
The Pill, the Condom, and the American Dream - prostoalex
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-pill-the-condom-and-the-american-dream/498206/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits&amp;single_page=true
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slau
This might be slightly off-topic, but maybe some here will find it
interesting.

My girlfriend and I have stopped using hormone-based contraceptives, for
nearly 2 years now, I believe. The main reason is that the hormone-stuff had
really messed up my girlfriend, and at some point, we were actually starting
to get worried about not having the opportunity of having kids.

When we met, she had an IUD (with hormonal stuff), which was uncomfortable to
me, so she switched to an implant. The next nearly two years were fairly
difficult because she would have extremely irregular periods (for up to two
months at a time, in one case), and it messed with our relationship in more
ways than one.

At our request, her gynæcologist removed the implant, and she switched to the
pill. This helped stabilise things, but it was still messed up. In the end, we
decided to stop any hormone-based contraceptive, and decided to use condoms.
Yes, it's annoying, and everything you want, but it's still a lot better than
whatever we had before.

The reason I'm telling this, is that I don't really understand the taboo
around it. It's a normal part of a normal relationship---there's no point in
pretending we're farting rainbows all the time. I'm also fairly annoyed at the
fact that women have to put up with this, whereas us men get the sweet end of
the deal. We don't have to pay a luxury tax for something which really is
essential for most women, we don't have to worry about whether something works
or not, or whether getting laid is worth having trouble at that level for the
next 6 months. Note that I'm saying "oh poor women, you have to deal with
periods," I'm only discussing the technical/monetary aspects of this.

I understand that there's very little interest by most men to have a male
contraceptive, but I for one would love to have one. Not necessarily hormone-
based, and preferably not something that requires having that part of my body
be approached by a scalpel. I seem to remember reading an article some time
ago explaining why there was no male contraceptive available to those who
wanted it. If I remember correctly, according to the labs/vendors, there was
simply no market for it. The products existed, but either they're making too
much money out of the female variants, or the male variants simply wouldn't
sell.

In any case, the situation is messed up.

~~~
MustardTiger
I don't get why people with reasonable intelligence don't just use fertility
awareness. It is free, it has no side effects, and any time you decide you
want to have kids you can use the same method to increase your chances. I get
that dumb people often think you can always get pregnant. But people capable
of passing high school biology should grasp the concept of ovulation.

~~~
mcherm
Because people of reasonable intelligence also realize that ovulation has
occasional hiccups in timing, that on rare occasions sperm can live a
surprisingly long time, and that as a result"fertility awareness" (on its own)
is a less reliable means of contraception than most other options.

~~~
y7
I'd really like to learn the proper numbers on this. What are the precise
risks of a timing hiccup or second ovulation during a menstrual cycle? Also,
how does regularity of one person's period affect these risks? How accurate
are the indicators for ovulation most methods use (body temp, cervical mucus,
etc.)?

~~~
LyndsySimon
Well... it depends.

If you only rely on this method for a few days each month immediately after
the end of menses, the chances of it failing are MUCH lower than if you rely
on it for a week prior and a week after menses.

That said, wiki claims[1] that the latter approach is >95% effective in
perfect use, and 88% effective in typical use.

Compare this to withdrawal[2], which wiki claims is 96%/78% effective
respectively.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-
based_contraceptive_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-
based_contraceptive_methods#Standard_Days_Method)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coitus_interruptus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coitus_interruptus)

~~~
MustardTiger
You linked to the rhythm method, not fertility awareness. Fertility awareness
means actually measuring the physiological changes resulting from the hormonal
changes that precede ovulation (temperature, saliva, cervical mucous). This is
much more reliable than guessing based on the date, which is obviously going
to fail relatively often as ovulation isn't reliably regular even in the most
"regular" cycles.

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DominikR
A more likely cause for these results is that there has been an effort in the
last decades to dumb down education at every level.

Not necessarily in order to lower the average level of education but to battle
perceived unfairness or racism within education.

The underlying assumption is that if you find that some minority or group is
not represented equally in any area of education then it is a sign that there
must be institutionalized racism involved.

This process is still ongoing to this day, currently everyone is focusing on
STEM fields and asking the question: Why do so few women choose to enter these
fields?

You can bet that the quality of education you are going to get in 20 years in
these fields will be worse in order to attract women to fields that they are
generally less interested in. (if Mathematics is the reason for that then they
will simply remove it or reduce it significantly)

Edit: It is by the way more likely that changes in the education system (of
which there have been plenty) cause different results in education than
attributing it to something like contraception.

~~~
jsmith0295
Not sure why people feel a need to downvote things they don't agree with, but
I think this might somewhat be on the right track. It seems weird to attribute
this change to something outside of the education system when there have been
plenty of changes within it.

~~~
lucozade
> Not sure why people feel a need to downvote things they don't agree with

That could be the reason. Or it could be that this article is referring to an
increase in pre-school readiness in poor children. It makes clear that there
was no drop in readiness of rich children over the same period. Therefore the
chances of this effect being due to some form of educational dumbing down
doesn't make much sense.

Now the authors of the article it's based on believe that the effect is likely
due to improvements in parental education pre-school and that that may be, at
least partially, due to government campaigns. I that sense it is conceivable
(excuse the pun) to attribute it to the education system but not in the way
the GP is suggesting.

~~~
DominikR
My point was that the educational system has been tweaked to be easier for
everyone across the board.

Children that previously performed better still perform well, children that
performed worse now perform better than before.

I'm not rejecting that contraception could be a reason, it's just that you
have to show convincing evidence for it. The more counter intuitive your
theory is the more evidence you need to produce.

Imagine I declared that all of this is correlating with the size of Big Mac
menus and has nothing to do with changes in the educational system. It
wouldn't be unreasonable for you to question my theory, especially if I do not
provide any evidence.

> Not sure why people feel a need to downvote things they don't agree with

I have no problem with that. If I'm just regurgitating what everyone is
already believing then my comments would be pointless. I happen to have a
different opinion and I know that for some this is offending. (but thats
really their problem, not mine)

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yummyfajitas
An alternate theory of how this effect is occurring.

Imagine there are two classes of human - high quality and low quality, and
this quality is hereditary (likely genetic). Low quality humans have a lot of
unplanned births and their children are also not very good at school.

The bottom 20% of humans will always consist of low quality humans, plus a
chunk of the remainder high quality humans (assuming low quality humans make
up < 20%).

Previously low quality humans had a lot of children - say 15% of children were
low quality children. Now if low quality humans have performance 1, and high
quality humans have performance 2, then the performance of the bottom 20%
would be (15% x 1 + 5% x 2) / 20% = 1.25.

Now suppose condoms reduce the number of children had by low quality humans.
Then the number of low quality children is reduced to 10% - so the performance
of the bottom 20% of people would be (10% x 1 + 10% x 2) / 20% = 1.5. That's a
20% improvement even though no group has improved their quality at all.

This effect is rather more plausible, given what we know about
intelligence/adult outcomes being hereditary, and given what we know about the
uselessness of "enrichment activities" (e.g. google how ineffective Head Start
or early childhood education is).

Such an effect would also have a significant eugenic [1] effect, i.e.
massively positive long term effects as well.

[1] The word "eugenic" is overloaded, and means both the opposite of dysgenic
and also human intervention into genetics to improve them.

~~~
jsmith0295
Isnt this based on proportionality though? If anything you would expect that
bottom 20% to be less likely to use birth control effectively and become a
larger share of the population over time, especially as the remaining 80%
preferred to have fewer children in general.

But that's mostly a guess on my part, I don't have data on hand to validate
any of that.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Right, the article postulates that the bottom folks have become more likely to
use birth control, so I'm only discussing a relative effect.

But yes, considering how our high-IQ elites _don 't_ reproduce, it's probably
just a reduced dysgenic effect rather than a eugenic one.

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Overtonwindow
It could also be an error in the self reporting population; it's socially more
"acceptable" to say you use contraception, even when you don't.

