The Death of Christian Britain

— Postscript —
the oral contraceptive pill became available to single women (in 1968). 114 If
the sexual revolution of the 1960s was about anything, it was overwhelmingly
the revolution in sexual activity before marriage, outwith marriage (i.e. adultery)
and after marriage (i.e. in divorce and its consequences), and the growing
discourse that pre-marital sex for women was not immoral but exciting
and above all fun. Young girls were exposed to magazines and pop songs in
which sex, romance and fun with boys were freed from the older discourse
circulated in women’s magazines about the ideals of domesticity and how to
train for it. 115
And the evidence is strong for pre-marital sex not growing in the 1950s
but booming in the 1960s. Figure 10.1 indicates the level of illegitimacy in
England and Wales between 1945 and 1975. The illegitimacy rate is taken
by demographers, and by Hera Cook specifically, as a good indicator of the
extent of pre-marital sex before the arrival of the pill. The graph shows quite
clearly that from the end of the war in 1945 until 1955 inclusive there was
a decline in illegitimacy, whilst at the same time Church of England Easter
Day communicants were rising as a proportion of population. The illegitimacy
rate was going down, suggesting the conclusion that pre-marital sex
was on the decline. In 1957, the level of illegitimacy was nearly half what it
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Illegitimacy rate England and Wales % 1945-1975
Church of England Easter Day Communicants as % of
population 1947-1973
1945 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975
Figure 10.1 Illegitimacy rate and Church of England communicants,
1945–75
Note: The series Church of England Communicants has gaps filled by linear extrapolation
between datapoints at 1947, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1970 and 1973.
Source: Data are calculated from figures at www.gro.gov.uk and from sources cited in
Figure 7.1 (p. 164).
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