The basic theory

The main theory of this site can be fairly simply explained. When the contraceptive pill was first developed it was tested for side effects dangerous to health but not for changes to a woman's physiology, emotional and mental states. The theory proposes that the pill, usually estrogen and progesterone in fact have profound changes to women because they are not actual drugs but bodily hormones.

So tinkering with the balance of hormones in the body can affect a person in many ways. When you suddenly introduce a contraceptive to a large portion of the population of women in developed countries those side effects can profoundly change society. One analogy is if you drugged a large percentage of the population with a chemical such as valium then this would change society as so many people would act differently. In the same way estrogen and progesterone might affect women so much as to profoundly change our society.

Why didn't anyone notice?

Most people ask this question, that if a drug suddenly changed so many people and made them act differently, why didn't those people realise they were drugged and stop taking it? I believe the answer to this lies in the way I first thought of this theory. In 1993 I was doing regular exercise at a gym, and as is typical, some people at gyms take steroids. This is usually a large dose of testosterone and related chemicals. I noticed at the time that bodybuilders who take testosterone often have personality changes. On reading more about this I found that this is quite common. Estrogen in the pill however has a similar effect on women.

So if women are taking estrogen in a contraceptive then they might find it hard to see how it affects them because their own estrogen levels sometimes go up and down naturally.

Also we have lived with these effects for decades now, and rarely see any women who didn't take estrogen as a contraceptive. So we don't have a ready sample of women to compare their behavior against. Exceptions might be women who refused to take the pill for religious or because of side effects, women in countries where is is banned and so on. So women who didn't take estrogen are now as rare as perhaps men today who take steroids, so their impact on society, once dominant is now insignificant. During this same time period society has gone from divorce being rare to being commonplace.

This has been noticed by other, particular in the Roman Catholic church. However they see contraception as an effect of an immoral society rather than the cause of one, as I theorize here.

The idea of a chemical or drug changing people in a society is not new. For example some people believe that fluoride affects the way people act on a mass scale. More recently estrogen is suspected of polluting society in a different way, in cosmetics. While I do not agree with this, it is natural for a society to be suspicious of radical changes. In fact conservatism is avoiding such risks. Oddly enough no one seems to have suspected estrogen of any of these side effects even though it is probably the most widely prescribed drug to women.

One of the reasons I took so long to put forward this theory is that no one else had done so. So I assumed for a long time there were reasons why none of this could be true. After having researched this for 14 years though I haven't seen such evidence against the theory, and believe the evidence for it continues to increase 

Do we know how estrogen affects women?

There is only anecdotal evidence. However there is a lot of evidence on how males taking sex hormones can be affected. This is because bodybuilders and athletes often take steroids, which are based on testosterone, and its effects have been studied. From my own experience and reading there is anecdotal evidence (not proof) the following occurs in people who take steroids, including testosterone.

1. A flattening of the personality. Bodybuilders often find their emotions are affected by testosterone. Mood swings are less pronounced and an abnormal settling into a narrow range of emotions occurs. This is because the emotions are strongly bound up with testosterone in a male. For example if a male is in a dominant position such as winning a football match their testosterone soars. If they are in a submissive position such as being weak, a subordinate position at work and so on their testosterone declines. In fact the body can change the level of testosterone quickly according to circumstances, and this is also seen in other animals such as monkeys. So the body uses its ability to manipulate the body's level of testosterone and this affects a person's personality. So if a bodybuilder takes testosterone they lose this ability to change their emotional state to some degree, resulting in a flattening of emotions.

2. Emotional outbursts. The high levels of testosterone cause a bodybuilder to display emotions such as aggression, increased confidence with women, anger ('roid rage), confidence and so on. This can be inappropriate as the testosterone they have injected changes their personality in ways that may not suit the situation. So a bodybuilder might have problems in fighting, explosive anger, sexual harassment, and so on. A good example of this was Arnold Schwarzenegger and how he got into trouble with women while taking steroids. Also there have been cases of security personnel and bouncers at night clubs hurting, even killing people in fights from 'roid rage.

3. Physical changes. Testosterone actually physically changes a male. If he is prone to baldness it can be accelerated. As is well known steroids increase stamina and muscle growth which is why athletes get caught taking them in sporting events. They also increase water retention in the body making the face for example seem more puffy, which can also be interpreted as looking more attractive to women. There is also evidence large amounts of testosterone make changes in the brain, increasing a male's ability to talk to and seduce women. Most of these effects cannot be reversed, and after time the person who takes testosterone becomes permanently different.

4. Ignorance. Many people who take testosterone and steroids don't realise these side effects exist, particularly in personality. This is probably because taking a bodily hormone is a fundamental change in ourselves and we are used to our hormonal levels changing. Because testosterone is a natural hormone then we have difficulty in telling exactly how it is affecting us in higher doses. Consequently a bodybuilder even though he might be aware of the side effects has to fight the feeling that his changed emotions are not natural. So instead of realising he is more prone to anger he might feel people are being more annoying to him. Such emotional problems can isolate the steroid taker and break up friendships without them realising why it is happening.

5. Relationships. Friends of someone taking testosterone can find their behaviour puzzling or annoying. Because they are more constantly aggressive someone more timid can fee threatened or feel their interests as friends are no longer the same. On testosterone a person might be much more obsessed with sex and a female partner might find this unnatural at that point in their relationship. So this changing of a bodybuilder's emotions can cause a rift between them and other people not taking it.

6. Hormonal variations. A person taking steroids can develop resistence to it and so at times act as though they have less testosterone than a normal person would. So they might at times act in the opposite way to these symptoms. Also they often have to not take steroids to reduce this resistence and it takes time for their natural testosterone flow to resume. This is because when someone takes testosterone the testicles stop producing it and shrink, and it takes time for them to start working again. So someone taking steroids might have times when it is working well and other times when they are not taking it, which can make for even larger changes in mood, personality, etc.

7. Marriages might break up. A married couple usually goes through a more intense sexual period and then later this declines. So a man might have lower testosterone normally because he has already found his mate for procreation and so testosterone is not needed to urge the man to find another woman. Also as children are being raised it becomes less necessary to have sex, particularly if more children are not desired. So historically people used abstinence as birth control, and combined with the rhythm method of having sex when a woman was infertile it worked quite well. Until recently the only other way to avoid procreation this was using some kind of sheath like a condom. Because this was not a drug though it had little effect on society, at least one people's emotions. So a man on testosterone might constantly be looking at other woman, causing jealousy in his mate, having affairs, and probably losing the love between them. So such a society might have fewer marriages and children, people stay single to have multiple sexual partners, divorce is more common, love is less a factor in relationships and physical desire is more important, and so on.

Why are the effects of testosterone relevant to estrogen?

Because estrogen and testosterone are very similar chemically. Also every woman has some testosterone in their body and every male has some estrogen. In a male this happens by a process called aromatization in which estrogen forms from testosterone, and this happens more and more as a male grows older. So for both sexes they are affected by both hormones. In this case then the level of testosterone in a woman might affect their personality as more testosterone is produced in them. The above side effects of testosterone in males are quite extensive but we don't notice this because hardly anyone takes steroids. However if we gave nearly every male in a society testosterone then we would see these changes in nearly everyone, and this could potentially change our society. Imagine for example if nearly every male had 'roid rage and attacked people physically when they got into an argument. Of course some people can control this, but a society is often based people being relatively timid and submissive rather than aggressive.

In fact this is actually being proposed, for men to take testosterone for birth control just as women take estrogen. This is because when a male takes steroids he in infertile. So by giving males the equivalent of a dost of steroids it would be impossible for him to make a woman pregnant.

So how would testosterone change society?

It is difficult to predict this because no studies have been done, but assuming a male contraceptive would make many people act like bodybuilders then:

1. Males would become far more sex obsessed at all ages. So our society would become far more sexually orientated in advertising and dress.

2. Males would be more aggressive sexually. Steroids are often implicated in rape so the numbers of rape and sexual harassment might soar.

3. Males would look different. Typically they would become leaner, more muscular, and also there are indication the rates of many diseases such as heart attacks and cancer might drop. This is because testosterone can boost the immune system. Also testosterone reduces fat which improves the physique but puts some bulk back on in water retention.

4. Preferences might change. Because testosterone changes the emotions people might want to watch different movies, talk about different things, read different books, and so on.

So why would testosterone be considered as a contraceptive with these side effects?

Because these side effects are not tested for in this use. While the effects of testosterone are well known to anyone who has taken it researchers have no easy way to measure any of this. Consequently the potential risks of widespread testosterone use has not been well researched.

So how is this relevant to contraception in women?

Because estrogen and testosterone are so similar it may be that the scenario I described with testosterone already happened in a similar way with women starting around the 1960's for many countries. So the effects of estrogen as I will show may have changed women in ways similar to how testosterone changes men, hence changing our society.

1. A flattening of the personality. In the same way as with testosterone, taking estrogen should alter the emotions in a woman. So a woman on a certain level of estrogen might have their emotions change, which could make other people, particularly males act differently towards them. Usually a woman's estrogen levels would fluctuate according to circumstances like a man's would. So in a submissive environment such as being married estrogen might be lower and when aggression is needed such as in finding a mate the estrogen might surge. So this can be the same in a female as a male, hormones regulated by the body to change their behaviour according to circumstances.

2. Emotional outbursts. If it has the same effect as testosterone, estrogen might cause women to lose their temper more often, act more aggressively, fight, and so on. So the use of contraceptives over time might have increased household violence. A man might typically expect a wife a girlfriend for example to reduce their estrogen level as they settle down, but the estrogen in contraceptives keeps it at much higher levels. Consequently a woman might be more aggressive, more self confident, get more angry than the male expects, causing fights. This can also have a positive effect as this aggression and self confidence can urge a woman into dominating a relationship, having a career and so on. Since the 1960's women have gone from hardly being in the workforce to virtually dominating it in many areas. So this estrogen might have changed our society so female dominate much of it instead of being traditionally submissive. It is not the intention here to assert the women's place is in the home or not, but to explore the idea that women do different things today, including work, perhaps from the effects of estrogen, not their own natural ambitions.

3. Physical changes. Estrogen is the hormone that causes a female child to become a woman and attractive to men. If it has a similar effect to testosterone then this artificial increase in estrogen levels might make women more feminine looking, more physically attractive, wider hipped, larger breasted etc. Also with water retention as with testosterone this would tend to change the physique shape and face, making them more attractive.

The result might be the equivalent of much of the female population becoming much more sexually attractive than their male counterpart, unless he took testosterone. So this could have a sexualising effect on society because since women are more attractive, men are more distracted and the female form becomes more and more effective when used in advertising. So this estrogen could transform society from where sex is not mentioned on TV, music, where people dress conservatively to where sex is accentuated on TV and in movies, sexual discussions happen more frequently amongst males as they notice these women more, etc. As with men once women had taken estrogen these changes would be permanent so there might be a strain in relationships where women more often seem "too good" or too attractive for a man who before might have been naturally a better match to them.

4. Ignorance. Because these hormonal changes are so similar to natural hormone surges it is more difficult for women to separate these as unnatural changes and so they tend to act more differently. So a woman might find herself thinking more sexually taking the pill but this might be masked by becoming sexually active or being in a relationship and so they think they are acting normally and not because of the estrogen. So a male might think a woman is acting strangely and end a relationship so a woman might find herself single or regularly being dumped, and attribute this to the fault of the men or some other fault in themselves. So at a critical time in a relationship the estrogen might distort sexual interactions, and making love and marriage less likely.

As a good example the sexual revolution in the 1960's might have been caused by estrogen rather than estrogen enabling easier contraception. When the pill came out there was a huge change in society with free love, but essentially condoms were also able to prevent contraction. So using a condom had not made society embrace free love, promiscuity and the like even though it could enable nearly the same lifestyle. Also the estrogen levels in the first contraceptive pills were much higher and so all these effects might be far more pronounced. People however saw this as a change in society perhaps brought about by technology changing our lives, and so someone taking the pill might assume their emotions and desires were natural and their parents were unnatural in their aversion to this lifestyle.

This situation is harder to see now since most parents also grew up in relationships using estrogen. One difference is most are either divorced or estranged in some way but before the 60's most marriages were relatively harmonious and stable. We can see though that other countries that didn't use the pill or banned it didn't have this same surge of sexual promiscuity and divorce, such as Japan, the Middle East, Ireland, etc.

5. Relationships. If estrogen works in a similar way to testosterone we should see a widening rift between males and females, not only in marriage and relationships but in friendships. A woman might feel more tempted to have a one night stand because like with testosterone the increased sexual hormone would be at a higher level than prudent when seeing men all the time socially and at work. So women not on the pill such as wanting to remain virgins would find a rift between them and their friends on estrogen. Also there would be a rift between girls who have not taken the pill and those who have. So younger women might find themselves under peer pressure to engage in premarital sex from other friends on estrogen. It need not even be from friends but peer pressure from the media, advertisements, movies, celebrities and so on. So before estrogen women might have had peer pressure to avoid premarital sex today the urge of estrogen shows women craving it, acting on impulse and the peer pressure is to do it as well. Once a girl does it then it is likely they would take estrogen as well and so the cycle continues.

Hormonal variations. Hormones may vary in a woman because, like taking steroids they have part of the month free from taking the Pill. So in this time the natural estrogen and progesterone levels struggle to return to normal, but becaue this has atrophied to some degree the result can be unbalanced hormones. Then when the Pill is resumed the receptors for it, like with steroids are refreshed and so it works better until resistance builds up again through the month. The effect then might be like a hormonal roller coaster.

6. Marriages break up. As mentioned earlier testosterone typically declines in a husband because the relationship should settle down into child rearing rather than eroticism. Instead though the taking of estrogen keeps a woman at a higher desire for sex, or in some cases (as with testosterone) it might have the opposite affect and reduce artificially a woman's desire for sex. So this friction between a woman's high estrogen levels and a man's lower testosterone levels might lead to a marriage breaking up, sexual incompatibility or inadequacy, a man's testosterone responding by being higher than normal and so on.

How would this affect society?

As I showed earlier if most males took testosterone than many would act like we already know steroid users do. So where we see this change from steroid use affecting some social circles like gym parties, bouncers at nightclubs, professional athletes partying and so on we can extrapolate this into a change in the whole of a society. To continue this thought experiment and assume estrogen would cause similar changes then were might theorise estrogen would change society in the following ways.

1. Females would be more sex obsessed. So there would be more magazines such as Cleo devoted to this, whereas such magazines and Mills and Boon like erotic novels barely existed before The Pill. Women would dress more sexually provocatively. Whereas before a woman might dress up to catch a man because circumstances cause a surge in natural estrogen now the estrogen is always high. So women might dress sexually more often. Since the use of estrogen there was a constant battle from women wanting to wear shorter skirts, lower necklines, small swimsuits, in more and more places. It can also be said this might be a by product of modern society but countries that didn't allow The Pill did not experience this. One only has to look at Muslim countries to see such dress changes have never been pushed for by women. In fact there women are often as keen as men to maintain traditional Islamic costumes. Also in Ireland and Japan the clothing by women remained more modest.

2. Females would be more aggressive sexually. Prearranged marriages were much more common prior to use of estrogen, as there might have been less sexual pressure from the estrogen to select a more attractive partner. So the estrogen may make women more aggressive in selecting their preferred partner rather than accepting the advances of a male. This would also change society radically over time, perhaps to make people more physically attractive if their fathers were selected for this. Also women might be more prone to being raped or a kind of date rape as the estrogen might make them more likely to go ahead rather than refuse sex. So this might lead to an increase in abortions where women took the pill erratically or it failed and they had not more than an artificially induced attraction from estrogen to have sex in the first place. So later a woman would realise they didn't want the baby and hence abortions rise, as well as use of morning after contraceptives.

Also a woman might marry a man for the wrong reasons, where instead of assessing a mate on many traditional factors they might pick someone inappropriate and then wonder later why they picked them. This can lead to divorce. Another result might be women end up in a triangle like relationship where there are two types of men. One is the kind they would historically have married but is less sexually exciting. In fact this might simply be because they have a more normal level of testosterone than the woman has of estrogen. The other type of man is more sexually exciting, either takes steroids or has a naturally higher testosterone level but is otherwise not suitable for marriage. So a woman might end up with the second kind of guy, be an unmarried mother, and over time this could skew the whole genetic distribution of a society.

3. Females would look different. As said earlier the widespread changes in female appearence would affect society. Women might decide they are too attractive for the kind of man they might have traditionally married, and so look for men that are better. These might be men with naturally higher testosterone. So they might end up in relationships where they have multiple sexual partners with such men, who because of high testosterone "aren't the marrying kind".

4. Preferences might change. Women on estrogen might find this gives them new interests and desires. Whereas before women spent less on looking good now often women spend far more on clothes, perfume, cosmetic, plastic surgery, want to see movies designed for their point of view, read romantic novels, and so on. So this can represent a massive change in the wealth of a society whereas before such money might have been spent on marriage, buying a home, etc.

So a woman as a housewife might need estrogen less as they have found a mate, and so a lower estrogen level might cause their bodies to become less attractive. This might be a benefit through natural selection as it makes it less likely she will be targeted by other men.

Can you prove this?

No. This site is merely the outcome of thinking about this since 1993 and presenting some information on the subject. A reader might then think for himself as to whether there is any merit to the idea. Obviously I think there might be or I wouldn't have made this site. At some point hopefully sufficient evidence will exist to prove or disprove this theory. The chance of the this theory being completely correct is low, but I think parts of it are likely to be right. Look for example in the references to see research on this subject

References:

Referenced material is in blue and my comments are in black.

An interesting article on divorce rates in Japan.

• Sex, infidelity, falling out of love and abuse are the primary reason for divorce in Britain.

The primary reason for divorce and hence likely the primary reason for the increase in divorce relate closely to my suggested effects from estrogen. Estrogen might make people more likely to have an affair because it might make women more promiscuous, causing a husband to have an affair or a wife to. The strain on a marriage from changing sex hormone levels might as described cause people to fall out of love. Another aspect is promiscuity is more common whereas before women were more likely to be virgins when married. So virginity has often been claimed to make a marriage more successful. When people have been promiscuous before marriage, like from the effects of estrogen it might make marriage less likely to succeed later.

• One in five women cite a serious incident of abuse as the reason for relationship breakdown.

Abuse as I described could occur from women being more aggressive, argumentative from the effects of estrogen and also from men seeing a women not settling down with low estrogen levels. So at a subconscious level men might see a wife on estrogen as wanting other men, which causes abuse and breakdown in a marriage.

• One in three men are currently bored with their wife and marriage.

This can also be from the Estrogen Society, where so many other women appear "on heat" from their artificially high levels of estrogen. So by comparison the single life appears more exciting.

• The average length of marriage before it hits the rocks is seven years, three months.

 "Nearly half (44%) of married people surveyed say that their sex lives have decreased while a further one in ten married couples are having no sex at all. These figures are particularly worrying for men, with “lack of sex” being cited as the single biggest factor in relationship breakdown. Tellingly, 36 per cent of men and 44 per cent of women said a partner’s affair was a key problem in their marriage."

Estrogen like testosterone can lead to a kind of resistance and actually make a women less interested in sex than normal. So chronic use of estrogen in contraceptives might lead to this. The simple way to prove or disprove this is to survey which marriages used contraceptives and which did not, and compare the divorce statistics and reasons for divorce for each.

Muslim divorce rates: S'pore tops KL, Jakarta

"DIVORCE rates among Muslims here have risen since the 1970s, to top those of Indonesia and Malaysia where divorce rates have actually fallen since the 1980s.

Last year, there were about nine divorces among every 1,000 married Muslims. This was about three times that for Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley and about five times that for Jakarta, says Professor Gavin Jones of the Asia Research Institute, who specialises in demography."

This shows divorce rates rising as a country becomes more developed, which should also trend the increase in the use of estrogen as a contraceptive. Of course there are many other factors in divorce and it is by no means clear if estrogen is a factor, but the data is not inconsistent with it.

'Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, which are highly developed places in Asia, have higher rates of divorce. It's not surprising that Singapore Malays too have a higher rate of divorce than their counterparts in less developed countries.'

The director of PPIS-Jurong family service centre, Mr Mohd Ali Mahmood, agrees.

He said: 'The higher divorce rate among Singapore Malays is likely to be due to the pressures of living in a highly developed country. Couples have a tougher time balancing material pursuits with marriage demands.

'Another could be procedural efficiency - divorce cases here are processed more quickly now.'
 

http://www.healthandage.com/default.cfm?curr_navi=02&curr_content=02&spr=en&framedef=1&curr_paramlist=healthandage;3024;2;haa_online_from;2;1;3;-;dsp_tooldetail

Unfortunately this article is no longer online.

So if estrogen made women more assertive and aggressive then this might have led to the lower birth rates we see in developed countries, to the point where some populations are actually decreasing.

When a woman becomes pregnant, her hormonal system changes to accommodate the gestation of her child. Her progesterone levels, for instance, can rise to more than twenty times their previous levels. Her estrogen system alters, which alters other brain chemicals, like serotonin and dopamine. Her oxytocin levels change. In total, her hormonal and brain-chemical alterations are responsible for her neurochemical interest in imagining, caring for, protecting, and nurturing her child and her home.

Estrogen alters other brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine which are implicated in depression, ambition, aggression etc. So altering the amount of estrogen in the body can affect the way a woman thinks, and if 80% of women have estrogen like this then the effects on a society's ideas might be enormous.

Male birth control pill moves closer

As can be seen here, the psychological effects of testosterone on males is not considered.

So if 80% of women have their libido affected then this correlates with one of the main causes of divorce being lack of sexual desire, perhaps leading to an affair. So there might be a paradoxical effect of estrogen, making women appear more attractive but wanting sex less.

http://www.hurriedwoman.com/faq.html

Q: Can birth control pills lower my sex drive?

A: They certainly can and do for about 10 to 15 percent of my patients. Most authorities think that birth control pills tend to lower the amount of testosterone in your bloodstream, which can in turn lower libido or sex drive. Pills that have a relatively lower dose of progesterone will be less likely to cause this effect.

So again estrogen in the Pill lowers libido.

Q: My husband says he needs to have sex to feel 'loved', but I don't feel that way at all. How do we handle this?

A: Your mate's primary "love language" is often different from yours and may be difficult for you to "speak" naturally. But, if you don't learn how to express your love in a way that you can each understand, your attempts to communicate love to each other will be much like an American and Chinese businessman attempting to negotiate a contract without an interpreter-utter chaos and frustration.
 

Estrogen makes women receptive to sex, but in order to wish to initiate sexual contact a high level of testosterone is necessary. Estrogen and testosterone tend to oppose each other's effects. Men manufacture more testosterone than they do estrogen, and vice versa, but each gender produces BOTH hormones.

So estrogen can have the effect making women receptive to sex and more attractive but with a lower libido.

Most women's output of testosterone is masked during the greater part of their menstrual cycle by their high estrogen levels, but when their estrogen levels drop, right before they get their periods, the testosterone that they do produce is unopposed and they then become very libidinous, sometimes demanding sexual gratification at the beginning and during their menstrual period. After the period is over, when estrogen levels start to rise again, they are less likely to try to initiate sexual contact, but they may be receptive to it, just the same.

Men and women who understand the fluctuation of hormone levels in women are more inclined to become happily adjusted to each other's libidinal impulses. There may be no perceived need to change any aspect of the female libido (for instance, to try to make its fluctuations conform to male standards of uniformity of level), but rather a celebration of its ups and downs.

One might not however be able to adjust to each other's hormone levels if the Pill is affecting the woman's level of estrogen. So perhaps over long enough this causes enough disruption in a marriage to make people fall out of love.

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/sargentapril2000.htm

Fisher says that in the 1960s 65 percent of 503 American college men would not marry a woman they did not love. Well, that’s impressive. That means that 35 out of every 100 men would. As for college women, 24 percent of 576 said they would refuse to wed a man they didn’t love—72 percent were undecided. Good grief.

In 1991, according to Fisher’s statistics, 86 percent of men and 91 percent of women said they would not wed someone they were not in love with and 50 percent of men and women believe that if romantic passion fades that is sufficient reason for divorce.

Another example of radical changes in attitudes since estrogen in the Pill was available.

---

Reclaiming Desire

This study confirms and extends previous work on the possible influence of estrogen on mood and cognition. Our results indicate that women using ERT have less-severe symptoms of depression and anger and better verbal fluency and working memory than non-ERT users. Men also have lower levels of anger and better working memory than women who do not use ERT. The findings that female ERT users reported less-severe depressive symptoms than men or nonusers are consistent with previous reports demonstrating relationships between estrogen use and fewer depressive symptoms.2–7 Unlike most

other studies, other aspects of mood were examined and found that ERT users and men were less angry than female nonusers. These results are actually contrary to those of Carlson et al., who found that ERT users were less elated, Understanding of how estrogen influences the brain and, in turn, mood and cognition, is derived from several sources, including basic laboratory studies (inferences from comparisons of sex differences, observational epidemiological

studies, and clinical trials).35 Mood effects could result from estrogen’s modulation of serotonergic, -adrenergic, and noradrenergic neurotransmitters.36–38 In addition, estrogen may modulate mood through monoamine oxidase inhibition at high levels, tryptophan displacement from plasma albumin binding sites, and effects on 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor binding and downregulation. Other brain effects of estrogen could influence cognitive performance, including its cholinergic neuroprotective and neurotrophic effects and its ability to foster dendritic growth.36–39 In this study, it is interesting to note that ERT was associated with several variables that are modulated by the orbitofrontal areas, namely mood, verbal fluency, and working memory. This is certainly consistent with the fact that estrogen receptors are found in higher concentrations intraneuronally in the basal forebrain (origin of cholinergic pathways), frontal lobe (modulates the verbal encoding and retrieval system), and locus ceruleus (site of norepinephrine production) in addition to the hippocampus

glucose metabolic rates in the CA-1 hippocampal region and the prefrontal cortex in premenopausal women than in age-matched men; moreover, postmenopausal non-ERT users show lower metabolic activity than age-matched men.19,37,38,40–42 Other PET studies support the observation that ERT use is associated with increased brain activity in temporal regions, areas known to be involved in cognitive function.15,43

This shows how estrogen affects brain function.

http://web.missouri.edu/~news/releases/decjan03/gearystudy.html

The disorder, characterized by a pattern of instability in relationships and self-image, includes symptoms such as impulsivity, suicidal behavior, and difficulty controlling anger. David Geary, professor of psychology at MU, and Catherine DeSoto, assistant professor of psychology at UNI, found that fluctuations in estrogen levels during the menstrual cycle may significantly worsen symptoms for women who are at risk for developing the disorder. It is the first study to link estrogen levels and BPD.

 "The critical thing to understand is that it is not how much estrogen you have in the body, but the level at which it fluctuates that is related to BPD,” Geary said. “The combination of being prone to the disorder and fluctuating estrogen levels is what produces the symptoms.”

So fluctuating estrogen levels with contraceptives is similar to this.

http://www.wellnesswithin.com/articles/estrogen%20dominance.pdf

• Anovulatory cycles (cycle where menstruation occurs, but no ovulation, and therefore no

ovarian progesterone is produced)

• Obesity (in postmenopausal women, estrogen is made in the fat cells; excess fat cells

make excess estrogen.)

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=53725

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm

Interestingly seniors would have married before the Pill was available. It would be interesting to see if there were variations in use of the Pill because of religious teachings.

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=34&idsub=127&id=1449

We all are aware of the pain and consequences of divorce. I submit there is an often overlooked factor in many broken marriages today: the use of contraception.

In a popular and published lecture titled 'Contraception: Why Not?,' Dr. Janet Smith, chair of Life Issues at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, discusses why the divorce rate doubled between 1965, when 25 percent of marriages ended in divorce, and 1975, when 50 percent of marriages ended in divorce – arguably the same as today.

Smith cites the research of social scientist Robert Michael, who concluded "that as the contraceptive pill became more and more available, divorce became more and more popular." In fact, Michael attributed "45 percent of this increase [in divorce] to increased use of contraceptives." Why so?

There are three reasons, according to Michael. First, his statistical data showed "that those who use contraceptives have fewer children and have them later in marriage…those who have the first baby in the first two years of marriage and another baby in the next couple years of marriage, have a much
longer lasting marriage than those who don't."

Secondly, Michael found that "since contraceptives have arrived on the scene, there is much more adultery than there was before." Observes Smith: "People have been tempted, for the history of mankind. It's easy enough to think about wanting to have an affair, but wanting a child out of wedlock is another story. But if most every woman is contracepting, then most every woman is available in a certain sense and there is no real reason to say no. Adultery is absolutely devastating to marriages."

The third explanation, says Dr. Smith, is "that women are financially more independent. They do have fewer children. They do go into the work place. And, again, when they have difficulties in the marriage, it's much [easier] to say, ‘Take a walk,’ than it is to work it out because they need their
husband for one fewer reason than they did before."

Smith also says that widespread pre-marital sex and cohabitation have contributed to the increase in divorce. Obviously, those who fornicate often use some type of contraception, and, if that fails, they can always have the unborn child killed through abortion.

"So contraception hasn't made for better marriages," concludes Smith.

Indeed. Now consider that the divorce/separation rate for married couples who use natural family planning - that is, periodic abstinence from sexual intercourse – is less than one in eight, according to Dr. Brian Clowes of Human Life International. (It should be noted that some faithful Catholics

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0002.html

http://www.omsoul.com/pamview.php?idnum=177

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=326

In 2002/03 the contraceptive pill continued to be the most common method of contraception, used by 26 per cent of GB women aged 16 to 49. Sterilisation, of either the woman or her partner was used by 21 per cent, and the male condom by 19 per cent. These have remained the three most common methods of contraception since 1986.

The type of contraception that women use varies with their age. Women aged under 35 are more likely to use the pill than any other form of contraception, while the likelihood of a woman having been sterilised, or having a partner who has had a vasectomy, rises with age.

Between 1998/99 and 2002/03 the proportion of 16 to 17 year-olds using the pill increased from 17 per cent to 24 per cent. There were also rises among 30 to 34 year-olds (from 24 per cent to 28 per cent) and 45 to 49 year-olds (from 3 per cent to 9 per cent). In all other age groups the level of use remained similar to the 1998/99 level.
 

http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/zim/zim_103marriagecontra1.html

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-97.pdf