Margaret Sanger And The New Era Of Women

4 Pages 963 Words

Imagine a world that is overpopulated with children. The number one reason why families are poor are due to the fact that they have too many children. But in today’s society overpopulation is not a problem due to the wonderful birth-control movement of Margaret Sanger. In the early 1900s sexual relations were used for the sole purpose of procreation, but as society changes, sexual relations became more for recreational purposes more than procreation purposes.
The 1920s brought forth a new era for the middle class women. A woman’s role was most indefinitely redefined. Motherhood was no longer seen as every woman’s maternal instinct and was claimed to be not sufficient enough for child rearing. Now mothers were expected to seek and rely on the advice of professionals such as doctors, nurses, and trained educators in nursery school and kindergartens. Up until this point, this was the only role that women knew. These changes devalued what had been a very important and consuming activity.
In order to compensate the loss of this very important role, many women now turned to another role: being a wife and companion to their husband. Previously women were consumed with the role of being a mother more so than the role of being a wife. But now a woman’s relationship with her husband assumed a greatly enhanced importance. Therefore, a woman’s sexual relationship with their husband was not solely considered a means of procreation, but now it was considered important and a very pleasurable experience. This also led to romantic love because a women’s sexual relationship was now more open.
Obviously, the more “relations” a husband and wife would have, the more children they would have. This led to the importance and the growing interest in birth control. The pioneer of the American birth-control movement was Margaret Sanger who began her career as a promoter of the diaphragm and other birth control devices. She believed ...