Question: Dr. Petigny, most people see the U.S. taking a strong, clear turn to the left during the 1960s, but you don't agree.  Why?

Petigny: When you say "turn to the left," it is important to differentiate between politics and societal values.  Too often we collapse the two.

Question: What do you mean?

Petigny: Well, on the political level there is no question that America moved to the left during the sixties.  The burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, and the emergent Women's Liberation, environmental and Gay Rights movements at the close of the decade illustrate this shift.

But outside the world of politics, on a personal and social level, the liberalizing process had already begun during the 1950s.

Question: Are you referring to Elvis, the beatniks, and rock 'n roll?  And if so, isn't that already a given?

Petigny: Those kinds of examples move my point. I don't want to pick on you, but when journalists and academics talk about "change" during the 1950s, the two items they inevitably point to are rock 'n roll and the beatniks.  But I would maintain that the sheer magnitude of change that was unfolding during the 1950s was far more sweeping than Elvis shaking his hips.

Question: You seem to be trivializing the impact of rock 'n roll.

Petigny: That's not my intention.  Rock 'n roll reinforced and reflected certain changes in the culture.  But compared to more significant changes unfolding at the time—changes in the home, the church, and in the human psyche—rock 'n roll was indeed trivial.

Question: Just what do you mean when you say "significant" changes?

Petigny: Take the perception of alcoholism for example.  In 1944, only 6 percent of Americans regarded alcoholism as a disease instead of a moral failing.  However, by 1954, that number had risen to more than 60 percent. 

 This is only one of many examples I give in The Permissive Society in America of how Americans' moral compass was changing in the fifties.

Question: In what other ways do we see the morality of Americans shift during the 1950s?

Petigny: If you look at the chapters in my book—sections on religion, sex, psychology, women, youth culture, the self, and our perception of sin itself—all shifted prior to the overt changes of the 1960s.

Question: You just mentioned sex.  But my understanding is that, from the standpoint of sexuality, the 1950s was a conservative time.   Yes, we had rock 'n roll and the birth of Playboy magazine.  But   it wasn't until the decade of the 1960s, with the arrival of the birth control pill, that we actually had the sexual revolution.  How would you respond?

Petigny:  Most historians and journalist would agree with your description of sexual landscape during the 1950.  What you've described is certainly the standard view.  But it is an incorrect view.

In terms of mass behavior—of people having premarital sex in appreciably greater numbers—the birth control pill did not matter much.  What is more, the key moment was not the 1960s, but the 1940s and 1950s.

Question: How do you know that?

Petigny:  We can know that by looking at the rate of single-motherhood—of the number of illegitimate births taking place in a given year. 

By its very definition, illegitimate births can only be produced by premarital sex.  So, if all other things are equal, higher levels of single-motherhood would indicate higher levels of premarital sex.  Conversely, lower levels of single-motherhood would probably be indicative of lower numbers of premarital sex.

And what do the numbers tell us?  They reveal that in the period between 1940 and 1960, the so-called "illegitimacy rate"—or rate of single-motherhood—more than tripled!  Such an upsurge could not have happened were it not for vastly higher levels of premarital sex.

Question:  But, it would seem that the operative term in what you just said is: "all things being equal."  But maybe some things were more equal than others.  Perhaps, the numbers changed because…well, maybe birth control practices changed.

Petigny: Yes, I considered that.  As it turns out, by the end of the 1950s—and this shouldn't come as much of a surprise—birth control was more plentiful and considerably more effective than at the start of the 1940s.  But that makes my point even stronger. 

Question: How?

Petigny: Let me explain.  With all of the birth control swirling around, it would have been more difficult for illegitimate births to result at the end of the 1950s than at the start of the 1940s.  In other words, despite the suppressive effects of birth control, the level of premarital sex was so plentiful at the end of the 1950s that the rate single-motherhood was able to increase by more than 300 percent from what it had been only twenty years earlier.

What we're talking about here is not a little more premarital sex, but vastly higher levels of premarital sex taking place at the end of the fifties.

Question: But haven't there been sexual surveys—you know, the kind used by Alfred Kinsey—which shows that it wasn't until the arrival of the birth control pill that single women began having sex in vastly greater numbers?

Petigny: Yes, but these surveys are based not upon what people do.  They are based upon what people say they do.

We shouldn't put much stock in such studies.  In most sexual surveys, only a small percentage—typically well under a third—of the people who are asked to reveal their sexual histories are actually willing to answer questions. And when they do answer, we cannot be confident that they are answering honestly. 

So my analysis here, and the kind of analysis The Permissive Society provides, is not based on what people say they have done.  It is based upon what we can empirically show they have done.

Question: Well, what about the birth control pill?  Didn't it matter?

The birth control pill hit the market in 1960, and by mid-decade it was the favorite form of contraception among married women.  So, the answer to your question is "Yes."  The birth control pill did matter—it mattered a great deal to married couples.  But, it did not matter a whole lot when it came to single people.    

On what basis do I say this?  I'll give you three things to consider.  First, most doctors in the 1960s were very reluctant to prescribe the pill to anyone who was not married.  So in 1966, when the college doctor at Brown University prescribed the birth control pill to two female students—women who were engaged, and who were over the age of 21—it became a huge scandal that attracted national publicity.

Second, as late as 1970, only about one in ten sexually active teenagers were even on the Pill.  

Third, by the time the Pill was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, the level of single-motherhood—and, presumably, the level of premarital sex—had increased by more 300 percent over the previous two decades.  Thus, the proverbial horse was already out of the barn.  The Sexual Revolution was well underway before the oral contraceptive had even arrived on the scene.

Question: If there was a Sexual Revolution unfolding during the 1950s, and if all the other subversive developments you write about were also occurring during the fifties, then why do we look at Eisenhower years as such a conservative time?  How do you explain this disjuncture between the image of the fifties and the reality of the fifties?

Petigny:  That's a great question  But it's going to take a minute or two for me explain.  When one looks at America in the 1950s, one can look at it in three ways: we can focus on America on the level of politics.  We evaluate America on the level of culture.  And, finally, one can look at America on the level of values.

Politically, it is very clear that in the fifteen years following the Second World War, America was a very conservative country.  It was during this time that we saw the Cold War arise, and McCarthyism emerge.  This was also a time when the more progressive elements of the Democratic Party—the wing most identified with Henry Wallace—become marginalized.  So when I speak of a "Permissive Turn" occurring after World War II, I am not talking about the politics of the United States.

Culturally, when I speak of the U.S. in the fifites, I am referring to social conventions, or what sociologists call "norms."  Norms, or social conventions, are the informal rules we all regard as decent and respectable.  It may not be what we really believe in our heart of hearts, but it is what we profess to our neighbors, or what we claim to believe publicly, in order to seem decent and respectable.  In my book, I identify some social conventions that were becoming more liberal, and others that were becoming more conservative.  However, in the aggregate, I see America in the 1950s as remaining largely conservative when it came to norms and social conventions.

Question: I assume we're now coming to the nub of your argument.

Petigny: And you are correct.  When I write of a "Permissive Turn," or of a "liberalizing impulse" emerging during the late forties and fifties, I am speaking not to the politics, or of the social conventions reigning at the time.  Instead, I am referring to values—to the American people's moral compasses, to what they really believed in their heart of hearts.  And it is on this level, on the level of values, that I believe Americans were liberalizing during the Eisenhower years.

Question: Briefly, in what other ways besides sex do you show this liberalization was taking place on the level of values?

Petigny: As I indicated earlier, I've included a chapter on religion in my book.  In it, I try to show that while Americans were attending church in ever greater numbers during the fifties, the robustness of faith—in other words, its demands and obligations—were actually receding.

I also have a chapter on women.  I look at the roles women played in the realms of politics, the family, religion, and education.  I also consult a lot of public opinion data to chart changing public attitudes towards the appropriate role of women in society. In contrast to the received narrative, which sees the 1950s as an especially oppressive time for women, I show it was a period when the subordination of women was in retreat.

Finally, I have chapters on psychology, the youth culture, and changing conceptions of the self.  Together, they show that during the 1950s the personal beliefs and dispositions of Americans were moving in a more "permissive" direction and away from a conservative vision—or what one might otherwise call the traditional moral framework.