Young Americans are taking flight from marriage—by avoiding it, delaying it, or exiting it. It should not surprise us, either, since this is cultural lag in action: the uptake of contraceptive technology is slowly undermining long-standing reasons for marrying. And yet we still want to marry, but the difference between needing and wanting marriage is a big one. Cheap sex—that is, the wide availability of sexual access—is arguably diminishing men’s marriageability, since the quest for sex was long a key motivator for men to marry. No more. Cheap sex has transformed modern men (and women), undermined and stalled the marital impulse, and stimulated critics of monogamy, who fail to recognize the goods historically secured by it and polyamory’s reliance on a male-dominated mating market. Despite increasingly unfavorable terms for marriage, men are not going their own way. Once in it, they tend to like marriage. Women, on the other hand, exhibit higher ideals for marriage. They remain far more likely to want out once in. And given their comparative recent economic successes, women are in a better position to leave—and still thrive—than ever before. Marriage has changed, no doubt. Once a staid institution characterized by its functional gain in trade between men and women, it has become a symbol of success shared by two increasingly similar spouses. All of it has thrown organized Christianity—marriage’s biggest supporter—for a lop. Cheap sex, it seems, secularizes. The more traditional ways American Christians think about marriage and family remains distinctive from emerging norms of confluent love for now. Cracks in the foundation, however, are visible.
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