Avoiding Marriage

TRIGGER WARNING:  In which I hint that you can't have it all.

For John, BLUF:  These new generations don't take marriage as seriously as we did, men and women.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Is Cheap Sex Making Men Give Up on Marriage?

The author of this 3 September 2017 short article from Pajama Media is forensic psychologist Dr Helen Smith.

The subject is a new book, by Sociologist Dr Mark Regnerus.  The title is Cheap Sex:  The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy. Dr Smith found this summation of the book in a New York Post article:

Thanks to cheap sex, marriage may be doomed.

The share of Americans ages 25-34 who are married dropped 13 percentage points from 2000 to 2014. A new book by sociologist Mark Regnerus blames this declining rate on how easy it is for men to get off.

Regnerus calls it “cheap sex,” an economic term meant to describe sex that has very little cost in terms of time or emotional investment, giving it little value.

Regnerus bases his ideas, in part, on the work of British social theorist Anthony Giddens, who argued that the pill isolated sex from marriage and children. Add online pornography and dating sites to the mix and you don’t even need relationships.

"Cheap" is an economic term, meaning that it isn't dear or expensive.  It can be had easily.  Guys don't have to work for it and don't have to make promises of life changing committal to get it.  Further, if there is a pregnancy involved they can easily back off without societal consequences, partly due to relatively more available abortion and partly because social peers and elders are willing to accept this not accepting of parental responsibility.♠

And, of course, everything is doomed, until we find some new level of normalcy.  That said, Dr Smith thinks there are additional factors at play:

Fair enough, but I think enough men have seen what marriage does to the older guys in their family and friend circles to know that the antiquated marriage laws (and new ones) that put the responsibility of the actual marriage legally more on men is also a factor.  Perhaps the discrepancy between the easier ability to get sex and the actual increased duties and responsibilities of men in marriage now are so much greater than in the past that it makes marriage unappealing to many.  Sure, a man can get sex more easily without being married but I wonder if women restricted sex more and porn was made illegal how many more men would marry? Maybe no more and maybe less.

Which raises the question of if men are asking less often or women are saying yes less often (or a combination thereof)?

What ever it is, we are sailing into unknown waters, and without a map.  If this is also happening in India and China then we are probsbly OK.  Otherwise we are probably, as a society, facing a crisis down the road.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Perhaps because they have seen a lack of commitment to marriage, resulting in too frequent divorces, thanks to the "no fault divorce" laws that we passed in the 1960s and beyond.