is big enough, but that may be because neither myself nor my partner intend on having children.

I don’t want a man to take responsibility for my contraception, and don’t see it as a huge burden. But I do involve long term partners in the discussion around the use of it - I’d never have come off it without saying, for example.

Isn't the thinking get the children when there's an advantage to it? So the Victorian father got custody if his kids as they could work. Now they don't and mothers pretty much always get custody.

The question is why don't more men get the snip. That would solve so many issues around feckless men.

One of the problems has been adequate clinical testing: because of the potential for it being ineffective or failing, to participate in some studies, candidates have had to be in committed relationships, and actively open to having a baby. But nobody really wants to chance a pregnancy whilst testing a sperm-altering drug, because of the unknown foetal health implications.

I recently listened to this, it was interesting.

Certainly - I have several friends who wish they had only wasted "months" rather than "years"!

Probably a mixed bag for children - I agree probably better, assuming that they do get to remain in a stable 2-bio-parent setup, but there'll be more children who now don't get that (if you buy the "contraception > less social commitment pressure > more separated families" argument, which I find compelling)

Just wanted to come on here to say on the death of Marrianne Faithful that she was absolutely a victim of the sexual revolution and might have had a happier life had she lived before reliable contraception.

Considering her three miscarriages and the five terminations she’s been open about having had - two being when abortion was still illegal in the U.K. - in her youth, the latter because she didn’t want babies to be born into heroin addiction, I suspect that access to reliable long-acting contraception would have been her preference.

Thank god that's not my culture.

I’m not sure it’s many people’s. Children are both parent’s responsibilities, and I don’t believe mothers or fathers should carry any more of that weight or importance than the other.

I still consider that she was a victim of the permissive culture of the '60s, men exploited her used her as a sex toy and repeatedly abandoned her. She was 17 when she started her relationship with the rolling stones- today that would be considered child sexual abuse.

So you want a method of contraception whereby women have 100% of the benefit and men have 0%

Right. Got it.