historian Stephanie Coontz has written, “Until women had access to safe and effective contraception that let them control when to bear children and how many to have, there was only so far they could go in reorganizing their lives and their marriages.” Whereas my grandmother had borne seven children, my mother bore only two. That’s a massive difference within just one generation. Mom also had a vacuum cleaner and indoor plumbing, so things were a little easier for her all around. This left a sliver of time in my mother’s life to start thinking about other things, and by the 1970s, there were a
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