Loretta Lynn is teh Awesome. Yet, when you find out how much the movie with Sissy Spacek gussied up Lynn’s marriage (which already gave me chills) it’s a little sad, too.

And a reminder that we have made progress. My own mother’s childhood was awful, in large part because of the crummy attitudes that permeated the society she lived in; she became a feminist because of me.

And that’s because: I was free to become one.

Gussied up how?  I’m super curious.  I’m sure they took artistic license, but…

From her own autobiography, published in 2002:
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“Coal Miner’s Daughter” ended with Lynn going off into the sunset. Her life wasn’t really like that, she says. The real story is in her new book: endless nights on the road in her tour bus while her husband Doo — the man she married when she was only 13 - stayed home drinking, womanizing and hiring housekeepers to raise their six children. It is brutally honest.

The book recounts a lot: Doo left her when she was pregnant. He slept with Lynn’s brother’s wife. He left her alone to deliver a son on her own. All this happens before page 50. “It was real lonely. I felt sometimes it was better to be on the bus than to be home… because he was drinking so much,” she says.
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Another book I read was even harsher. This one was about the true stories behind certain movies “true” stories, and it made him sound downright psychopathic; threatening and beating the children, as well.

Not saying this to be against her… she was awfully honest in her songs, and was a truthtelling phenom in country music.

I’m not sure I’m remember the movie accurately, but I don’t think it made it very clear that she was 13 when she married, and had 4 kids by 19.  Her husband was more of a low-down, no-good cheater and abuser than the movie made him out to be.

Yeah, I always found the romantic movie to be in contrast with the anger in her songs.  The fact of the matter is that his pushing her into music was a matter of necessity, since he thought she could make some money.  Worked out well for him!

That same reality about the pill limiting the size of families extends to abortion - most women who seek abortions are women who have children limiting the size of their families.  They know full damn well what having kids means.

Kind of bittersweet for me, since my mother was one of those who developed extreme high blood pressure and nearly died from the pill - and had evidence of past strokes when she started having them again in older years and MRI was available.  I do think more kids would have killed her and impoverished the rest of us.  Dad, to his credit, wasted no time getting snipped when it was clear that the pill was no longer an option.

for the first decade plus of its existence, the pill was mainly used by married women (mostly mothers), who used it to stop having children, not delay motherhood or avoid it altogether.

People reading the thread probably already know this, but until 1972 states were allowed to make it a felony for anyone to prescribe or distribute contraceptives to an unmarried person.

Interesting coincidence:  My daughter has been doing research for a college paper she has to write about abortion in the US for one of her humanities courses.  One of the books she got at the library is The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back, by Gloria Feldt, and it’s been a revelation to her to realize just how far women have come within the last 100-years, the key importance of being able to control reproduction in all that, and how virulent and evil the anti-choicers are while attempting roll back all the gains women have made over the last century+. 

She’s realizing that all sorts of things she takes for granted in her life are relatively recent developments, and are still controversial enough, and still threatening enough, that there are powerful forces in this country that would sweep all this progress aside, given the chance, and happily plunge us back into a modern dark ages.

I know we talked about a lot of this when she was growing up, but I think this is really the first time these things have really hit her in a personal way.  I knew that we had a budding feminist in our house, and it’s interesting to see her awareness kick into high gear as she becomes an adult…
[/proud_dad]

Given that we live in a world where anyone can see it’s just not possible for all of us to live like Michelle Duggar and her clown-car vagina, and given that birth control is widely used, even among people who belong to religions that reject the permissibility of birth control, how can so many Americans live in this weird twilight zone of denial regarding the direct contradiction between their own stated ideals and political efforts and their own personal practices?  I’m surprised the cognitive dissonance doesn’t cause them to explode…

On cnn they have a few women writing short essays on the pill http://bit.ly/d9H8Xf
One is written by Raquel Welch. She uses the pill as a jumping off point for the “Ohhh noes teh hook-up culture is ruining society!” even as she admits to being married four times.

One thing that always annoys me is when older generations claim “Young people think they created sex” then flip out because “Young people are having sex”. I mean WTF?

#9

One thing that always annoys me is when older generations claim “Young people think they created sex” then flip out because “Young people are having sex”.

“Every generation thinks the next one is wack.”—Chuck D

In the 1960s three of my high school friends got pregnant: two forced to marry at 14 (!) and 16, one sent away to “an aunt” where I believe she gave birth and gave the child away.

I’m here to tell you that the pill wasn’t readily available to high school girls in my lower-middle class community right up until 1968.

As also evinced by the local “home for unwed mothers” another living scare tactic that scared me off sex until 19.

Things had changed for my sister four years younger—when one of her friends got pregnant at 16, her minister directed her to a sort of underground railroad for an abortion.

That girl went on to become a pharmacist, wife and mother, but I doubt she’s the kind of pharmicist who refuses to dispense the Pill.

I didn’t take the Pill until the early ‘70s, but hormonal levels were still so high I reacted badly to it. But still I’m thankful for a Pill that could have saved two of my A student friends who became teenage wives and mothers, and offers opportunity to every generation of women since to make their own lives and decisions.

I am also thankful for comprehensive sex education and a mother and grandmother - herself a teenage bride and mother - who insisted that I knew what I needed to know and had access to what I needed to avoid the traps that they were forced into or fell into.