The pill doesn't nullify female reproductive responsibility. If anything, it's increased the responsibility and concerns surrounding it.

wtknight · 2022-12-26T14:49:48+00:00

Re-flaired CMV as this post is making an affirmative claim

_revelationary · 2022-12-26T13:26:54+00:00

You realize two people need to have sex for a baby to be born, right? And to avoid single motherhood, BOTH parties need to stick around to raise any children that result…

manmadestool · 2022-12-26T14:23:53+00:00

Single motherhood wasn't as common because men would marry younger women and become her first partner and then get married 6 months later.

Men were also expected to financially take care of the wife and divorce was highly frowned upon. Why were so many women being abused back in the day? Because they literally couldn't leave if they wanted. Now men and women have the choice to date before marriage which also means leaving a marriage if it's not right for you.

I personally think it's the over sexualization of young girls without the education behind it to protect them

AcanthocephalaNew947 · 2022-12-26T13:40:12+00:00

It’s crazy how many claims you’re making without any research to back it up

the_lazy_orange · 2022-12-26T15:15:05+00:00

Male concern over promiscuity? Where’s the concern for male birth control and deadbeat dads??

januaryphilosopher · 2022-12-26T13:59:09+00:00

I'd imagine that single parenthood was much higher before marriage. Societal change has meant that people are freer to leave relationships in a process that isn't very related to birth control which has increased single parenthood. (And, I may point out, single mothers usually aren't such because they are promiscuous. Most chose to have children in relationships that later ended.)

Circ-Le-Jerk · 2022-12-26T13:35:25+00:00

[permanently deleted]

relish5k · 2022-12-26T15:38:55+00:00

First of all, rates of single motherhood (at least in the US) have peaked and are going down. But of course compared to pre-1960 it is very high, and that's for two reason:

-birth control and the general de-coupling of sex with marriage means people as a whole are having a lot MORE sex outside of marriage. And even if pregnancy is more preventable now, birth control is not always consistently and correctly used. So even if 98% of pregnancies are prevented, if you have a much higher base size, you're going to end up with more unplanned, out of wedlock pregnancies.

-The decline of working class male jobs means that men can no longer support a family, and have lost their integral role to the traditional family structure. So while there are still a host of benefits to having children in wedlock, it does not provide the security it once did and there is therefore lower financial and social incentives to having children in wedlock, especially for lower SECs.

So issues with both supply (of pregnancies outside of marriage) and demand (male working class breadwinning jobs no longer around), have lead to a break in the traditional family and increase in single motherhood.

ManWazo · 2022-12-26T13:03:51+00:00

today, with birth control, female sexuality shouldn't be a concern

Have you talked with a woman once in your life about birth control? IUD is for most the most painful experience ever, hormonal leads to various physiological imbalance and diminished sexual libido, doctors refuse to do tube tying, condoms are refused by a lot of men, etc. The risk of pregnancy remains a concern because all the birth control methods are deeply flawed.

Sadly, most male birth control aren't approved (hormonal, thermal) aren't approved by the FDA but it would totally help reduce unwanted pregnancies.

Noodles_R · 2022-12-26T13:10:41+00:00

If men are concerned about women’s birth control, they could try being more willing to use those available to them - condoms, vasectomies etc. then there would be a lower risk of pregnancy and paternity worries.

Circ-Le-Jerk · 2022-12-26T13:24:47+00:00

[permanently deleted]

OkProfessional9405 · 2022-12-26T14:28:16+00:00

The obvious solution is to give equal rights to men in women around this.

Currently both parties have a choice on having sex and using birth control. Many choose unprotected sex.

When a woman becomes pregnant she retains full control of becoming a parent. Currently the man loses any say in becoming a parent. This is unbalanced and should be corrected.

12 weeks for the woman to decide, 12 weeks for the man (from when informed). Paternity tests should be automatic and a negative paternity test should re/start his 12 week consent period.

This risk today is that woman are able to make a financial decision for a man who isn't legally given the same choices she is.

I personally don't have a problem with a woman becoming a single mother by choice, but there's no laws against lying about paternity, laying about birth control/reproductive status, etc and we are kidding ourselves to pretend this isn't exploited.

Just a reminder. If you are unmarried there's a 30% chance a child born is not your child in the US. If you are married, there's a 10% chance the child is not yours.

phuck_polyeV · 2022-12-26T12:55:57+00:00

You do understand that many women aren’t on birth control right for various reasons, and perhaps it is those women getting pregnant?

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KayRay1994 · 2022-12-26T14:35:36+00:00

The issue of increasing single motherhood is far more complex than the pill existing - society has changed radically in a social, economic, religious, egalitarian, mental, emotional and logistical standpoint. There is also the factor that single motherhood is overly represented in one economic class - who are often far poorer, more uneducated and they’re generally impacted by many other factors such as increased drug use, incarceration, etc etc

The people who are single mothers who are outside this social and economic class drops dramatically - so if you’re concerned about single motherhood you shouldn’t be asking “is the pill responsible?” but rather “what can we do to solve the social and economic issues that create the vast majority of single mothers?”

pearllovespink · 2022-12-26T17:28:09+00:00

You are a man correct? Try waking up and making sure you take the pill at the same time every day for 10 years. How df is that not responsibility?

Irresponsibility is not taking anything and getting knocked up.

Just a reminder to you that men are also irresponsible according to your theory. Who df do you think is knocking these women up?

Creation_Soul · 2022-12-26T19:12:17+00:00

considering the amount of sex that is had, the number of single mothers is quite low. Just imagine your average college campus, keep the amount of sex had constant, but remove all birth control methods from the equation: everyone would have 1-2 kids by the end of college. More sex is being had, but with a lower chance of pregnancy, but when you add the total numbers it may result in a higher number of single mothers.

The thing is, a child at the wrong time was always a bad thing. Even for couple who are committed to eachother it's a bad thing. Look, I met my wife in college and we had a pregnancy scare back then (the condom broke, the only time it ever did), but she took the morning-after-pill and everything was fine (but we did discuss the possibility of abortion). Our relationship flourished (evidenced by the fact that we are now married), but a child back then would have changed our lives a lot (for the worse).

RocinanteCoffee · 2022-12-26T19:57:20+00:00

Your premise is flawed. Women do not have an inherent responsibility to reproduce. Many have the biological capability of it, nothing more, nothing less.

You would think with such great control over reproduction, single motherhood would be practically non-existent.

It is very difficult for some women to have access to reliable birth control. The expense, the prescription, the way their church or their parents intervene and try to prevent it.

Most don't learn how important it is to take it at the same time every day and that it is just one method of pregnancy prevention and works best when paired with a second (condom, spermicidal gel applicators).

In the US with Roe v Wade being overturned it made it even more difficult to get birth control and there has been a rash of pharmacies with techs lying to women telling them to go elsewhere (in parts of the country with religious exemption they are required to immediately turn them over to another tech).

If birth control were educated properly, not interfered with by religious concerns which have no place in government or medicine, and were readily available especially in states with high unwanted pregnancy rates, it would have its higher success rate.

In some parts of the country in the last decade the social taboo around birth control has gotten worse. People who used to permit their daughters to take it for headaches and cysts now actively prevent their access to the medicine.

If you don't have insurance and don't have an affordable clinic near you it can still be five hundred dollars just to travel, get the appointment, and get the prescription, with an additional $10-$40/month for the actual pill.

SmarmyPapsmears · 2022-12-26T16:08:15+00:00

They aren't single mothers because of the pill, they're single mothers because men don't want to be with them (or vice versa)

RandomRedditGuy322 · 2022-12-26T18:14:57+00:00

Reproductive irresponsibility was fundamentally triggered by the rise of the welfare state.

Women need to live in a world where they and their bastard children will starve if you want them to actually give a shit about random dudes nutting in them. As long as the government swoops in and takes care of them with men's tax dollars women wont start caring again.

The entire idea of "miss independent" involves the single mother using the government as her husband to raise a child. She isn't independent at all. Just another animal at the zoo waiting to be fed by the keepers.

WilliamWyattD · 2022-12-26T16:06:53+00:00

Before the pill, sex carried an enormous chance of pregnancy. So casual sex was very rare. Other forms of birth control, such as the condoms at the time, were not as advanced and more greatly reduced pleasure than they do today. The Pill (and other later advances in birth control) really were a cultural atomic bomb. As other posters points out, these are complex matters where many factors interact with other factors. So a precise causal description of everything relevant is very hard to do. But there is no question that the Pill was instrumental in triggering a wave of enormous social change.

The Pill facilitated a psycho-sexual revolution in many dimensions, one of which was in no longer trying to convince so many women that sex could not be enjoyable for them. This change in mentality, combined with the Pill, made it so that far more women were having sex outside of marriage than before. Since the Pill is not perfectly reliable when taken properly, and people cannot be relied upon to take the pill perfectly, actual unwanted/unexpected pregnancies went UP after the Pill. This is why abortion was so important for so many women--if women were going to be fully equal to men, including in terms of sexual freedom, you needed the combination or birth control AND cheap, safe and accessible abortion as a backstop. Purely in terms of single motherhood or undesired children, it is actually better to have no Pill than to have the Pill but not easily accessible abortion.

RGL137 · 2022-12-26T16:17:45+00:00

Liberals have no real answer to single motherhood, which is strongly correlated with major social problems like crime and poverty.

TOMTEXOMA · 2022-12-26T16:38:18+00:00

But how many of these are unplanned pregnancies of the pro sports male athletes

gymbro718nyc2 · 2022-12-26T18:03:33+00:00

Medical advances have some effect on sexual behavior but in my opinion zero effect on sexual partner selection. For millions of years, men selected women who had better chances of beating a healthy child and surviving themselves. Things such as hips to waist ratio, breast size, butt and hips, beautiful hair, skin and lips were associated with better reproductive health.

These days, modern medicine can all but insure a healthy pregnancy and the survival of both parent and child, yet men still prefer hot looking women.

Same goes for women. The pill can remove the conscious fear of pregnancy, but they will still select for the alpha males that make them aroused, because they can protect her as opposed to the nice guys who are scared of her.

West-Ad-9697 · 2022-12-26T19:32:40+00:00

I don't think womankind cares about children as much as you think.

I think they are more concerned to have the ability to scratch the mothering itch, more than how healthy or safe that child grows up to be.

Women - all women - see having a child as a fundamental right, a gender right - that elevates them from the baren male sex.

How they actually define that right - varies based on political and religious beliefs, but you will find that they see having a child as a very female exclusive concern.

despisedlove2 · 2022-12-26T22:33:22+00:00

The source of single motherhood is the rise of the welfare state, and recreational divorce. It has nothing to do with the pill.

Perfect-Resist5478 · 2022-12-26T22:58:27+00:00

You’re conflating access to birth control with access to education.

There are people out there who don’t know you can get pregnant on your period, or while you’re breastfeeding, or within 6w of having a baby, or as a result of rape.

But also, what does any of that have to do with male concern over promiscuity. If you don’t trust that the person you’re sleeping with is on the pill, bring a condom. Or don’t have sex.

AnonFakeAccount1 · 2022-12-27T03:52:20+00:00

Partly because of Risk compensation. People take on more risk when they perceive safeguards are in place. You're more likely to have unprotected sex when other contraception is involved.

Also, fewer shotgun weddings and less social stigma probably contributed to more single mothers.

Who claimed women aren't at all responsible for reproductive responsibility? Seems like a straw man argument.

Additional_Speech164 · 2022-12-28T04:32:19+00:00

I know a few quite successful single moms. They wanted children but weren’t willing to look for “ the one” . One had a child with a guy she was fwb with, and gave him a choice whether he wanted to be in her child’s life or not. He did. But she’s a ceo she could’ve done it alone. She does the financial part and her daughter spends weekends and holidays with the dad. Seems to be a healthy situation, kids happy.

I also have a doctor who decided she wanted kids so had ivf with a donar. Her kids are doing well and in college now.

Title	The pill doesn't nullify female reproductive responsibility. If anything, it's increased the responsibility and concerns surrounding it.
Author	Circ-Le-Jerk
Upvotes	5
Comments	189
Date	December 26, 2022 12:52 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/zvmjuv/the_pill_doesnt_nullify_female_reproductive/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/the-pill-doesnt-nullify-female-reproductive.1145728 https://theredarchive.com/post/1145728

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