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Polls on nonsexual attitudes trace the same trajectory during the '70s, suggesting that the softening of support for the sexual revolution owes something to the softening of support for liberalism in general. The National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, which has been surveying liberal and conservative attitudes since 1972, reports that the dominant social views in America are still liberal, but not so solidly as they once were. Tom W Smith of N.O.R.C. writes that in most categories, liberal sentiments "either leveled off or slowed their rate of increase around 1973-75. Instead of a conservative tide, the period since about 1973 can be better described as a liberal plateau."
Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset of Stanford's Hoover Institution thinks the "destabilization of belief systems" wrought by the Viet Nam War helped propel the sexual revolution along. The end of the war and the onset of a recession, he says, brought "a movement back to more stability" and a turn away from far-out sex in the mid-'70s. British Journalist Henry Fairlie, an astute observer of the American scene, thinks the tinkering with personal life-styles that characterized the '60s and early '70s inevitably bred distaste for further social change. "Endless questioning of all aspects of life from food, dress, dropping out, child rearing and commune living led to mere exhaustion," he says. "There simply was no energy left. People found it an isolating and cutoff way to live." Yankelovich too thinks the turn away from sexual adventuring is a byproduct of other change. It is, he says, "only one part of a larger phenomenon of society going through a sober, responsible phase."
An uncertain economy may also have helped quiet the sexual scene. Though no one can demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship, sexual caution and money troubles seem to go hand in hand, in the '30s as in the '80s. A common saying among sex therapists is "sex goes up with the stock market." The free spirits of the '60s are the busy careerists of the '80s, hustling for a dollar in a competitive job market. "The students you talk to want to do well," says retired Harvard Sociologist David Riesman. "They want to do more than pass their courses, and they want more than a job. They want a career. Sex and drugs are distractions, things that are no longer new and exciting." Robert McGinley, of Buena Park, Calif, head of the North American Swing Club Association, believes the economy is probably the major factor in the recent decline of swinging, a euphemism for mate swapping and group sex. Attendance at swing parties, he says, dropped 15% to 30% in early 1983, and attendance at Plato's Retreat, a Manhattan sex parlor, was down 40% in the same period.
According to Sociologist William Simon, "The affluence of the '50s, '60s and '70s gave us courage to experiment with our lives. With the present economy, there is a sense of cautiousness. There is more commitment to careers and coupling because we are hedging our bets for social and economic security. We think, 'How can I financially and emotionally budget my energies?' and the career is winning out over thoughts of sex."