The FamilyScholars blog is hosting a symposium on marriage this week to mark the release of “The President’s Marriage Agenda for the Forgotten Sixty Percent” (PDF here), a new report from the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values. The “sixty percent” in the title refers to the roughly three in five Americans who have graduated from high school but not from college—a group whose members are rapidly becoming less likely to marry and more likely to have children outside of marriage, with all the disadvantages those trends imply.
In my contribution, I argue that we can’t talk about the marriage crisis without talking about sex. Here’s a taste:
The breakdown of marriage stems not only from economic factors but also from changing standards in the realm of sex, dating, and intimate relationships. Making these standards more conducive to marriage is as crucial as political reform if we are to restore the institution.
Let’s start by acknowledging that there is no such thing as consequence-free sex. No form of contraception is 100 percent effective; even a one-night stand can result in the creation of a child. Aside from pregnancy, sex has dramatic effects on physical, mental, and emotional health. Hookups, for instance, significantly increase teenagers’ and female college students’ risk of depression. The more lifetime sexual partners an adult woman has, the more likely she is to be depressed and to report a lower level of life satisfaction. Sexual satisfaction is highestand the risks of sex lowest in the context of marriage.
Elsewhere in the symposium, Ryan Anderson argues against redefining marriage, Isabel Sawhill doubts that today’s trends can be reversed, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead discusses pathways to successful relationships, Katelyn Beaty asks what churches can do, and Kevin Noble Maillard criticizes marriage stereotypes. To view the whole discussion, visit FamilyScholars.
December 20th, 2012 | 6:18 pm
Anna quoted: “Sexual satisfaction is highest and the risks of sex lowest in the context of marriage.”
I have to say that when I first read this sentence, I read it as: “Sexual satisfaction is highest and the risks of (having) sex lowest in the context of marriage.”
What? That can’t be right. Let’s read that again.
……………….
Hook-up culture is so destructive. I am very glad that social conservatives are addressing the issue in a much more scholarly and formal public debate of the issue.
And as the Regnerus study also blogged about here recently points out, normalizing homosexuality is part of normalizing many other destructive and dysfunctional dynamics relating to sexuality and relationships: porn, hook-ups (including sex with strangers) and promiscuity, S&M, prostitution, etc.
Thank you Regnerus for doing one of the many studies I thought social scientists needed to do, and have thought so for so long…
I think Regnerus has a very bright research future ahead. He is doing the kind of research that is urgently needed. Unfortunately, most social scientists who dominate the academy are liberals and lack the critical stance to perform research that addresses some of the greatest problems with liberals and their sexuality and relationship ideology.
December 20th, 2012 | 9:31 pm
“[N]ormalizing homosexuality is part of normalizing many other destructive and dysfunctional dynamics”.
Nonsense.
We’re not suggesting that homosexuality be adopted by the general heterosexual population. We’re suggesting that we, as gay men and women, can live happy and productive lives as we are. For me, that has involved being in a monogamous relationship with the same person for almost two years in a home in an affluent suburban area.
We aren’t “swingers” who are addicted to (or even own) porn. We don’t do drugs. We are both close to our families. Far from being detrimental, my relationship to my partner has been a blessing in countless ways.
I’m not that unusual. I have co-workers who have been in relationships for over a decade.
The reason you don’t realize we exist is because many of us have resolved ourselves to hiding this aspect of our lives in a corporate environment that has historically been unwilling to extend legal protections to gays(much thanks to the Christian Right who apparently believe we shouldn’t be employed by anyone).
It’s time to end these false accusations and generalizations about a sizable number of people within the American population.
December 21st, 2012 | 9:00 am
Very good thoughts in that, the more education one has, the more one understands marriage as a social good. We need to accept as a culture that everyone is better off getting married young and having children at a young age (wish I’d known that).
December 21st, 2012 | 2:11 pm
“[N]ormalizing homosexuality is part of normalizing many other destructive and dysfunctional dynamics”.
“Nonsense. ”
Excuse me, but NOT nonsense.
Homosexuals cannot reproduce on their own without a man and a woman, so some of them adopt or turn to artificial forms of creating a child so that they can have a family. Thus, even in committed relationships, homosexuals are establishing (or contributing to) a norm that can easily become a commodification of children.
Those who don’t have children, like couples who choose not to, often have high double incomes and comfortable materialistic lives. That contributes to setting another kind of norm, one which few families can compete with. So why would kids think that they should have children? Don’t tell me that if they are from happy homes they’ll still make the choice; too often the lure of materialism is a hard temptation to turn away from.
Sadly, many many male homosexuals in particular are very promiscuous and DO live dysfunctional lives, as well as passing on disease. Despite whatever percentage of committed couples exist – and that has been disputed too – normalizing this lifestyle opens the door to saying it’s OK to be promiscuous, etc.
Over and over again we see the deniers of the slippery slope, but it does exist. It’s evident with divorce, contraception and abortion.
Not denying that many of the same moral ills – unfaithfulness, promiscuity and excessive materialism – afflict the rest of the population, but we need to start closing the door somewhere. There are ills from this lifestyle, they have been identified, and a quick “nonsense” from you is hardly persuasive or helpful.
December 21st, 2012 | 10:09 pm
Being homosexual is not per se “destructive” or “dysfunctional” any more than being heterosexual is.
December 22nd, 2012 | 5:13 pm
Scott Rose, your proposed equivalence is not what is at issue.
Behavior. Consequences of sexual behavior.
That is the issue that cannot produce the sort of equivalence that perhaps you would claim through an extension of the equivalence you mistakenly propsed.
Do you think that those who’d engage in opposite-sexed sexual behavior ought to act as if it was no different in consequence and in moral reality from same-sex sexual behavior? At what level of generality? Or does your thinking leave you with an indifferent or even a hopeless shrug?
December 22nd, 2012 | 6:00 pm
James Bradshaw, regarding your misreading (“homosexuality be adopted by by the general heterosexual population”), I think the actual point is clarified in my response to Scott Rose.
Think of it as reverse-assimmilation whereby the general population adopts the atitude that complementary sexual behavior (man and woman) was the consequential and moral equivalent of same-sex sexual behavior.
Maybe you would not beckon society to go that way, I dunno.
Maybe you would expect the general homosexual population to adopt the attitude that same-sex sexual behavior is — at least metaphorically — the consequential and moral equivalent of complementary sexual behavior. Would that entail a public sexual morality that justified taboos against behaviors that are not assimilative in this way or would such moralism be inapt and unpalatable for those who’d engage in same-sex sexual behavior?
December 23rd, 2012 | 1:05 pm
Chairm writes: “Maybe you would not beckon society to go that way, I dunno. ”
My view is that we should seek the optimal solutions given reality as it is, not as we fantasize it to be in a world that doesn’t exist.
For gay men like myself who have no interest or capacity in “becoming straight”, this means living with a sense of integrity by avoiding promiscuity and seeking monogamy. For those who are predominantly heterosexual, it means channeling their drives towards heterosexual marriage.
This seems to me both plausible and humane. At the same time, it gives no allowance to anyone for living a life of unrestrained sexual license.
However, if you think there’s some reasonable expectation of convincing all gay men and women to live their entire lives as celibate virgins so that they can die alone, I’d simply say “good luck”.
December 27th, 2012 | 12:09 am
The if statement in you last paragraph does not reasonably follow from my previous comment.
Nor does it take into account the comment I addressed to Scott Rose and referenced at the top of my response to you.
I had asked Scott Rose a few basic questions. If you believe your thinking is plausible and humane, as you say, am interested in how you got from A to B.
Please clarify or illustrate your thinking by way of addressing what I had actually asked. Based on your comment, still “I dunno” what you mean.
December 27th, 2012 | 12:29 am
According to the census and related evidence, about 90% of the adult homosexual population does not reside in same-sex households. Participation rates are very low where SSM has been imposed or enacted. To hope for a huge reversal of this is to hope against reality as we find it and, perhaps, to promise a fantastical alternative reality.
To treat “the gay relationship” as marital is to treat it as something that it is not.
It might be both plausible and humane to treat it as what it is, in reality, rather metaphorically.
But what we get instead from SSM advocates is the reverse: we must treat it as the equivalent of the union of husband and wife because, supposedly, we are to treat complementary sexual behavior as the moral equivalent of same-sex sexual behavior. That does not seem plausible nor humane.
December 27th, 2012 | 12:32 am
Apologies for the typo: “rather than metaphorically”.
December 29th, 2012 | 11:27 am
“Loretta (no family name)” discounts fertilization and surrogacy for same-gender couples, but not for opposite-gender couples.
She calls some commonly used approaches to pregnancy “artificial” if pursued by same-gender couples, but “not artificial” when pursued by opposite-gender couples.
This, of course, betrays thinking from a basis of prejudice rather than information. Under her own mental yoke, she easily hurtles into conclusions such as . . .
“impregnation techniques can easily commodify [sic] children”
“childless children are often materialistic”
“many, many male homosexuals live dysfunctional lives”
“when committed, loving couples are same-gender they increase promiscuity”
“we need to close the door on same-gender couples first, everyone else later”
. . . and more.
The most slippery slope of all time is the one that begins in ignorance, builds on fear, and ultimately ends in rank bigotry.
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