This August we are going to talk about sex and relationship and examine how our shifting society and culture affects sex and relationships, but first consider these facts.
According to the Center for America Progress, a public policy, research, and advocacy organization, 84 percent of women work full time, and “women bear a disproportionate burden from family caregiving responsibilities, not only during their reproductive years, but across the life course. […] A massive gender gap exists in the share of women and men who are either not working or working part time because of childcare or family reasons. Regardless of age or parental status, women were a staggering five to eight times more likely to experience a caregiving impact on their employment in 2022.”
The University of Houston reports that, “89 percent of the world’s population lives in a country with falling marriage rates,” and that there are “several reasons why more and more women are choosing not to get married including infidelity, increasing career opportunities and independence, and finding more security living with their parents and siblings.”
“Marriage has mostly not been a great situation for women historically and across the world, and they’re trying to find alternative solutions,” Dinah Hannaford, an associate professor of anthropology at the university said. As new opportunities open up for women to be full people without it, they’re opting for that.”
In 2022 the U.S. Census Bureau released on America’s Family and Living Arrangements. They found that “10.9 million one-parent family groups with a child under the age of 18 in 2022 [and] that 80 percent of one-parent family groups were maintained by a mother.”
But it doesn’t stop there.
The Pew Research Center found in 2021 that, “44 percent of non-parents ages 18 to 49 say it is not too or not at all likely that they will have children someday, an increase of seven percentage points from the 37 percent who said the same in a 2018 survey.”
You may have noticed the shift happening but clearly society is changing. Women are figuring out new ways to create their lives and families and ideas on marriage are changing. The feminism, careers, the strain of living under a capitalist society, gender roles, social media gender wars, and more are contributing to the evolution of sex and relationships.
What do you think about all this?
Perdita Patrice is a Texas-based writer and documentary filmmaker. She enjoys live music, reading, and watching TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @perditapatrice