Bad marriages will always be with us, but I’m skeptical of the notion that more restrictive sexual norms will make anything better. People who really want to marry each other are perfectly free to do so even under the most permissive norms - nobody is advocating for stigmatizing commitment. So all restrictive norms will do is push people…
Bad marriages will always be with us, but I’m skeptical of the notion that more restrictive sexual norms will make anything better. People who really want to marry each other are perfectly free to do so even under the most permissive norms - nobody is advocating for stigmatizing commitment. So all restrictive norms will do is push people who don’t really want to commit to do so anyway to meet social expectations. The outcome is that people have to spend their lives with people they don’t love. Seems like a recipe for disaster to me. On the margin, the additional marriages contracted as a result of restrictive sexual norms are highly unlikely to be happy. If they would be happy, the people involved would marry of their own accord without society needing to push them into it.
Hmmm, logically there’s not much to argue there. I agree with most of that statement.
The issue I see is that I think you’re dramatically overestimating the effect of the social pressure I’m implying. People flat out ignore social pressure in all sorts of ways and have done so since the dawn of time. No one is advocating dystopian control over this issue. The cut and dry logic of your previous statement implies that the only reason people get together is sex. That’s just not true. This whole debate is framed on a premise that’s just a false. Marriage is not just about sex. So putting a pressure on sex, which is important but certainly not the whole basis of a relationship helps you be more selective of the people you would theoretically sleep with(and by extension date)in the first place. There’s a lot of chicken and egg possibilities here.
I definitely don’t think marriage is just about sex in general. My view is that marriage should be about love. My concern is that the *additional marriages created* by restrictive sexual norms would be about sex (marriage as a means to sex), which I don’t think is a good foundation for a loving bond. I’m thinking on the margin. People who love each other can marry under both permissive and restrictive norms. So the marginal marriages created by restrictive norms will be between people who don’t love each other and would be reluctant to marry in the absence of society using norms around sex to nudge them in to it. Even gentler, non-dystopian norms of the sort we see in actually-existing conservative cultures will trend this way. Whereas in a permissive culture in which people have little reason to marry other than love, we will have fewer unloving marriages, which is a thoroughly good thing in my opinion.
I’m not sure I follow your point about how “putting a pressure on sex…helps you be more selective of the people you would theoretically sleep with”. Under a permissive model that respects consent, people have freedom to be as selective as they want. Why would they need help from social pressure?
On your last paragraph, that’s a simple one. If you are more selective about who you sleep with, the repercussions of having slept with that person are far less severe.
If you have a baby with a woman that you are totally fine with marrying, there’s relatively little to be upset about. If you’re just doing your thing and she gets pregnant but you don’t really even like her, that’s a problem for everyone.
Being more selective at the start is a good way to make potential life changing experiences much, much more palatable.
Consent is not where that conversation stops. Two people often consent on sex and they don’t even want to date, or at least one of them doesn’t. Where does that leave the potential kid? The more permissive model leaves far more cracks for people to fall through.
That’s a fair point, but I think the solution is comprehensive and effective sex education and access to contraception, rather than social pressure to wait until marriage.
Again, I’d emphasize that blue states that take the approach I favor have a better record of reducing teen pregnancy and unwanted births than red states that have more cultural pressure around abstinence. Northern European countries with similarly liberal norms also have good outcomes on this score.
Bad marriages will always be with us, but I’m skeptical of the notion that more restrictive sexual norms will make anything better. People who really want to marry each other are perfectly free to do so even under the most permissive norms - nobody is advocating for stigmatizing commitment. So all restrictive norms will do is push people who don’t really want to commit to do so anyway to meet social expectations. The outcome is that people have to spend their lives with people they don’t love. Seems like a recipe for disaster to me. On the margin, the additional marriages contracted as a result of restrictive sexual norms are highly unlikely to be happy. If they would be happy, the people involved would marry of their own accord without society needing to push them into it.
Hmmm, logically there’s not much to argue there. I agree with most of that statement.
The issue I see is that I think you’re dramatically overestimating the effect of the social pressure I’m implying. People flat out ignore social pressure in all sorts of ways and have done so since the dawn of time. No one is advocating dystopian control over this issue. The cut and dry logic of your previous statement implies that the only reason people get together is sex. That’s just not true. This whole debate is framed on a premise that’s just a false. Marriage is not just about sex. So putting a pressure on sex, which is important but certainly not the whole basis of a relationship helps you be more selective of the people you would theoretically sleep with(and by extension date)in the first place. There’s a lot of chicken and egg possibilities here.
I definitely don’t think marriage is just about sex in general. My view is that marriage should be about love. My concern is that the *additional marriages created* by restrictive sexual norms would be about sex (marriage as a means to sex), which I don’t think is a good foundation for a loving bond. I’m thinking on the margin. People who love each other can marry under both permissive and restrictive norms. So the marginal marriages created by restrictive norms will be between people who don’t love each other and would be reluctant to marry in the absence of society using norms around sex to nudge them in to it. Even gentler, non-dystopian norms of the sort we see in actually-existing conservative cultures will trend this way. Whereas in a permissive culture in which people have little reason to marry other than love, we will have fewer unloving marriages, which is a thoroughly good thing in my opinion.
I’m not sure I follow your point about how “putting a pressure on sex…helps you be more selective of the people you would theoretically sleep with”. Under a permissive model that respects consent, people have freedom to be as selective as they want. Why would they need help from social pressure?
On your last paragraph, that’s a simple one. If you are more selective about who you sleep with, the repercussions of having slept with that person are far less severe.
If you have a baby with a woman that you are totally fine with marrying, there’s relatively little to be upset about. If you’re just doing your thing and she gets pregnant but you don’t really even like her, that’s a problem for everyone.
Being more selective at the start is a good way to make potential life changing experiences much, much more palatable.
Consent is not where that conversation stops. Two people often consent on sex and they don’t even want to date, or at least one of them doesn’t. Where does that leave the potential kid? The more permissive model leaves far more cracks for people to fall through.
That’s a fair point, but I think the solution is comprehensive and effective sex education and access to contraception, rather than social pressure to wait until marriage.
Again, I’d emphasize that blue states that take the approach I favor have a better record of reducing teen pregnancy and unwanted births than red states that have more cultural pressure around abstinence. Northern European countries with similarly liberal norms also have good outcomes on this score.