Seven Facts About The Early 1960s That Shows How Different It Was For A Woman To Live In That Era

While the 1960s got off to a slow start, it quickly accelerated into a decade full of amazing moments and world-changing turns. It's achievements in women's rights, civil rights, and so much more defined the decade. It was one hell of a time to be young, as evidenced by the fact that it gave birth to the saying 'sex, drugs, and rock and roll.'

All those stories you've heard about the '60s being a fantastic time to be alive? They’re all 100% true, but only to a point. For many people, women included, it wasn't always great. Here are seven facts about the 1960s that'll give you a sense of how different life was back then. 

Today, when people say they have no desire to be in a relationship, a likely response would be, “Oh, you just haven't found the right person yet” or “you don't mean that.” However, there’s no great issue with the person having expressed such a wish. Rewind a few decades to the ‘60s, and it was thoroughly taboo to express such a “crazy” desire. A survey conducted during the first years of the decade revealed that 80% of Americans believed that the desire to be single was equivalent to being sick, neurotic, and immoral.

In the 1960s, a study found out that about 32 million US citizens aged 18 and up were single. They were either divorced, widowed, or had never been in a relationship. While that sounds like a whopping number, it pales in comparison to the 105 million single individuals revealed in a survey conducted in 2013. The significant difference is due in part to population growth. However, there’s still an escalation in singledom, perhaps reflective of the fact that we’ve eased up on that old ‘60s stigma. 

The FDA refused to approve a birth control method known as “the pill” until May 1960. Though it won approval in the ‘60s, it wasn't widely accessible until 1972 when the Supreme Court ruled that it should be legally and publicly available for women. 

Records show that in 1960, only seven percent of women aged 30-34 years old had earned a bachelor's degree. Only 30% of these degree holders were employed, and 93% of them were married. These statistics show a dramatic difference when compared to how we lived 2012. A similar survey conducted that year showed that 40% of women in the same age bracket had finished college, 71% were employed, and only 66% were married. 

In the year 1960, a survey conducted on 100 children revealed that 65 of them lived in a household with a working dad and a stay-at-home mom. That all changed by 2012 when studies showed that only 22 out of 100 kids in the US had a home with this construct. 

1 out of 350 children had an unmarried mother in the '60s. Fast forward to 2012, and 22 of the 100 kids surveyed lived with a single mom. Half the parents of the kids surveyed weren't married. 

On many issues, today's views are the opposite of what people believed back in the '60s. In 2012, researchers found that more children lived with single-mothers, a statistic that would’ve horrified the typical '60s citizen.