Word: 70s
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Daniel Yankelovich's study New Rules showed how the self-fulfillment ethic, largely confined to the campuses in the late '60s, had pollinated much of America's culture by the late '70s, wafted along by a score of pop-psych books, from How to Be Your Own Best Friend to Passages and Your Erroneous Zones. By the late '70s, according to polls conducted by Yankelovich, Skelly & White, 72% of Americans spent a great deal of time thinking about themselves and their inner needs. "The rage for self-fulfillment," wrote Yankelovich, "... had now spread to virtually the entire U.S. population...
Yankelovich's study, published in 1981, captures the theology of the revolution at its peak. Future historians of the movement, in fact, may set the years of sexual revolt at roughly 1965 to 1975. Since the mid-'70s, according to some small surveys, the revolution has decelerated or reached a plateau. One such study shows that rates of premarital intercourse for students at the University of California at Davis rose sharply to 62% by 1977 and then increased to only 64% by 1981. Said Ann Clurman, a vice president at Yankelovich, Skelly & White: "In the latter part of the decade...
Polls on nonsexual attitudes trace the same trajectory during the '70s, suggesting that the softening of support for the sexual revolution owes something to the softening of support for liberalism in general. The National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, which has been surveying liberal and conservative attitudes since 1972, reports that the dominant social views in America are still liberal, but not so solidly as they once were. Tom W Smith of N.O.R.C. writes that in most categories, liberal sentiments "either leveled off or slowed their rate of increase around 1973-75. Instead of a conservative tide, the period since...
...thinks the "destabilization of belief systems" wrought by the Viet Nam War helped propel the sexual revolution along. The end of the war and the onset of a recession, he says, brought "a movement back to more stability" and a turn away from far-out sex in the mid-'70s. British Journalist Henry Fairlie, an astute observer of the American scene, thinks the tinkering with personal life-styles that characterized the '60s and early '70s inevitably bred distaste for further social change. "Endless questioning of all aspects of life from food, dress, dropping out, child rearing and commune living...
According to Sociologist William Simon, "The affluence of the '50s, '60s and '70s gave us courage to experiment with our lives. With the present economy, there is a sense of cautiousness. There is more commitment to careers and coupling because we are hedging our bets for social and economic security. We think, 'How can I financially and emotionally budget my energies?' and the career is winning out over thoughts...