Sex, What's the Big Deal?

Birth Control 

Alongside the civil war and anti-war movements in the 1960’s, the beginning of the feminist movement saw a grand shift of values regarding gender roles. Many women came to the realization that women had sexual needs too and the notion that women should be a virgin going into marriage was absurd. At the same time, oral contraceptives were beginning to gain ground. Now women were able to have sex without the worry of becoming pregnant.  By 1962, about 1,187,000 women were on the Pill! Not only did the pill allow women to not have children, it also forestalled the need to have a family. Women were now able to marry at a later age, focus on education and joining the work force.

The problem was that this shift in values was not for everyone. Many adults of the previous generation were against the sexual liberation. Many though that this would lead to “sexual anarchy”and they were correct! Even some states, including Connecticut and New York, went as far as to make the Pill illegal. Some people were avidly against the sexual promiscuity that was on the rise, especially religious groups. This revolution shook the core of American values.

These days, people consider sex to be no big deal! It has become a typical aspect of being in a relationship. Some teens may have sex in a long term relationship, they can have one-night stands and they can even wait until marriage! The fact that sex has become integrated in teen’s values today even leads to the pressure of having sex in your teen years. Since we are overexposed to the idea of sex through the social media and television, it seems drilled in our head that we should be having sex in our teen years. Even research done between Utrecht University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute found that teens will be more sexually active “if they perceived their peers as 1) more sexually active, 2) more approving of sex, and 3) exerting more pressure on them to have sex”.

To say the least, although sex is generally more accepted in society than in the 1960’s, people are still against it. Although men and women are almost equal in this day and age, some individuals still consider virginity to be a factor. The older generations, more like our grandparent’s age and even our parents, think that sex should be held off until marriage. For example, when I was having a conversation with my family, we started to talk about relationships. One of my aunts found that couples shouldn't even be living together before marriage because it just wasn't done in their age! My cousins and I even felt pressured to agree with them, although in private we found that their opinion was ridiculous. To say the least, although sex is more widely accepted, it’s still a source of tension between generations.