My last post dealt with a movement that created "social worker" as a new occupation that was acceptable for single women in the late nineteenth century. This is an occupation that grew out of the new study of social sciences, which is a progressive area of study. Until the late nineteenth century there was no such academic area as "social studies." By the year 1920 twenty-five percent of women who were in the workforce were married. As mentioned last time, the few areas of employment that were acceptable for single women, besides housekeeping, were fashion, education, social work, nursing, and lower level business management.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to discern what life was really like for women before 1880 because of the progressive subversion of our education system. The progressives have gone out of their way to portray women as second class citizens who were abused by their husbands and employers. It is true that women were disenfranchised from the ballot box until 1920 when the nineteenth amendment was passed. (See an earlier post about the suffrage movement.) However, it is hard for me to believe that life for women in general was so terrible that they should be in the same category as African Americans fighting for their rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
Behaviorism is another branch of progressive social studies. This was a movement that was started by John B. Watson after World War I. These "social scientists" began to challenge the fact that women were instinctively motherly. (I say, "What?!?!? What are our bodies designed to do????") Anyway, the behaviorists believed that experts; doctors, nurses, and trained educators; should advise new mothers. Rather than turning to their own mothers and grandmothers for advice and council, women were now to go outside the extended family for "expert" advice. Middle-class women began to question their roles as women and started to feel unfulfilled in their natural role. Not only did women begin to question their role as mothers, but they also started looking at their relationships with their husbands, and the role that sex played in that relationship. Sex was not just for having babies anymore.
I want to pause here and look at what may be an idealistic view of the relationship that should exist between a man and a woman, the relationship that God planned for people before the fall. First, marriage was intended to be a relationship between one man and one woman. Second, one of the purposes of marriage was to have children, or at least have every intention to have children. The man and the woman were intended to work together for the betterment of their family. If a family placed God at its head and followed His laws, then the family will be strong. Also a community of families that follows God's Law will be honorable and equitable to women and children.
Now, fast forward about six thousand years. The philosophy of progressives is atheistic. When God is removed from the social realm, all sorts of chaotic ideas come to bear. Sigmund Freud had much to contribute to the women's liberation movement. Popular women's magazines in the early twentieth century published a watered down summary of his works. What they summarized was that women were repressed and inhibited. Women read these magazines and began to rebel against Victorian manners and expectations of women. They began to smoke, drink, dance (unchaperoned at parties), wear makeup, and wear seductive clothes. This was a paradigm shift in how women behaved in public. Rather than focusing on God's expectations of them, they began to follow their animal instincts.
Now I will introduce Margaret Sanger, an atheist. She was a founder of Planned Parenthood and got into a great deal of trouble for talking and distributing information about birth control to the public. She believed that poverty was caused by women bearing too many children, especially in poor communities. Birth control did begin to catch on in the 1920s, but poor women were not the ones practicing it. Middle class women began to use birth control. Thus, birth control gave middle class women the ability to separate the act of having sex from the purpose of having sex, which is to have children.
A piece of legislation that was passed during this period was the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921. This law provided federal funding for prenatal and child health care programs to the states. The law was repealed in 1929. Members of the National Women's Party, who wanted an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, did not like this law because it classified all women as mothers. (Why wouldn't it? Don't most women have the potential to be mothers? Isn't it in God's plan for all women to try to be mothers?) Margaret Sanger did not like this law because it did not promote birth control. This legislation was progressive in nature because big government tried to influence the decisions and choices of individuals.
At this point you may be thinking what is the problem with this? Rewind the tape again to God's intent for the union of men and women. Sex is for having babies. Sex is not a hug or a handshake or a recreational activity. Sex is supposed to be a sacred part of the marriage covenant between men and women. Extra marital sex kills the relationship between husband and wife. It is also none of the government's business. Tax money should not be spent to influence people's private decisions or behavior.
I will deal more with the sexual revolution in my next post that will focus on the 1960s and 1970s.
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