The World: A Family History of Humanity

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

In 1960, a birth-control pill, using hormones to inhibit ovulation, freed women from male control of sex for the first time: it could be enjoyed for its own sake. New household gadgets, washing machines, fridges, vacuum cleaners, made female servants obsolete, but also liberated women – encouraged by a movement of female empowerment, feminism – to pursue independent careers. They had fewer children, but now most of those survived to adulthood, leading to a new cult of childhood, particularly in the middle class, where the desire for women to work clashed with the virtues of attentive parenting. The feminist movement was the great success of the Sixties and early Seventies, the Great Liberal Reformation that delivered the right to abortion, curtailed capital punishment, legalized homosexuality and later gay rights.