A New Era in a Small Tablet

When the Food and Drug Administration approved Enovid in 1960, it gave American women access to more than a contraceptive. It offered them something society had long denied: control over time. That small, circular pill, taken each morning with breakfast or slipped discreetly into a purse, radically changed how women thought about their bodies, their schedules, and their futures. Suddenly, women could decide when to have children, or whether to have them at all, and to make plans that reached beyond the next menstrual cycle or maternity ward.
Before the Pill, most women lived in rhythms dictated by biology. Pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and recovery determined much of what they could and couldn’t do. The unpredictability of contraception often meant days filled with exhaustion, nausea, or interrupted sleep. With each pregnancy came a reshuffling of the household’s entire routine. And even with some family planning methods available, none matched the convenience, reliability, or discretion of oral contraceptives. With the Pill, women could finally press pause, or fast forward on those rhythms.

Time Becomes a Choice

This new control had ripple effects inside the home. Daily routines once defined by babies and caretaking could now be shaped more intentionally. Fewer surprise pregnancies meant more predictable schedules. Women could take classes, return to work, or simply rest without the constant looming question of “what if?” More than just a planning tool, the Pill allowed women to see time differently: to move from managing the immediate to imagining the long term. Time became theirs to devote to growth and personal well-being, not just survival or service.
It also transformed marriage. For many women, particularly white, middle-class, married women, who were the first to gain broad access to the Pill, domestic life became more manageable and flexible. Couples could wait to have children until they were financially or emotionally ready. Some chose to have fewer children; others delayed childbearing entirely. The nuclear household, long organized around a cycle of babies and toddlers, began to shift. Family dinners became less chaotic. Kitchen counters made room for textbooks and notebooks alongside baby bottles, and women’s identities expanded beyond mother and homemaker.

Hurry Up and Wait

Legal barriers, however, kept some women from accessing this power. At first, the Pill was only available to married women, and laws in several states still restricted access to contraception entirely. In Connecticut, for example, a law dating back to the 1870s made it illegal for anyone to distribute or use birth control—even with a doctor’s guidance. That changed with the 1965 Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down the state’s ban and affirmed a constitutional right to marital privacy in decisions about contraception.¹ The ruling marked a turning point, not only for birth control access but also for broader conversations about reproductive autonomy.
Still, the benefits of the Pill were not distributed equally. While the government encouraged white, middle-class women to take control of their fertility, state and federal agencies often took a more aggressive approach to Black and Brown women, frequently recommending sterilization or long-term contraceptives like Depo Provera. Coercive public health campaigns in low-income neighborhoods framed birth control as a way to reduce poverty, sometimes promoting it with more concern for demographic control than for women’s empowerment. In some cases, women were given oral contraceptives without full consent or adequate information. These realities complicated the story of liberation that surrounded the Pill’s arrival.²

From Kitchen to Campus and Office

For women who gained access to birth control on their own terms, the change was liberating. They could take jobs or pursue degrees without fear that pregnancy would derail their goals. Graduate programs and professional careers long viewed as incompatible with motherhood became more accessible. The Pill didn’t guarantee equality in the workplace, of course, but it opened the door. Women had more control over when they entered the workforce, how long they stayed, and what kind of futures they could realistically pursue.
And in homes across America, this shift in timing played out quietly but powerfully. The kitchen, once a space dominated by child-centered routines, became a backdrop for adult ambition. Women began to organize their days around schedules that made room for both care and career. Some took night classes. Others started small businesses from the dining table. The Pill didn’t remove the weight of domestic obligations, but it gave women more leverage to shape them.

Rewriting Domestic Rhythms

The Pill helped recalibrate the tempo of American domestic life. With birth control came power over time. Instead of surrendering to the next pregnancy, women could ask: Do I want this now? Do I want it at all? Measured pauses allowing for reflection and redefinition that were unthinkable for earlier generations. Marriage was no longer an automatic precursor to parenthood, so some couples waited and others opted out. Fertility rates dropped and the average age of first-time mothers began to rise.
Culturally, these changes echoed across the growing feminist movement. Writers like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem spoke to the feeling many women had that their days were swallowed up by expectations that no longer fit.³ The Pill didn’t give birth to feminism, nor did feminism alone give birth to the Pill. The relationship was deeply reciprocal. Feminist advocates like Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick pushed for contraceptive research long before it was politically popular and laid the groundwork for the Pill’s development. In turn, access to reliable birth control gave women the freedom to delay marriage, pursue education, and organize politically on a larger scale. In short, feminism made the Pill possible, and the Pill made feminism powerful. Each shaped and accelerated the other in a kind of historical feedback loop. Neither one alone could have transformed women’s lives the way they did together.

Claiming the Clock

For all its impact on women’s lives, time was perhaps the Pill’s most powerful gift. For too long, it had belonged to others: husbands, children, bosses, even lawmakers. Now, for the first time, women could decide how to spend an hour, a day, a decade. That autonomy reshaped everything from kitchen routines to career timelines. It allowed women to imagine futures beyond the next diaper change, futures where their identities weren’t tethered solely to biology.
Even today, as debates about reproductive rights rage on, the question of time remains central. Who gets to decide what a woman does with her body and when? The Pill’s legacy is more than medical; it is temporal. It’s about who controls the minutes, hours, days, and years of a woman’s life. The Pill shifted women’s worldview from reactive to intentional — from counting days to shaping decades. From marking time to making it.

Notes
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 104–110.
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963); Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983).