and thereafter declines sharply until forty, after which
it becomes problematic, although women’s health
sources emphasize great variation in decline dates
and rates.
Impact The concept of a biological clock exerting
pressure on women as they approached their late
thirties was the invention of a society in which some
women prioritized their careers or other sources of
personal fulfillment above marriage and child rear-
ing. It was therefore emblematic of the ambivalent
attitude in the 1980’s toward feminism: The term
would have made little sense earlier in the century,
when the average woman had little choice but to
“settle down” and have children, but it would have
made just as little sense were there not a residual
sense during the decade that women were “meant”
to be mothers and that those species of feminism
that denied priority to motherhood were somehow
unnatural (opposed to biology).
Further Reading
Birrittieri, Cara. What Ever y Woman Should Know
About Fertility and Her Biological Clock.Franklin
Lake, N.J.: New Page Books, 2004.
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective.Our Bodies,
Ourselves. New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schu-
ster, 2005.
Hewlett, Sylvia Ann.Creating a Life: Professional Women
and the Quest for Children.New York: Hyperion,
2002.
Payne, Roselyn.AMWA Guide to Fertility and Reproduc-
tive Health.New York: Dell/Random House, 1996.
Sandelowski, Margarete.Women, Health, and Choice.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1981.
Erika E. Pilver
See also Age discrimination; Bioengineering; Fem-
inism; Mommy track;thirtysomething; Women in the
workforce; Women’s rights.
Biopesticides
Definition Pesticides derived either from living,
nonchemical matter or from nontoxic, naturally
occurring chemicals
The movement to replace synthetic chemicals with organic
and natural pesticides grew during the 1980’s. Scientific
advances in the use and modification of living organisms
to combat pests proceeded alongside a growing fear of the
health consequences of using chemical pesticides, which
were in any case proving less effective as pests developed
resistances to them. By the end of the decade, biopesticides
were preferred over chemical pesticides whenever their use
was feasible.
In 1969, the Federal Pesticide Commission urged re-
stricting pesticide use. Government agencies had
found traces of pesticides in the fatty tissues of nearly
every American tested, and it was believed that even
these trace amounts could have deleterious effects.
In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon created the En-
vironmental Protection Agency (EPA). Congress,
which had authorized the EPA’s establishment, fol-
lowed suit with a flurry of environmental legislation:
Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), a pesti-
cide that had been found in the fat and liver of even
Artic polar bears, was banned in 1972.
In 1976, the Toxic Substances Control Act man-
dated governmental analysis of all chemical risks to
health. In 1978, the city of Love Canal near Niagara
Falls, New York, was found to be built on a toxic-
waste dump; 1,004 families were evacuated. A na-
tional superfund to clean up twelve hundred such
sites was created. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs),
previously used as coolants and lubricants, were
banned in 1979, but they stayed resident in soil and
animals for years. By the 1980’s, public concern
about chemicals in food and water was quite strong.
Chemical pesticides and herbicides were blamed
for pushing California sand crabs, Florida snooks,
black-footed ferrets, brown pelicans, bald eagles,
peregrine falcons, and others toward extinction.
The EPA found pesticides and heavy metal residues
in much of the nation’s groundwater.
Chemical-Resistant Pests As chemical-based pesti-
cides were used more broadly, they became less ef-
fective, requiring farmers to use more of a given sub-
stance to achieve the same result. The use of farm
chemicals doubled between 1960 and 1985 as a di-
rect result of this problem. Department of Agricul-
ture figures noted that crop losses from weeds and
insects, which were 32 percent in 1945, were 37 per-
cent by 1984. The term “superbug” was coined, de-
noting organisms immune to chemicals and anti-
biotics. In 1983, the National Academy of Sciences
estimated that 447 insects had developed resistances
to chemical insecticides, half of these crop pests,
with the Colorado potato beetle resistant to all major112 Biopesticides The Eighties in America