Adam and Eve after the Pill

Adam and Eve after the Pill is Mary Eberstadt’s landmark 2012 account of the unintended human consequences of modern contraception. Drawing on social science, literature, and lived experience, she argues that the Pill has reshaped relationships between men and women, parents and children, and church and society in ways no one fully anticipated.

Across chapters on women, men, children, the Catholic Church, and Western culture more broadly, Eberstadt shows that the revolution promised personal liberation — but delivered, alongside that liberation, deep social paradoxes that persist today.

The book set the stage for her 2023 sequel, Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited.