What is more, the current thrust of feminist criticism of heterosexuality is at odds with what most women are saying about their sex lives. Reflecting a new liberal acceptance of women's sexuality outside wedlock, marriage rates in most Western countries were declining, divorce rates rapidly rising, and many women were choosing to cohabit. Parenting was being postponed until careers were established and, overall, women were having fewer children by the 1980s than in the 1960s. Married women, it seemed, were also receiving greater satisfaction from sex with their husbands. Blumstein and Schwartz reported much the same from their extensive survey of couples a decade later.
British surveys agree.
They show women initiating more sexual contacts, and married women having more affairs, reflecting their heightened expectations and sense of sexual agency. The overwhelming majority use contraception during their first sexual intercourse, and three out of four women felt that it occurred at about the right time, for the right reasons. There is thus a dramatic lack of fit between what one very visible group of feminists have been saying about women's experience of sexual victimization, and what most women have been reporting about their experiences of sex, and its importance to them. Nevertheless, while the gap between women's and men's sex lives is narrowing, and marriages seem happier, this is probably only because of the high rates of divorce. When women's frustrations do lead to separation or divorce, they are economically disadvantaged.