NationalReview.com reported on September 18, 2015:
(...)Wide uptake of contraception changes people and communities. It alters the meaning of sex, fosters ambivalence about having children, and reinforces (though doesn’t cause) a consumptive rather than productive view of humanity — that we’re here to enjoy ourselves, to consume what life, work, and others have to offer us. It undermines the notion that we were made to love and be a gift to others, not to use and be used. Collectively, it splits the mating market into two parts — those looking for commitment and those just looking for sex — making the road to marriage notably longer and more confusing.
Unfortunately, the contraceptive mentality now saturates relationship preferences. It doesn’t take a pope to see it. It doesn’t even take faith. Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics and one of the most famous sociologists alive today, saw it coming in his 1992 book The Transformation of Intimacy, where he highlighted how contraception paved the way for the emergence of the “pure relationship,” onewhere a social relation is entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only insofar as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it.Moreover, “now that conception can be artificially produced, rather than only artificially inhibited, sexuality is at last fully autonomous,” Giddens asserted.
Fully autonomous. That is, sexuality is not only separated from its longstanding association with marriage and baby-making but free from being embedded in relationships (even short ones). What Giddens predicted is that in an era wherein childbearing is an afterthought — thereby making possible an extensive and diverse sex life — what would result is what in fact has materialized, now almost 25 years later:
- Expectations of paired sexual activity emerge quickly in budding relationships.
- Sexual exclusivity is no longer assumed but rather subject to negotiation.
- Strong demands are made for both emotional and physical satisfaction in relationships.
- Plastic sexuality — sexual interests and directions are shaped and remodeled.
- In turn, diverse sexual expressions and identities flourish.
This is the relational world that contraception gave birth to. Some like it. Some are ambivalent. What we can’t do, however, is pick and choose among its fruits. They’re a package deal.This is the world that effective contraception has made. We’re investing in orgasms, not persons. Even environmental activist and cultural critic Wendell Berry gets it:Like any other industrial enterprise, industrial sexuality seeks to conquer nature by exploiting it and ignoring the consequences, by denying any connection between nature and spirit or body and soul, and by evading social responsibility. The spiritual, physical, and economic costs of this “freedom” are immense, and are characteristically belittled or ignored.(...) It’s pretty difficult to say with confidence that the relational world today is better, kinder, and more loving than it was before the pill. No, it’s lonelier.
Contraception renders women more like men, too. (It doesn’t work the other way around.) We’re increasingly interchangeable. As a result, “men and women become, quite simply, less interesting to one another. Sameness begets ennui, which begets divorce,” wrote economist Tim Reichert. And, in the near future, expect a very wide failure to launch owing to plain disinterest in the idea of lifelong marriage. We’re almost there already, having witnessed a flip-flop of the ratio of married-to-unmarried young adults since the year 2000. This is the “cultural lag” effect of contraception on marriage. The longer the former is around, the less the latter appeals. Contraception didn’t train men to want cheap sex. (They’ve always wanted that.) What it did, however, is prove to them that they could get it, with few strings attached. Relations between the sexes haven’t been the same since.
Yes, Mr. Steinfels, the Church may shrink. Her position on contraception is not easy to abide, and her popular credibility may further erode. So be it. Paul VI didn’t issue Humanae Vitae because it was convenient. It sure as hell was not. He did it because he foresaw the world that would come to be if he didn’t do something.
Mark Regnerus is associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior fellow of the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture.