The machine production of goods that occured during the age of invention had a stunning impact on women's lives. Population control and destabilization of traditional attitudes toward family. These changes have had a similarly disorienting effect on women. In the nineteenth century, the birth rate in America began to decline, plunging from about 55 live births per 1,000 population in 1820 to 16.7 in 1990. But the impact of a lower birth rate goes beyond simple numbers.
Women now devote fewer years to primary care of children, while living longer.
The women's movement. It is hard to assign a beginning to the women's movement, but it is convenient to choose 1848, the year of the women's rights convention at Seneca Falls. Women have gone to work. More than 60 percent of American women are now in the work force. Women cannot go back in time.