Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution

Though the birth control pill is taken for granted as a fact of life, no single event since Eve took the apple has been as consequential for relations between the sexes as the arrival of modern contraception. Indeed, there would have been no sexual revolution without it.

Though the sexual revolution has been celebrated as a positive and liberating social force, this book contends that sexual freedom has paradoxically resulted in much unhappiness. This unhappiness is not seen on the surface, where one finds capable women unencumbered by a family breaking through glass ceilings, or childless, two-income couples living in fashionable urban districts and taking expensive, exotic vacations. One must dig deeper and into ground-breaking new sources, as this book does, to see the children of broken homes incapable of satisfying adult relationships, the unprecedented number of young men addicted to pornography, and the young women who have been date-raped in a college dormitory or whose later lives ultimately subvert the message of liberation.

Mary Eberstadt makes her case using an impressive variety of evidence from sources ranging across academic disciplines and into such venues as women's literature, contemporary novels, advertising, and other sources not previously brought to bear on this debate. She examines hitherto unexamined cultural fallout of our post-sexual revolution world by asking 'is food the new sex?,' 'is pornography the new tobacco?,' and other provocative questions about our changing mores. Adam and Eve After the Pill will permanently change the way readers think of the sexual revolution and consider the evidence of its impact.