It may have been penicillin, not the Pill, that triggered the sexual revolution, a new study indicates. Hypothesizing that “a decrease in the cost of syphilis due to penicillin [which, in 1943, was found to treat syphilis effectively] spurred an increase in risky non-traditional sex,” the Emory University economist Andrew Francis discovered evidence that “the era of modern sexuality originated in the mid to late 1950s,” prior to the debut of oral contraceptive pills in 1960. (Full PDF here.)
Francis is not the first to suggest this; Megan McArdle, for one, floated the idea last year when writing about the advent of seemingly untreatable STDs. Untreatable STDs sound like the stuff of a nightmarish sexual education class (like the scene in Mean Girls: “if you touch each other, you will get chlamydia, and die”), but the CDC seems to consider their development fairly likely. If penicillin sparked the sexual revolution, antibiotic-resistant STDs could lead to something of a sexual un-revolution.
But it’s impossible to know what such an “un-revolution” would look like. It would certainly disrupt the hook-up scene (not to mention today’s “open relationships”) and may make serial monogamy a bit less serial. Nevertheless, given the contraception-related transformation of the sex and marriage markets—which Timothy Reichert has described in our pages—a return to premarital abstinence and lifelong monogamy seems highly unlikely. Let’s hope, for the sake of people who could contract incurable and fatal STDs in this scenario, that we don’t find out.
January 29th, 2013 | 2:14 pm
What exactly is “non-traditional sex?”
Is the idea here that people weren’t having premarital sex nor adulterous affairs before 1950?
The real change was the role of women in society. The middle class woman was no longer locked away and separated from men until she was married off. This greatly increased the opportunity for sex among the unmarried.
People who are going to have sex are usually not thinking, “But what if I get syphilis?” This seems like one of those cases of correlation rather than causation.
January 29th, 2013 | 2:49 pm
The economist defined “risky non-traditional sex” as “nonmarital sexual behavior associated with an elevated likelihood of STD transmission.” No one’s claiming that people weren’t having premarital sex or adulterous affairs before 1950; obviously people were.
The role of women in society was certainly changing, but contraception also had effects on premarital sex independent of women’s changing social roles. I suggest reading the piece linked in my last paragraph if you’re curious about how that played out.
I don’t know enough about statistics to argue about correlation/causation in this particular case, but I assume a professional economist would know enough about that to consider and account for it in a study.
January 29th, 2013 | 3:16 pm
I read that. The issue is that the writer chose and arbitrary definition for non-traditional sex. This is from the study:
“It is important to recognize the limitations of this study. It was challenging to measure sexual behaviors during the period of interest.”
“Also, the study was unable to confirm or reject alternative hypotheses, because it was even more difficult to measure use of contraceptive technology, social attitudes toward sex, and moral values during the period.”
Basically, the study begins with an idea, and looks for data to support that idea without considering that there might be other reasons behind the data. That’s not a very good study
The supposition is that syphilis rates were depressing “non-traditional” sexual encounters. Syphilis has been around for over five hundred years. The sexual mores of society have greatly-fluctuated over that time. It’s hard for me to believe that syphilis played a primary factor in the changing sexual mores when the role of women and, as you cite, the prevalence of artificial contraception were much more significant and unique developments in the same time period.
January 29th, 2013 | 5:14 pm
“Compulsory Wassermann test before marriage” ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1953197/) is an interesting letter regarding the reduction in syphilis cases between 1951 and 1959.
It seems the State provided a disincentive to premarital copulation and it does not seem as if it will return to that role in the near future now that we know marriage is about survivor benefits and estate tax rather than children.
January 29th, 2013 | 5:45 pm
@Petro:
It’s not too difficult to fathom that syphilis would discourage the marginal individual from having “non-traditional” sex. It’s just another example of a cost of engaging in a particular behavior. You often see these relationships in public policy. Tax policy is a prominent example.
Most studies are done with a conclusion in mind which greatly simplifies the variable selection process and analysis.
However, you are right to say that the study had poor data.
January 30th, 2013 | 10:30 am
I remember seeing a BBC aired documentary where a woman said that following World War 2, she was part of a team charged by the government to explore a new view of marriage. She told they worked on promoting marriage as an expression love rather than it being a contract. She referred to post war time being a good time for change. I think there were many reasons for change sometime more direct that we like to admit. Characters in old movies sometimes openly discussed the issue of marriage-for-love as an avant garde idea. Victorian Britain made many changes too. So change again is not beyond the scope of possibility
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