March 26, 2012 • 26 mins
In this episode, Cristen and Caroline examine the relationship birth control and perceptions of promiscuity. Learn more about how birth control historically affected the outlook on premarital sex, and what happens when the cost of birth control rises.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:21):
are asking you a question on the minds of many
politicians and a question that's coming up a lot in
the mainstream media. On Facebook, it's everywhere, and it's whether
or not there is a connection between risky sexual behavior
and promiscuity and access to birth control and specifically the
(00:43):
birth control pill. And this relates to the issue over
the Patient Protection and Affordable Act that President Obama signed
into law on March, which expanded health insurance coverage and
included a provision that would ensure that that birth control
(01:04):
would be covered for for women in the US um
and that meant that some employers would have to provide
for birth control. This has ruffled some feathers, particularly among
the Catholic church there and then it got into the
air waves with Rush Limbaugh and some very unsavory comments
he made about how women who take birth control are
(01:26):
essentially and we are using this word because it is
used so liberally now in the news sluts, let's birth
control turned women into sluts? And the research just to
sum it up basically, no, no, just just to calm
your fears right out of the gate. But don't stop listening, because,
(01:46):
like the abortion podcast that we did a long time ago,
even though this issue has been very politicized and there
is a huge debate going on right now about UM
reproductive rights for women in the US, we want to
move aside from the politics as much as we can
and really look at the research that's gone into the
(02:07):
connection between premarital sex and promiscuity and access to birth control,
because honestly, I don't I don't really care who is
right and who is wrong. I just want some facts,
and I want to the pundits to stop yelling at
each other and maybe get down to some Oh I
don't know, Caroline, some economics, yes, indeed, yeah, I bet listeners,
(02:32):
I bet you weren't thinking about that curveball just through it.
And economics really shaped the early attitudes towards sex, as
far as the official attitudes held by the church and
the state. UM. Often, churches were responsible for funding orphanages,
providing support for unwed mothers UM who were part of
(02:53):
their their parish, and so they had an economic interest
in keeping those women from getting pregnant, because otherwise they
would have had to flip the bill, right, because a
lot of times, the out of wedlock pregnancy rates were
the highest among working women who at the time, and
we're talking about in the UM eight hundred, sev hundreds,
even going into the sixteen hundreds UM, would not have
(03:15):
been able to afford to work outside the home and
also raise their child. Now, because of that high price
of promiscuity, we're gonna start talking about prices and demand
and supply, So get ready, because of that high price
of premarital sex, a lot of people abstained until they
(03:38):
were married. In the past one hundred years, the rates
of premarital sex, especially if we looked just at the
United States, have gone up very quickly, UM. And just
to give you an idea of where we started, UM,
from eighteen to nineteen hundred, the out of wedlock birth
rates were extremely low, uh six percent in Australia, nine
(04:02):
percent in Germany, five percent in Spain. UM. And during
that time, the contraceptive methods were minimal at best, and
so you would assume that with such low out of
wedlock birthrates, it meant that, you know, many women were
not having sex outside of outside of marriage. And this
is coming from a great study from the University of
(04:23):
Pennsylvania published in November of two thousand eleven called From
Shame to Game into one Years, a macro economic model
of the rise of premarital sex and it's destigmatization. So
going back to the whole cost benefit analysis that we're
getting into, as far as the church goes, if the
shame or the stigma that is placed on a woman
(04:45):
has basically a means of production, if it's benefiting someone,
then it's going to continue. And so the act of
shaming or um putting someone in the stocks, as as
happened for sexual activity, if that can keep them from
having sex and therefore having children out of wedlock, then
they're going to do what it takes. And so these
(05:07):
views kind of get ingrained as part of the church
and they end up persisting and so, like I was
just talking about, in sixteen o one, the Lancashire Quarter
Sessions condemned an unmarried father and mother to be publicly
whipped and sit in the stocks. Underneath the placard that
said these persons are punished for fornication, and in a
(05:29):
sixteen forty eight in new Haven, Connecticut, a court find
a couple for having sex out of marriage, saying that
the pair should be brought forth to the place of correction,
that they may be shamed. Yeah, early America not very
friendly toward premarital sex. Also in new Haven, New England,
essentially was just like a simmering pot of premarital sex
(05:51):
slut shaming. Uh. Sixty of all criminal cases in new Haven,
Connecticut between seventeen ten and seventeen five d were for
premarital sex SI. That is so much percent. Yes, I
just I can't believe that they were that focused on it.
And when you read about premarital sex um at this time,
(06:16):
it's often vilified as being debauched. It's lascivious, it's loot,
it's vain and wanton, it's a selfish act because the
price is so high, because they see it as morally
degrading two communities into societies and placing undue burden on
the church. And then gradually as the state starts to
(06:36):
take more control on the state as well, right, and
this the cost benefit analysis starts to change. This is
from the same study that Kristen mentioned. In the early
nineteenth century, French hospitals were instructed to receive abandoned children,
thereby reducing the cost of premarital sex i e. Having
to raise a child out of wedlock. And so around
(06:57):
this time, you know, the wealthy had to worry about
how illegitimate the would affect property transfer. So there are
a lot of wealthy people telling their children that they
better not have sex outside of marriage. Now, one of
the biggest impacts to lowering the price of premarital sex
is also technology, as contraceptive methods begin to develop. And
(07:18):
then we have this crucial moment in nineteen sixty when
the first birth control pill is approved by the f
d A. The price of premarital sex i e. Pregnancy
risk is drastically lowered. And while that's going on, this
public attitude towards premarital sex is some kind of lewd
(07:39):
and less sevious. Act also begins to change, and you
see the shift in public attitude that is that's been
slow to catch up, um, but from nineteen hundred to
the turn of the twenty one century, the percent of
women US women who engaged in premarital sex jumped from
six percent to sevent So this is going on, but
(08:03):
what our attitudes toward it, because this is very important
as well in terms of driving down that price of promiscuity.
So in nineteen sixty eight, only fifteen percent of women
had a permissive attitude about premarital sex, despite the fact
that about of nineteen year old females had done it,
(08:25):
and by it I do mean six But then by
nineteen eighty three the permissive attitudes had jumped to forty
five percent. But at the same time there's still the
gap because by then seventy percent of nineteen year old
females had had six and two thousand three Harvard study
offered some explanations for changing attitudes, and they have some
(08:48):
highly technical language that I will break down for you.
They say that the replacement of more conservative birth cohorts
born in the early twentieth century with more liberal cohorts
born later was part of the change, and that just
means that our conservative grandparents, our grandparents are dying and
that and so they're being replaced by people like us.
(09:10):
I know, it's sad um. Another another explanation they give
is that age related changes occur in the views of
each cohort and that cultural changes affect all of the
views of all of the cohorts simultaneously, right, And it's
it's really important that we think about this issue of culture.
Because there was an article over at the Big Think
(09:31):
dot com by Marina odd Shad and she she's looking
at this issue of the price of promiscuity and premarital
sex falling as a result of birth control, but she
is curious about the fact that even though the risk
of pregnancy has gone down, the rate of out of
wedlock pregnancy has gone up from two percent in the
(09:55):
nineteen twenties in the US to in two thousand even
according to the CDC, and I know that since two
thousand seven that number has only gone up. And she
says that that represents a major shift in how our
society accepts premarital sex as more of a normative behavior,
(10:16):
because it can't just be birth control that is um
instigating all of this premi premarital sex, because clearly we're
either not using it correctly or at all, because that
rate of out of wedlock birth is so um has
risen so much. And going along those same lines, there
is a study from the University of Pennsylvania and from
(10:38):
the University of Carlos the Third of Madrid like to
go there. Um called social change the sexual revolution revolution,
which states that economists have estimated that get this, people
listen in listen in less than one percent of the
increase in premarrital sex among teenagers is the result of
(10:59):
the invention of the pill. And teenage girls don't even
use the pill all that much. It's not that widespread
among them, Okay. So referencing the same study that Christian
was just mentioning, um, they go and going back to
the technology thing, they say that as technology has made
better birth control possible, there's less reason to a abstain
(11:19):
from sexual intercourse and be inculcate sexual mores. So as
the birth control methods get better, parents and the church
and the state have less reason to hammer it into
their kids heads that it's something they need to avoid,
so less parental inculcation of more's uh. It ends up
(11:39):
resulting in maybe less of a feeling of shame if
young girls decide to participate. So having less of a
feeling of shame, you're more likely to feel free to
do something. Also, if your peer group is doing it,
if your peer group is engaging in sexual activity, or
if you're seeing it on TV all the time, or
if just people are talking about it in a in
a behavior not just actual activity seems common and accepted,
(12:03):
you are more likely to participate. But on the flip
side of of that whole issue of pure influence in
the lessening of shame, there's also going back to the
importance and force of um societal viewpoints as driving down
(12:23):
that that price or influencing the price of premarital sex
and promisecuity. The flip side of that is still happening
even though access to birth control is abundant for teens
these days. UM. This is coming from the Wall Street Journal,
which was reporting on two thousand eleven data released by
the CDC, and they found that in more than half
(12:46):
of teen females and six of teen males who had
never married reported having sexual intercourse. That number has dropped
as of two thousand eleven to forty two point six
percent for young women in forty one point eight percent
for young men, meaning that the teen sex rates have dropped.
And why do abstinent teens refrain from premarital sex. It's
(13:10):
not because they can't get their hands on some birth control.
They most frequently cite religious or moral objections to sex
as their reason for holding off, And there are other
two top reasons desire to avoid pregnancy. There's that cost
again and also not having found the right person yet,
which might have to do with their peer group. And
just to reiterate the economic perspective of premarital sex, because
(13:35):
I think it's so important to kind of move steer
the conversation away from purely moralistic terms. UH. The National
Bureau of Economic Research in the US published a study
in the year two thousand UH stating that American teens
will change their sexual behavior and birth controlled choices in
response to changes in the price of pregnancy measured by
(13:58):
labor market conditions, AIDS incidents, welfare benefits, and abortion restrictions.
So there's so much more that is going into our
decisions to have sex with someone outside of wedlock or
to have sex with tons of people outside of the
bounds of marriage, UM, aside from whether or not we
can get our hands on oral contraception for cheap right exactly,
(14:22):
and what happens when people can't get oral contraception for
cheap Emily Gray Collins and Brad Hirshbine of the Population
Studies Center at the University of Michigan Institute for Social
Research released a paper in mayn looking at what happened
when the price of birth control increased at college health centers,
And basically what happened is that when Congress passed the
(14:43):
Deficit Reduction Act in two thousand five and then it
went into effect in two thousand seven, they inadvertently increased
the effective price of birth control pills more than threefold,
from about five to ten dollars to about thirty to
fifty dollars per month, which is a lot if you
were in college or just in general, it is a
lot of money. They found that this price increase reduced
(15:06):
the use of the pill by two to four on
average among college women. College women did cut back on
sex somewhat, but the rate of accidental pregnancy didn't decline,
and they looked at how much more of an effect
it had on women who were in bad financial shape
as opposed to women who had insurance and could still
afford it. Um Among women in bad financial shape, the
(15:29):
rate of unintended pregnancy actually increased twenty three percent because
many switched to cheaper risk ear methods or unprotected sex.
Women with no insurance who had sex infrequently would it
instead opt for over the counter emergency contraception, But women
who with no insurance who had sex frequently opted for
(15:49):
condoms as well as increasingly relying on the rhythm method
and unprotected sex, which is why you see that that
um jump in the accidental rate of pregnancy. And as
far as those alternate methods, the rhythm method just having
plain unprotected sex, plain old unprotected sex, the failure rates
(16:11):
are pretty scary and this raises the whole cost benefit
analysis issue again. While the failure rate for imperfect use
of the pill is nine per one, so that's nine
pregnancies out of a hundred women over a year of use,
for withdrawal it's twice that, and the failure rate for
periodic abstinence is nearly three times. It's high. While four
(16:34):
completely unprotected sex. It's women so perhaps because of the
economic risk that a woman in man might be putting
themselves at by having risky unprotected sex. Previous studies have
also found that contraceptives, which includes condoms and birth control,
are relatively priced and elastic, meaning that the demand for
(16:57):
them stays pretty steady no matter what the price is,
because the benefit i e. The joy of sex is
constant and it's something that especially in today's culture, outweighs
maybe the the upfront cost of protecting your stale and
I feel like a lot of the um the focus
(17:20):
on birth control in the media at the moment is
on young single women in college who are being portrayed
as these you know, the look of a good time exactly.
I couldn't put it better. But the use of contraception
doesn't stop when someone gets married. People still, people still
(17:41):
want to have control over the size of their families, right, um,
which is why we felt like it was also important
in this conversation to offer up some statistics on uh
the rate of contraceptive methods by married women of childbearing age.
And we should also point out we haven't gone into
this yet as well. Um. But also birth control can
(18:03):
be necessary for women who are not necessarily not looking
to get pregnant, but might have certain health conditions such
as polycystic ovarian syndrome that require birth control and regulating
those hormones to prevent the growth of ovarian system. Which, yeah,
which was part of standard Flukes argument in front of
that hearing UM. So, going back to those married women
(18:26):
in contraceptive stats, we have some information from the CDC,
and this is looking at UH their use of contraception
from two thousand six to two thousand eight, and it's
in comparison to a number of European countries that have
a very low fertility rate. UM in the US about fiftent,
(18:47):
not an insignificant number of married women are on the pill.
Five five percent use an i U D and use
female sterilization. And as far as oral interception, women in France,
the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom are more likely to
rely on oral contraception than women in the United States.
And that's the comparison of about in those previously mentioned
(19:11):
countries to the United States, which is six women in
France use the i U D to a greater extent
than women in the US do, whereas the male condom
is used by partners of approximately twenty percent of married
women in Spain and the UK. So the point we're
trying to make is, like you said, Caroline, it is
erroneous to only frame the conversation around birth control as
(19:33):
something that is only accessed by possibly teen girls and
UM you know, barely not teen girls essentially um in college.
And finally, the last point that we um we feel
like should be raised is that while a lot of
these single women are being labeled as sluts and even yes,
(19:55):
whorrors for their sexual behavior or just their choice to
take control, statistically, men engage in risk your sexual behavior
and with more partners over the life term than women do.
And this might be an issue of self reporting where
men might inflate their numbers and women deflate their numbers
(20:15):
because there of those lingering uh social shaming against premarital
sex and promiscuity. But statistically, men report two to four
times more sexual partners than women. Yeah. According to a
National Health Statistics report from March, men a just twenty
five to forty four and two thousand six to two
(20:36):
tho eight reported having slept with a median of six women,
while women in the same age brackets said they slept
with a median of four men. But men count a
greater number of sexual acts as sex. And that's just
referring to the median number. When you average out those numbers,
the average number of partners sexual partners that men have
(21:00):
thirty one point nine. So clearly you have some Wilt
Chamberlain esque outliers in there, whereas the average for women
is much lower at eight point six. So for me,
the biggest, the biggest takeaway from all this research and
especially all of these economic models that we've talked about
at length, UM is a reframing in my brain of
(21:23):
the public conversation that's going on around reproductive rights and
especially this access to birth control. UM. I can understand
the more politically dicey issues of whether or not employers
should be forced to supply birth control uh two employees,
But when you get beyond that and actually, you know,
(21:45):
think about whether or not birth control is somehow turning
women into just promiscuous sex mongers, you quickly quickly realize
that birth control in the technology has much less to
do with it then our collective actions and acceptance of
sex as a pleasurable activity between people, between people exactly,
(22:11):
it's people being people. So UM. So I hope that
this has been enlightening for listeners. Um, it was enlightening
for me. I was not expecting for this conversation to
take an economic turn, but I'm so glad that economists
have have taken such a hard look at it right.
The cost benefit analysis is a perfect way to look
(22:33):
at it. People have to weigh a lot of actual
literal costs how much money it would cost cost to
raise a child, but they also have to look at
the more personal, mental and emotional costs. Yeah, and thank heavens,
we didn't live in New Haven in the six the
stocks would be uncomfortable. And now it's time to open
(22:54):
it up to listeners. What what do you think about
the situation that's going on? Um? Do you think that
they're should be more access to birth control? Do you
think that this economic model is totally bunk? Let us
know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send them, or you can head over
to Facebook and leave us a comment there. And in
the meantime, we got a couple of listener letters to read.
(23:20):
This is an email from Sandy about our foster Care podcast.
She says, after your paperwork, training and waiting, I've just
been matched with a ten year old girl for foster
to adopt placement. We start her gradual transition to my
house tomorrow. I'm a first time parents who I'm scared
and excited. I'm in Colorado and the state has made
some steps to help foster kids, such as one working
(23:41):
to keep the child in the same school during care
if that's in the best interest of the child, to
requiring high schools to accept all credits when a child
transfer to the child can stay on track to graduate.
Three extend Medicaid and other support services through the age
of one, and four. Work with teenagers so that they
can gain independent living skills before they age out. Everyone
I've dealt with has the best interest of the children
(24:03):
in the hearts and brains, but funding, time and resources
can only go so far. More families, especially families of color,
are needed for placements. And I've got another email here
from Rachel also about our foster care episode, and it's
a sweet story. Um. She writes, I was a product
of a seventeen year old unweedden mother and I was
adopted through a close adoption at two and a half
(24:25):
months of age, but for those first months I was
in foster care. I've never found my birth mother, but
I did connect a few years ago with my foster
family and that was amazing. They still had pictures of
me as a newborn, with their daughters hugging on me,
and their family albums, and the most fascinating pictures where
of the morning before they had to take me to
the adoption agency to meet my parents. I'd only ever
(24:46):
seen the pictures that were taken with my parents after
they were given me same little outfit which my mom
saved two different families. My foster mother told me that
she was worried for years that I had woken up
from a nap I was having and then they dropped
me off and wondered where they were, And it was
so nice to know that I've been very much loved
even during that short little gap before I had my
own family. I think a lot of foster parents are
(25:08):
the most selfless people in the world that taken a
child who needs a home, love them like their own,
and then have to give them back. And she's also
majoring in social work because she wants to find a
way to support the adoption industry. So good for you, Rachel,
and thanks for sharing your thoughts, um and thanks to
everyone who's written in mom stuff. At Discovery dot com
(25:29):
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(25:52):
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(26:12):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:21):
are asking you a question on the minds of many
politicians and a question that's coming up a lot in
the mainstream media. On Facebook, it's everywhere, and it's whether
or not there is a connection between risky sexual behavior
and promiscuity and access to birth control and specifically the
(00:43):
birth control pill. And this relates to the issue over
the Patient Protection and Affordable Act that President Obama signed
into law on March, which expanded health insurance coverage and
included a provision that would ensure that that birth control
(01:04):
would be covered for for women in the US um
and that meant that some employers would have to provide
for birth control. This has ruffled some feathers, particularly among
the Catholic church there and then it got into the
air waves with Rush Limbaugh and some very unsavory comments
he made about how women who take birth control are
(01:26):
essentially and we are using this word because it is
used so liberally now in the news sluts, let's birth
control turned women into sluts? And the research just to
sum it up basically, no, no, just just to calm
your fears right out of the gate. But don't stop listening, because,
(01:46):
like the abortion podcast that we did a long time ago,
even though this issue has been very politicized and there
is a huge debate going on right now about UM
reproductive rights for women in the US, we want to
move aside from the politics as much as we can
and really look at the research that's gone into the
(02:07):
connection between premarital sex and promiscuity and access to birth control,
because honestly, I don't I don't really care who is
right and who is wrong. I just want some facts,
and I want to the pundits to stop yelling at
each other and maybe get down to some Oh I
don't know, Caroline, some economics, yes, indeed, yeah, I bet listeners,
(02:32):
I bet you weren't thinking about that curveball just through it.
And economics really shaped the early attitudes towards sex, as
far as the official attitudes held by the church and
the state. UM. Often, churches were responsible for funding orphanages,
providing support for unwed mothers UM who were part of
(02:53):
their their parish, and so they had an economic interest
in keeping those women from getting pregnant, because otherwise they
would have had to flip the bill, right, because a
lot of times, the out of wedlock pregnancy rates were
the highest among working women who at the time, and
we're talking about in the UM eight hundred, sev hundreds,
even going into the sixteen hundreds UM, would not have
(03:15):
been able to afford to work outside the home and
also raise their child. Now, because of that high price
of promiscuity, we're gonna start talking about prices and demand
and supply, So get ready, because of that high price
of premarital sex, a lot of people abstained until they
(03:38):
were married. In the past one hundred years, the rates
of premarital sex, especially if we looked just at the
United States, have gone up very quickly, UM. And just
to give you an idea of where we started, UM,
from eighteen to nineteen hundred, the out of wedlock birth
rates were extremely low, uh six percent in Australia, nine
(04:02):
percent in Germany, five percent in Spain. UM. And during
that time, the contraceptive methods were minimal at best, and
so you would assume that with such low out of
wedlock birthrates, it meant that, you know, many women were
not having sex outside of outside of marriage. And this
is coming from a great study from the University of
(04:23):
Pennsylvania published in November of two thousand eleven called From
Shame to Game into one Years, a macro economic model
of the rise of premarital sex and it's destigmatization. So
going back to the whole cost benefit analysis that we're
getting into, as far as the church goes, if the
shame or the stigma that is placed on a woman
(04:45):
has basically a means of production, if it's benefiting someone,
then it's going to continue. And so the act of
shaming or um putting someone in the stocks, as as
happened for sexual activity, if that can keep them from
having sex and therefore having children out of wedlock, then
they're going to do what it takes. And so these
(05:07):
views kind of get ingrained as part of the church
and they end up persisting and so, like I was
just talking about, in sixteen o one, the Lancashire Quarter
Sessions condemned an unmarried father and mother to be publicly
whipped and sit in the stocks. Underneath the placard that
said these persons are punished for fornication, and in a
(05:29):
sixteen forty eight in new Haven, Connecticut, a court find
a couple for having sex out of marriage, saying that
the pair should be brought forth to the place of correction,
that they may be shamed. Yeah, early America not very
friendly toward premarital sex. Also in new Haven, New England,
essentially was just like a simmering pot of premarital sex
(05:51):
slut shaming. Uh. Sixty of all criminal cases in new Haven,
Connecticut between seventeen ten and seventeen five d were for
premarital sex SI. That is so much percent. Yes, I
just I can't believe that they were that focused on it.
And when you read about premarital sex um at this time,
(06:16):
it's often vilified as being debauched. It's lascivious, it's loot,
it's vain and wanton, it's a selfish act because the
price is so high, because they see it as morally
degrading two communities into societies and placing undue burden on
the church. And then gradually as the state starts to
(06:36):
take more control on the state as well, right, and
this the cost benefit analysis starts to change. This is
from the same study that Kristen mentioned. In the early
nineteenth century, French hospitals were instructed to receive abandoned children,
thereby reducing the cost of premarital sex i e. Having
to raise a child out of wedlock. And so around
(06:57):
this time, you know, the wealthy had to worry about
how illegitimate the would affect property transfer. So there are
a lot of wealthy people telling their children that they
better not have sex outside of marriage. Now, one of
the biggest impacts to lowering the price of premarital sex
is also technology, as contraceptive methods begin to develop. And
(07:18):
then we have this crucial moment in nineteen sixty when
the first birth control pill is approved by the f
d A. The price of premarital sex i e. Pregnancy
risk is drastically lowered. And while that's going on, this
public attitude towards premarital sex is some kind of lewd
(07:39):
and less sevious. Act also begins to change, and you
see the shift in public attitude that is that's been
slow to catch up, um, but from nineteen hundred to
the turn of the twenty one century, the percent of
women US women who engaged in premarital sex jumped from
six percent to sevent So this is going on, but
(08:03):
what our attitudes toward it, because this is very important
as well in terms of driving down that price of promiscuity.
So in nineteen sixty eight, only fifteen percent of women
had a permissive attitude about premarital sex, despite the fact
that about of nineteen year old females had done it,
(08:25):
and by it I do mean six But then by
nineteen eighty three the permissive attitudes had jumped to forty
five percent. But at the same time there's still the
gap because by then seventy percent of nineteen year old
females had had six and two thousand three Harvard study
offered some explanations for changing attitudes, and they have some
(08:48):
highly technical language that I will break down for you.
They say that the replacement of more conservative birth cohorts
born in the early twentieth century with more liberal cohorts
born later was part of the change, and that just
means that our conservative grandparents, our grandparents are dying and
that and so they're being replaced by people like us.
(09:10):
I know, it's sad um. Another another explanation they give
is that age related changes occur in the views of
each cohort and that cultural changes affect all of the
views of all of the cohorts simultaneously, right, And it's
it's really important that we think about this issue of culture.
Because there was an article over at the Big Think
(09:31):
dot com by Marina odd Shad and she she's looking
at this issue of the price of promiscuity and premarital
sex falling as a result of birth control, but she
is curious about the fact that even though the risk
of pregnancy has gone down, the rate of out of
wedlock pregnancy has gone up from two percent in the
(09:55):
nineteen twenties in the US to in two thousand even
according to the CDC, and I know that since two
thousand seven that number has only gone up. And she
says that that represents a major shift in how our
society accepts premarital sex as more of a normative behavior,
(10:16):
because it can't just be birth control that is um
instigating all of this premi premarital sex, because clearly we're
either not using it correctly or at all, because that
rate of out of wedlock birth is so um has
risen so much. And going along those same lines, there
is a study from the University of Pennsylvania and from
(10:38):
the University of Carlos the Third of Madrid like to
go there. Um called social change the sexual revolution revolution,
which states that economists have estimated that get this, people
listen in listen in less than one percent of the
increase in premarrital sex among teenagers is the result of
(10:59):
the invention of the pill. And teenage girls don't even
use the pill all that much. It's not that widespread
among them, Okay. So referencing the same study that Christian
was just mentioning, um, they go and going back to
the technology thing, they say that as technology has made
better birth control possible, there's less reason to a abstain
(11:19):
from sexual intercourse and be inculcate sexual mores. So as
the birth control methods get better, parents and the church
and the state have less reason to hammer it into
their kids heads that it's something they need to avoid,
so less parental inculcation of more's uh. It ends up
(11:39):
resulting in maybe less of a feeling of shame if
young girls decide to participate. So having less of a
feeling of shame, you're more likely to feel free to
do something. Also, if your peer group is doing it,
if your peer group is engaging in sexual activity, or
if you're seeing it on TV all the time, or
if just people are talking about it in a in
a behavior not just actual activity seems common and accepted,
(12:03):
you are more likely to participate. But on the flip
side of of that whole issue of pure influence in
the lessening of shame, there's also going back to the
importance and force of um societal viewpoints as driving down
(12:23):
that that price or influencing the price of premarital sex
and promisecuity. The flip side of that is still happening
even though access to birth control is abundant for teens
these days. UM. This is coming from the Wall Street Journal,
which was reporting on two thousand eleven data released by
the CDC, and they found that in more than half
(12:46):
of teen females and six of teen males who had
never married reported having sexual intercourse. That number has dropped
as of two thousand eleven to forty two point six
percent for young women in forty one point eight percent
for young men, meaning that the teen sex rates have dropped.
And why do abstinent teens refrain from premarital sex. It's
(13:10):
not because they can't get their hands on some birth control.
They most frequently cite religious or moral objections to sex
as their reason for holding off, And there are other
two top reasons desire to avoid pregnancy. There's that cost
again and also not having found the right person yet,
which might have to do with their peer group. And
just to reiterate the economic perspective of premarital sex, because
(13:35):
I think it's so important to kind of move steer
the conversation away from purely moralistic terms. UH. The National
Bureau of Economic Research in the US published a study
in the year two thousand UH stating that American teens
will change their sexual behavior and birth controlled choices in
response to changes in the price of pregnancy measured by
(13:58):
labor market conditions, AIDS incidents, welfare benefits, and abortion restrictions.
So there's so much more that is going into our
decisions to have sex with someone outside of wedlock or
to have sex with tons of people outside of the
bounds of marriage, UM, aside from whether or not we
can get our hands on oral contraception for cheap right exactly,
(14:22):
and what happens when people can't get oral contraception for
cheap Emily Gray Collins and Brad Hirshbine of the Population
Studies Center at the University of Michigan Institute for Social
Research released a paper in mayn looking at what happened
when the price of birth control increased at college health centers,
And basically what happened is that when Congress passed the
(14:43):
Deficit Reduction Act in two thousand five and then it
went into effect in two thousand seven, they inadvertently increased
the effective price of birth control pills more than threefold,
from about five to ten dollars to about thirty to
fifty dollars per month, which is a lot if you
were in college or just in general, it is a
lot of money. They found that this price increase reduced
(15:06):
the use of the pill by two to four on
average among college women. College women did cut back on
sex somewhat, but the rate of accidental pregnancy didn't decline,
and they looked at how much more of an effect
it had on women who were in bad financial shape
as opposed to women who had insurance and could still
afford it. Um Among women in bad financial shape, the
(15:29):
rate of unintended pregnancy actually increased twenty three percent because
many switched to cheaper risk ear methods or unprotected sex.
Women with no insurance who had sex infrequently would it
instead opt for over the counter emergency contraception, But women
who with no insurance who had sex frequently opted for
(15:49):
condoms as well as increasingly relying on the rhythm method
and unprotected sex, which is why you see that that
um jump in the accidental rate of pregnancy. And as
far as those alternate methods, the rhythm method just having
plain unprotected sex, plain old unprotected sex, the failure rates
(16:11):
are pretty scary and this raises the whole cost benefit
analysis issue again. While the failure rate for imperfect use
of the pill is nine per one, so that's nine
pregnancies out of a hundred women over a year of use,
for withdrawal it's twice that, and the failure rate for
periodic abstinence is nearly three times. It's high. While four
(16:34):
completely unprotected sex. It's women so perhaps because of the
economic risk that a woman in man might be putting
themselves at by having risky unprotected sex. Previous studies have
also found that contraceptives, which includes condoms and birth control,
are relatively priced and elastic, meaning that the demand for
(16:57):
them stays pretty steady no matter what the price is,
because the benefit i e. The joy of sex is
constant and it's something that especially in today's culture, outweighs
maybe the the upfront cost of protecting your stale and
I feel like a lot of the um the focus
(17:20):
on birth control in the media at the moment is
on young single women in college who are being portrayed
as these you know, the look of a good time exactly.
I couldn't put it better. But the use of contraception
doesn't stop when someone gets married. People still, people still
(17:41):
want to have control over the size of their families, right, um,
which is why we felt like it was also important
in this conversation to offer up some statistics on uh
the rate of contraceptive methods by married women of childbearing age.
And we should also point out we haven't gone into
this yet as well. Um. But also birth control can
(18:03):
be necessary for women who are not necessarily not looking
to get pregnant, but might have certain health conditions such
as polycystic ovarian syndrome that require birth control and regulating
those hormones to prevent the growth of ovarian system. Which, yeah,
which was part of standard Flukes argument in front of
that hearing UM. So, going back to those married women
(18:26):
in contraceptive stats, we have some information from the CDC,
and this is looking at UH their use of contraception
from two thousand six to two thousand eight, and it's
in comparison to a number of European countries that have
a very low fertility rate. UM in the US about fiftent,
(18:47):
not an insignificant number of married women are on the pill.
Five five percent use an i U D and use
female sterilization. And as far as oral interception, women in France,
the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom are more likely to
rely on oral contraception than women in the United States.
And that's the comparison of about in those previously mentioned
(19:11):
countries to the United States, which is six women in
France use the i U D to a greater extent
than women in the US do, whereas the male condom
is used by partners of approximately twenty percent of married
women in Spain and the UK. So the point we're
trying to make is, like you said, Caroline, it is
erroneous to only frame the conversation around birth control as
(19:33):
something that is only accessed by possibly teen girls and
UM you know, barely not teen girls essentially um in college.
And finally, the last point that we um we feel
like should be raised is that while a lot of
these single women are being labeled as sluts and even yes,
(19:55):
whorrors for their sexual behavior or just their choice to
take control, statistically, men engage in risk your sexual behavior
and with more partners over the life term than women do.
And this might be an issue of self reporting where
men might inflate their numbers and women deflate their numbers
(20:15):
because there of those lingering uh social shaming against premarital
sex and promiscuity. But statistically, men report two to four
times more sexual partners than women. Yeah. According to a
National Health Statistics report from March, men a just twenty
five to forty four and two thousand six to two
(20:36):
tho eight reported having slept with a median of six women,
while women in the same age brackets said they slept
with a median of four men. But men count a
greater number of sexual acts as sex. And that's just
referring to the median number. When you average out those numbers,
the average number of partners sexual partners that men have
(21:00):
thirty one point nine. So clearly you have some Wilt
Chamberlain esque outliers in there, whereas the average for women
is much lower at eight point six. So for me,
the biggest, the biggest takeaway from all this research and
especially all of these economic models that we've talked about
at length, UM is a reframing in my brain of
(21:23):
the public conversation that's going on around reproductive rights and
especially this access to birth control. UM. I can understand
the more politically dicey issues of whether or not employers
should be forced to supply birth control uh two employees,
But when you get beyond that and actually, you know,
(21:45):
think about whether or not birth control is somehow turning
women into just promiscuous sex mongers, you quickly quickly realize
that birth control in the technology has much less to
do with it then our collective actions and acceptance of
sex as a pleasurable activity between people, between people exactly,
(22:11):
it's people being people. So UM. So I hope that
this has been enlightening for listeners. Um, it was enlightening
for me. I was not expecting for this conversation to
take an economic turn, but I'm so glad that economists
have have taken such a hard look at it right.
The cost benefit analysis is a perfect way to look
(22:33):
at it. People have to weigh a lot of actual
literal costs how much money it would cost cost to
raise a child, but they also have to look at
the more personal, mental and emotional costs. Yeah, and thank heavens,
we didn't live in New Haven in the six the
stocks would be uncomfortable. And now it's time to open
(22:54):
it up to listeners. What what do you think about
the situation that's going on? Um? Do you think that
they're should be more access to birth control? Do you
think that this economic model is totally bunk? Let us
know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send them, or you can head over
to Facebook and leave us a comment there. And in
the meantime, we got a couple of listener letters to read.
(23:20):
This is an email from Sandy about our foster Care podcast.
She says, after your paperwork, training and waiting, I've just
been matched with a ten year old girl for foster
to adopt placement. We start her gradual transition to my
house tomorrow. I'm a first time parents who I'm scared
and excited. I'm in Colorado and the state has made
some steps to help foster kids, such as one working
(23:41):
to keep the child in the same school during care
if that's in the best interest of the child, to
requiring high schools to accept all credits when a child
transfer to the child can stay on track to graduate.
Three extend Medicaid and other support services through the age
of one, and four. Work with teenagers so that they
can gain independent living skills before they age out. Everyone
I've dealt with has the best interest of the children
(24:03):
in the hearts and brains, but funding, time and resources
can only go so far. More families, especially families of color,
are needed for placements. And I've got another email here
from Rachel also about our foster care episode, and it's
a sweet story. Um. She writes, I was a product
of a seventeen year old unweedden mother and I was
adopted through a close adoption at two and a half
(24:25):
months of age, but for those first months I was
in foster care. I've never found my birth mother, but
I did connect a few years ago with my foster
family and that was amazing. They still had pictures of
me as a newborn, with their daughters hugging on me,
and their family albums, and the most fascinating pictures where
of the morning before they had to take me to
the adoption agency to meet my parents. I'd only ever
(24:46):
seen the pictures that were taken with my parents after
they were given me same little outfit which my mom
saved two different families. My foster mother told me that
she was worried for years that I had woken up
from a nap I was having and then they dropped
me off and wondered where they were, And it was
so nice to know that I've been very much loved
even during that short little gap before I had my
own family. I think a lot of foster parents are
(25:08):
the most selfless people in the world that taken a
child who needs a home, love them like their own,
and then have to give them back. And she's also
majoring in social work because she wants to find a
way to support the adoption industry. So good for you, Rachel,
and thanks for sharing your thoughts, um and thanks to
everyone who's written in mom stuff. At Discovery dot com
(25:29):
is the email address, and you can send us a
little message on Facebook if you'd like. And I do
have a Facebook request I'm gonna offer up right now.
We are just about a hundred likes away from a
nice round ten thousand thumbs up on our fan page.
And I know that it's just numbers, but people look
in Internet land, numbers meet a lot. Yeah. Look, if
(25:52):
my parents can go on Facebook and like us, you
can do. So what I'm asking is for I'm going
to call this the thousand Light Drive, not because there's
a good ring to it, because it gets across the
point I would I would be really pleased if people
will listen to this episode and go like us on Facebook.
That's all I'll say about it. And you can also
(26:12):
find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and you
can read about what we're writing during the week at
how Stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app
(26:35):
has a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to
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