A Norm That Has Changed a Family Over the Years
The young people who assembled at the Woodstock music festival in August 1969 epitomized the countercultural movements and changes occurring in U.S. order at the time. I commentator described the three-day upshot as "an open, classless society of music, sex, drugs, love and peace."
The "open" brandish of these activities at Woodstock was a straight challenge to the relatively conservative social views of the fourth dimension. 50 years later, Gallup offers a rundown of the major ways U.S. norms have inverse.
1. Religious Attachment Has Waned
Americans' attachment to religion was steady at a high level from the 1950s to the mid-1960s, as measured by the percent of Americans saying religion was very important to them. Only this was followed by a sharp drop in religiosity spanning the Woodstock era.
Gallup did non measure religiosity in 1969, merely its two measures bracketing Woodstock, taken in 1965 and 1978, show this was a period of abrupt decline. The percentage describing religion equally very important to them barbarous from 70% to 52%.
Reported church membership and church attendance declined more than gradually between the 1960s and 1970s, but both figures have dropped precipitously in the by 15 years.
2. Marijuana Legalization Has Gained Support
Despite open up drug utilise at Woodstock, it would be several decades before Americans would support the legalization of marijuana. The figure was 12% in 1969, rising to simply 16% in 1973 and 28% by 1977. Back up picked upwardly in the 2000s, however, rising from 31% in 2000 to 66% in 2018.
3. Interracial Marriage Has Gained Acceptance
Some of the most transformational changes since the Woodstock era chronicle to racial tolerance, particularly interracial marriage.
In 1968, 20% of Americans said they canonical of marriage between blacks and whites. That figure rose to 87% past 2013, Gallup's most contempo measure. Still, as Gallup has discussed previously, widespread acceptance for interracial marriage was long in coming, with bulk approval commencement recorded in 1997.
4. Majority At present Think First-Trimester Abortions Should Exist Legal
In 1969 -- before the Supreme Courtroom's 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which struck downwards state restrictions on abortion in the starting time trimester -- 40% of Americans favored making it legal for women to take an abortion "at any time during the outset iii months." In 2018, 60% of Americans idea abortions in the start 3 months should be legal.
Americans' views on abortion in certain specific circumstances have not changed as much. Both in 1969 and 2018, majorities of U.S. adults supported legalized abortion when the female parent's health would be endangered or when the child would exist born with serious medical problems.
five. Americans Have Get Willing to Vote for a Woman for President
Women were merely starting to break through college education's glass ceiling in 1969, every bit Princeton and Yale admitted women for the outset time. Several other Ivy League schools didn't follow suit for years.
This is the cultural context within which barely one-half of Americans in 1969 said they would support their party's nominee for a "more often than not well-qualified person for president" if that nominee were a woman, although that was itself an comeback from 33% in 1937. Today, Americans' expressed willingness to back up a woman for president is most universal, at 94%.
six. Willingness to Vote for a Blackness President Has Grown
Two-thirds of Americans in 1969 (66%) said they were willing to vote for a black presidential nominee, more than at the fourth dimension than said they would vote for a woman. Today, a decade after the first black president took office in the U.S. and two decades after the effigy first surpassed 90%, the sentiment is nigh universal, at 96%.
7. Americans Now Prefer Smaller Family Size
A number of political movements in the 1960s -- demand for reproductive rights, demand for women'due south equality and concerns about global population growth -- may have contributed to a reject in Americans' preference for large families between the tardily 1960s and early on 1970s, spanning Woodstock.
In 1967, fully vii in x Americans said that having three or more children per family unit was ideal. In Gallup's next measure in 1971, that figure had dropped to 52% -- and by 1977, it was at 36%. Later bottoming out at 28% in afterwards years, Americans' preference for large families has since increased to 41% simply is withal not at the level it was before Woodstock.
eight. Premarital Sex No Longer Taboo
The expectation that couples await until marriage to consummate their relationship may take been so entrenched in U.S. social norms that Gallup didn't poll on the consequence until 1973. Even then, less than half of Americans (43%) supported premarital sex, saying information technology was non wrong for people to have "sex relations before marriage." Today, that figure is 71%.
9. Homemaking No Longer Women's Preferred Vocation
In 1974, five years afterwards Woodstock, a bulk of U.S. women (sixty%) said in a poll conducted by the Roper Organisation that given a choice, they would rather "stay at abode and take care of the house and family" than "accept a chore outside the home." Roper updates later that decade constitute women more evenly divided on the question. Three years agone, Gallup plant a slight majority of women preferring to work exterior the home.
10. Support for Gay Rights Goes Mainstream
Gallup has no measures of back up for gay rights from the 1960s -- the beginning measure was in 1977. But since then, there has been a sea modify in Americans' views on the effect, no doubt reflecting an even greater change since the Woodstock era.
The per centum of Americans saying gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should be legal has risen from 43% in 1977 to 73% today.
Bottom Line
Woodstock wasn't so much a catalyst for modify as a signal that it was coming. The Vietnam State of war, the women's and civil rights movements, the environmental movement, medical advances in birth control and the proliferation of household boob tube are merely some of the factors that contributed to social change in the 1960s. Woodstock was, however, symptomatic of major societal changes underfoot.
Gallup trends indicate that in 1969 the majority of Americans were very religious, disapproved of premarital sexual practice and frowned on interracial marriage. Half opposed first-trimester abortions, and many probable thought gay relations should be illegal. Additionally, bias against women and blacks who might run for president was pervasive, and a majority of women preferred to exist homemakers rather than work outside the habitation.
Americans' stances have since changed on all of these matters, in some cases markedly so. However, except for the refuse in religiosity and preference for smaller families, these changes didn't happen abruptly after Woodstock, simply evolved over several decades.
In retrospect, social modify may accept been inevitable from a generational perspective, as the youth of Woodstock are at present the youngest cohort of senior citizens, meaning most of American club today is composed of the Woodstock generation and its progeny.
Source: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/265490/major-social-changes-years-woodstock.aspx
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