Mostly, when I think of the 1960s I think of the Viet Nam War and all my friends either trying to get into college (so they didn't get drafted and die in Viet Nam) or they wanted to join a service which was less likely to die in like the Air Force or Coast Guard or something like that. If you really wanted to die you joined the Army Infantry or trained as a helicopter pilot if you had a real death wish or maybe you just were a natural risk taker and didn't really care if you lived or died like a lot of guys I knew in High School in the 1960s. This was pretty common then. IF my father hadn't intervened this could have been me too.
But, luckily I actually had a father who had survived the Great Depression and World War II and wasn't clueless sort of like I was then (and how many of my friends were then who died before 25 or 30) in various different ways then.
But, I digress. My wife told me something I had never put together before: The birth Control pill which became legal in 1960 and a gigantic increase of girls and women going to college after that.
Before that women had very little control of whether they got pregnant or not. But, starting in 1960 all educated white and other educated women learned they didn't need to get pregnant whether it was date rape, or voluntary sexual intercourse with a man or being married or whatever. They could use birth control pills so even if they had a date rape experience they wouldn't be forced to marry the guy that knocked them up by their parents anymore because they wouldn't get knocked up unless they wanted to as long as they took birth control pills.
So, because of this educated girls and women could then go to college in unheard of numbers after this sea change and gigantic change to all women in the U.S. and Europe who were legally allowed to get birth control pills from (in the U.S.) 1960 onwards.
Before today I thought that all the boys who weren't going to die or get PTSD in Viet Nam because they had a student deferment is why so many girls went to college. But, today my wife informed me of this and I realized there were MANY reasons why so many girls went to college starting in the 1960s and the main reason was because they weren't all getting knocked up through date rape or being forced to get pregnant because they had gotten married. They could prevent their pregnancies by hiding their birth control pills from their boyfriends or husbands or rapists or date rape partners they might be dating and still be able to go to college because they weren't getting pregnant anymore in droves (unless they wanted to).
You would not believe how many girls got pregnant between ages 15 and 25 that weren't married before birth control pills became legal. It was a nightmare for thousands of years for girls and women on this level until 1960 here in the United States.
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