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Women In Marriage In The 1950's

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The role of women in marriage in the 1950’s was often to stay at home doing housework and taking care of the kids while the husband was away at work. Because of this, women would often be financially dependent of their husbands. This all changed with the sexual revolution in the 60’s and 70’s, which was sparked due to the access of birth control. This allowed women to decide when they wanted to have children, which thus allowed more women to go to college and create plans for their families and futures. Before, women would often get married and stay married due to their financial dependency of their husbands, but since more women were attending colleges, they became able to get careers that would allow them to become more financially independent. “The Pill” is often seen as the symbol of the sexual revolution. But the creation of birth control actually came from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s social …show more content…

Not only did the pill allow women to acquire longer positioned jobs, but also allowed women the ability to pursue higher education. After the introduction of birth control a much higher percentage of women graduated high school and went to college, which also lead to higher position careers. This had a huge impact on marriages at the time, because women who were unhappy with their marriages could now afford financially to get divorced. This ultimately changed the perspective of marriage from being a financial partnership, to being about love and achieving happiness. This has often led to what many see as a degradation of the institution of marriage. Since the beginning of the 1960’s, marriage rates have decreased by over 30%, while divorce rates have doubled. This has led to triple the number of children that live with single parents.

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