The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

More Sex, Less Babies?

Posted on | September 26, 2011 | 24 Comments

Reader Matt K. calls to my attention the compare-and-discuss juxtaposition of two items at Instapundit. Item One:

NOT SURE THIS APPLIES IF YOU’RE MARRIED: How the ‘price’ of sex has dropped to record lows.“Women are jumping into the sack faster and with fewer expectations about long-term commitments than ever, effectively discounting the ‘price’ of sex to a record low, according to social psychologists.”

Item Two:

PHILLIP LONGMAN: Actually, The Children Aren’t The Future: The World Will Be More Crowded — With Old People.“The U.N. now projects that over the next 40 years, more than half (58 percent) of the world’s population growth will come from increases in the number of people over 60, while only 6 percent will come from people under 30. Indeed, the U.N. projects that by 2025, the population of children under 5, already in steep decline in most developed countries, will be falling globally — and that’s even after assuming a substantial rebound in birth rates in the developing world. A gray tsunami will be sweeping the planet.”

(Emphasis added.) What I see here, as a pro-life father of six children, is how the economics of sex and reproduction have been distorted by the Contraceptive Culture.

Perhaps you see something else in this Rorshach inkblot test.

ADDENDUM: To explain what I mean by “the economics of sex and reproduction,” this phrase doesn’t refer strictly to monetary values, but rather expresses an understanding of the processes of sexual behavior from a market perspective.

The old saying that a man will not “buy a cow if he’s getting the milk for free” — i.e., that promiscuous women undermine their marital prospects — expresses this supply-and-demand concept of sex. But the truth of this adage an individual basis can also be extrapolated to the larger society: When women are generally promiscuous, men will be generally reluctant to marry.

This explains why, in every culture, sluts are stigmatized. The rational basis of what feminists derogate as misogynistic “slut-shaming” is seldom articulated, but it is this: Promiscuous women make it more difficult for all women — including chaste women — to get and keep a husband.

As female promiscuity flourishes, the incentives for men to enter into and remain in monogamous relationships are diminished. Furthermore, the men for whom monogamy is most discouraged by widespread female promiscuity are the men most desireable as husbands. Affluent, confident, attractive men — Alpha males — are those whom women commonly dream of marrying, but in a society that tolerates (or even encourages) female promiscuity, such men are also magnets for tramps, floozies and bimbos.

Because these Alpha males never lack opportunities for low-investment sex in a promiscuous society, more chaste women find themselves under pressure to “put out” if they wish to attract the interest of a successful man. And even if a woman can manage to land a real “catch” of a husband in such a society, his fidelity is always jeopardized by the floozies, who don’t give a damn whether their one-night-stand is married or not.

This unfortunate situation is an inexorable consequence of the Contraceptive Culture, which hurts women far more than it hurts men, although ironically it is feminists who most zealously defend the Contraceptive Culture.

Contraception transforms the nature of the sexual act and, as contraception becomes a routine matter, the ways in which we think about sex — that is to say, our cultural expectations — are likewise transformed. Because cultural expectations are seldom examined in any genuinely objective way, most people never question the assumptions of their own cultures. And when you try to explain to such people that life can be lived in other ways, they often become angry and irrational, as if you had insulted them. And speaking of feminists . . .

Feminists are not the only “progressives” who lack the curiosity to question whether any particular element of their political agenda is genuinely “progress.” But offending feminists is just so much fun that I can seldom resist the temptation of pointing out their errors.

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Category: Contraceptive Culture, Feminism, Instapundit, Sex

Comments

24 Responses to “More Sex, Less Babies?”

  1. Joe
    September 26th, 2011 @ 9:33 pm

    This assumes traditional people who get married sooner and have lots of kids have less sex.  Do they really have less?  People often assume that, but studies show such people have better sex lives (so while kids do lead to be tired, maybe they have more sex because they like it more). 

  2. chuck coffer
    September 26th, 2011 @ 10:44 pm

    One would assume it is premarital sex to which the article refers.

  3. Bob Belvedere
    September 26th, 2011 @ 10:46 pm

    Stacy, I’m begging you: if there’s one temptation on this earth I don’t ever want you to resist, its offending Feminists!

  4. Charles
    September 26th, 2011 @ 11:14 pm

    This sounds like sociology and it’s a thin line between sociology and socialim.

  5. Matt Knowles
    September 26th, 2011 @ 11:14 pm

    What I saw in “this Rorshach inkblot test” was that “Life Will Find a Way”.  That is, even as we consciously choose not to reproduce, our subconscious will do everything it can to ensure we do actually reproduce.

  6. Anonymous
    September 26th, 2011 @ 11:35 pm

    On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
    (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
    Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
    And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

  7. Richard Mcenroe
    September 26th, 2011 @ 11:56 pm

    There’s another aspect of this you’re overlooking: the lack of incentive for denizens of the collectivist/entitlement state to reproduce when there’s nothing to leave their descendants.  When existence is a life on the dole at the government’s whim or keeping the factories open for another generation that will never know the pride of owning the fruits of their own labor, seriously, what’s the point of children?

  8. Joe
    September 27th, 2011 @ 12:04 am

    Bleak, bleak, bleak!

  9. Joe
    September 27th, 2011 @ 12:05 am

    I know, but those who avoid that trap do tend to be happier. 

  10. Joe
    September 27th, 2011 @ 12:06 am

    I have not seen Little Miss Atilla in a while.  I miss her. 

  11. Adjoran
    September 27th, 2011 @ 12:28 am

    On behalf of all the tramps, floozies and bimbos out there, I think you aren’t doing them any favors if your post causes the likes of Amanda Marcotte to stumble out of bed or the back seat, pull up her knickers, and begin to berate you on their behalf. 

    They aren’t afraid of her, but they ARE afraid of BECOMING her, which is probably what lowered their self image to the point they behave like her in the first place.

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  13. CalMark
    September 27th, 2011 @ 1:23 am

    There’s another aspect to this.  Many people don’t have bigger families because life is so expensive due to overt and hidden taxes and regulatory costs. 

    In other words, 100 years ago $10 a week (roughly $250 in today’s money) was enough to raise a family without the intervention of government busybodies.  In fact, it was a point of pride not to accept charity.  It wasn’t a great life, but it produced a lot of good and even great Americans. Today, $250 is barely starvation level for one or two people, let alone a family of 5 or 6.

  14. GAHCindy
    September 27th, 2011 @ 1:57 am

    Well, our family has considerably more than $250 a week, but with baby number 5 on the way, I can tell you from experience that it’s not children that are too expensive to have, it’s the lifestyles Americans think children have to have. A family with a perfectly average income can do quite well with more than 2.1 kids, and I have a well-fed little family to prove it. :0)

    “Because cultural expectations are seldom examined in any genuinely
    objective way, most people never question the assumptions of their own
    cultures. And when you try to explain to such people that life can be
    lived in other ways, they often become angry and irrational, as if you
    had insulted them.”

    Amazing, ain’t it, how mad they get?

  15. Anonymous
    September 27th, 2011 @ 2:08 am

    Excellent post, RSM. It is especially effective because it proceeds mostly along consequentialist, not moralistic, grounds.

    I also agree that declining birth rates are, firstly, a cultural phenomenon. The left would have us believe that lower birth rates are an inevitable byproduct of economic prosperity, greater latitude of individual choices, and other (post)industrial “structural” factors.

    In contradition, though, they simultaneously lament that the dominant western, primarily American, culture of consumer capitalism/materialism, metaphorically seeing these strands as invasive species that corrupt other traditional/indigenous “authentic” cultures.

    Okay, but if this Anglo-American culture is so dominant, isn’t also possible – or even expected – that it might have something to do with declining birth rates – i.e., that all/most of the world’s “advanced” economies are largely products of those Anglo-American cultural influences and thus we cannot seperate the cultural variables from the “structural” ones?

    It’s an extremely important question because we’re on our way to extinction, but our death spiral is NOT inevitable.   

  16. ThePaganTemple
    September 27th, 2011 @ 2:27 am

    I only have sex with pregnant women so, no problems here.

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  19. Bob Belvedere
    September 27th, 2011 @ 12:59 pm

    Check out The Conservatory. She’s there every day in all her glory.

  20. dad29
    September 27th, 2011 @ 2:30 pm

    It may be ‘consequentialist,’ but it proves the moral case.

    If McCain continues in this vein, he could well become a paid writer for the Roman Catholic church.

  21. Paul Joslin
    September 27th, 2011 @ 4:06 pm

    Fire your editor!  You obviously put “Fewer Babies” and they changed it incorrectly!

  22. Andrew Patrick
    September 27th, 2011 @ 4:06 pm

    Indeed. I almost suspected that McCain cribbed this from Humanae Vitae, but knowing him as a “redeemed or doomed” Calvinist, I put such heresy aside.

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