Dr. Helen Johnson
14 Aug 2020
Intimacy, pregnancy, the 80s, and f*** boys! I just commented on something elsewhere and thought...
Intimacy, pregnancy, the 80s, and f*** boys!
I just commented on something elsewhere and thought I would reproduce it here. The original post was asking about being born in the late 70s/early 80s and someone (who I know well) replied saying she thought people were more likely to get pregnant too young back then. In reality, I think it depends a lot on context but it got me thinking about the people I was around and the impact of a culture that completely forgot about intimacy:
“God that wasn’t my experience of sex at all amongst my peers – everyone I knew had a boyfriend around 16 that they had sex with but weren’t really all that emotionally ready, none of us got pregnant apart from one and we all thought it was crazy. We all popped the pill like mad! I would say that we are seeing the effects now whereby loads of us swallowed the idea that we shouldn’t worry about having a family until later but then we all left it really late to the point where we are either a) having kids late, knackered, realising our careers aren’t ‘sorted’ anyway so what was the point in waiting or b) on the brink of missing out/haven’t found a partner/struggling with fertility.
I will encourage my boys to partner up younger and grow with their family like in the old days instead of the rampant individualism we are stuck with.The 80s individualism gave rise to people who were taught to be sexually liberated and career minded but not about emotional needs/intimacy – this I think created f*** boys and a lot of unhappy straight women in particular who didn’t take their emotional needs seriously.I see a bigger push towards emotional wellbeing now but also decadence on the flip side – I feel we need to bring intimacy back into the picture.”