According to Angela Franks, it has.
Dr. Franks is the director of theology programs for the Theological Institute for New Evangelization at St. John's Seminary in Boston. She is also the author of a (critical) book on Margaret Sanger. I saw her give a talk on October 15 at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, where she was hosted by Clarion Students for Life, the Newman Association, and the Clarion Muslim Students Association, among others.
If you follow the pro-life movement and know something about the Catholic view of sex and relationships, much of what Dr. Franks said would sound familiar-- her views clearly track with Catholic doctrine.
Her presentation, however, did not mention religion at all. Instead-- perhaps hoping to connect with an audience beyond people of faith-- her presentation was grounded solidly in what she referred to as "sociological" evidence.
Focusing on young people (18-23), her primary observation was that casual sex and "serial monogamy" (a series of short-lived sexual/romantic relationships) do not make people happy, and that women, in particular, find life in this sexual regime unsatisfying. She also asserted (more than observed) that this kind of experience sets up dysfunctional behavioral patterns in men and women-- in particular, learning to be uncommitted to one's partner-- that make it more likely for eventual marriages to fail.
Dr. Franks relied heavily on data and conclusions drawn from the book Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying, by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker.
Why has the sexual revolution failed? Franks, Regnerus, and Uecker assert the following (quoted words and phrases are Dr. Franks'):
First, Dr. Franks' physiological and sociological justification for traditional sexual and marital relationships reduces romance to something transactional. There is nothing wrong with that, per se, but her rather impoverished and reductive description of male/female relationships strikes me as ironic. It is, for example, rather different than the warm and rich account one finds in the Humanae Vitae and other Catholic tracts.
If Dr. Franks is correct, we must resign ourselves to the different physiological and psychological imperatives of men and women regarding sex. Men and women enter into monogamous martial relationships primarily due to negative incentives. The possibility of pregnancy is a stick that scares women into keeping the proverbial gates closed. Therefore, the absence of contraception and abortion as options is a good thing-- it reduces the "supply" of extramarital sex. With conditions thus, women have the leverage to force sexually hungry men to commit to marital relationship in order to get some. That's romance, all right.
For a man, this is for his own good, as, despite what he thinks he wants, he will become happier and more mature in a monogamous married relationship. "Men, by and large, grow up when they get married," according to Dr. Franks-- a variation on the old idea that men are domesticated and civilized by a good relationship with a woman.
It is not clear to me that young men and women entering into (what Dr. Franks would hope to be) permanent marital relationships due to the need to satisfy sexual impulses is the best recipe for long-term stable partnerships.
Second, Dr. Franks' assertions as a whole rely on the existence of a pre-sexual-revolution golden age, when women and men did not have premarital sex, did not use contraception or have abortions, and had happy monogamous marital relationships that did not end in divorce. Put another way, the underlying narrative of her talk is that sexual and marital relationships before the pill and a more permissive sexual culture were functional and positive for women.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb in observing that, before the sexual revolution,
Finally, Dr. Franks did not acknowledge that married women with children in stable relationships may want to have access to contraception and abortion to assert more control over the number and spacing of their children. She seems to assume that once one is in a marriage, the need or desire for control over family planning evaporates. This is obviously untrue.
It seemed like Dr. Franks' talk was designed to go beyond preaching to the choir, attempting to reach a secular audience with social scientific evidence. One person who stayed for the Q&A session remarked that it was nice to see that the empirical evidence validated what Catholic doctrine had asserted all along. This is a common refrain from Catholic defenders of the Humanae Vitae (written in 1968) -- it has been proven right. Based on what I heard from Dr. Franks, I think it has only been proven right to people inclined to believe it.
Links:
Angela Franks official web site
The following are some books, articles, and scholars cited by Dr. Franks:
Dr. Franks is the director of theology programs for the Theological Institute for New Evangelization at St. John's Seminary in Boston. She is also the author of a (critical) book on Margaret Sanger. I saw her give a talk on October 15 at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, where she was hosted by Clarion Students for Life, the Newman Association, and the Clarion Muslim Students Association, among others.
If you follow the pro-life movement and know something about the Catholic view of sex and relationships, much of what Dr. Franks said would sound familiar-- her views clearly track with Catholic doctrine.
Her presentation, however, did not mention religion at all. Instead-- perhaps hoping to connect with an audience beyond people of faith-- her presentation was grounded solidly in what she referred to as "sociological" evidence.
Focusing on young people (18-23), her primary observation was that casual sex and "serial monogamy" (a series of short-lived sexual/romantic relationships) do not make people happy, and that women, in particular, find life in this sexual regime unsatisfying. She also asserted (more than observed) that this kind of experience sets up dysfunctional behavioral patterns in men and women-- in particular, learning to be uncommitted to one's partner-- that make it more likely for eventual marriages to fail.
Dr. Franks relied heavily on data and conclusions drawn from the book Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying, by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker.
Why has the sexual revolution failed? Franks, Regnerus, and Uecker assert the following (quoted words and phrases are Dr. Franks'):
- Men initiate sex more often and refuse sex less often, while women "trade" sex for other perceived goods like love and attention.
- These differences sets up a situation where women are "sexual gatekeepers."
- There is a "sexual economics" between men and women, where women are the sellers and men are the buyers-- or, as Dr. Franks put it, women can charge a high "price" for sex.
- Contemporary cultural conditions prevent women from keeping the price of sex high-- they can't command a high price anymore, e.g., demanding marriage in exchange for regular sex.
- What are the conditions that have made sex "cheap"? For one, contraception and abortion: Women don't have a good reason for saying "no," because the perceived possibility of getting pregnant is removed. So contraception and abortion drive down the price of sex.
- Another factor is pornography-- essentially, porn lowers the price of seeing naked women and allows an alternative route for satisfaction.
- A third condition is the availability of multiple sexual partners, which increases supply and therefore lowers the price of sex.
- Young men and women report greater happiness in married relationships; marrying young (in one's early 20s) is best; and putting off sex in a relationship increases the relationship's chance of success. Also, when people have sex with one another, "sex chemistry" causes people to be attracted to one another involuntarily; this makes casual sex and the break-up of sexually active couples more emotionally painful.
- If contraceptives were not available, it would stop women from having sex with men outside of marital relationships because the "cost" of sex would be too high.
- There are, according to Dr. Franks, two traditional reasons for sex: "babies and bonding." With the invention of the pill in the 1960s, the "babies" part of sex was taken out of the equation. The permissive sexual culture of the 1990s, with the media promotion of the "hook-up," removed the bonding aspect of sex.
- Contraception, furthermore, is, by its nature, a struggle against one of the primary biological imperatives of sex, making babies. Sex is also a means, within a committed relationship, of cementing intimacy, which creates a good environment for child-rearing.
Assuming all this to be true, what are the conclusions one is to draw?
- Don't have sex before marriage.
- Marry young.
- Don't use contraception, within or outside of marriage.
- Don't allow abortion.
- Don't use pornography.
What to think? Several things come to mind.
If Dr. Franks is correct, we must resign ourselves to the different physiological and psychological imperatives of men and women regarding sex. Men and women enter into monogamous martial relationships primarily due to negative incentives. The possibility of pregnancy is a stick that scares women into keeping the proverbial gates closed. Therefore, the absence of contraception and abortion as options is a good thing-- it reduces the "supply" of extramarital sex. With conditions thus, women have the leverage to force sexually hungry men to commit to marital relationship in order to get some. That's romance, all right.
For a man, this is for his own good, as, despite what he thinks he wants, he will become happier and more mature in a monogamous married relationship. "Men, by and large, grow up when they get married," according to Dr. Franks-- a variation on the old idea that men are domesticated and civilized by a good relationship with a woman.
It is not clear to me that young men and women entering into (what Dr. Franks would hope to be) permanent marital relationships due to the need to satisfy sexual impulses is the best recipe for long-term stable partnerships.
Second, Dr. Franks' assertions as a whole rely on the existence of a pre-sexual-revolution golden age, when women and men did not have premarital sex, did not use contraception or have abortions, and had happy monogamous marital relationships that did not end in divorce. Put another way, the underlying narrative of her talk is that sexual and marital relationships before the pill and a more permissive sexual culture were functional and positive for women.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb in observing that, before the sexual revolution,
- people were having sex before marriage,
- people, women in particular, tried very hard to control pregnancy through contraception and abortion,
- people engaged in adulterous relationships,
- and marriages, instead of ending in divorce, sometimes morphed into toxic relationships, to the harm of the entire family unit.
Dr. Franks' assertion that women had more power in relationships before the sexual revolution is contrary to the historical experience of millions of American women-- not to mention millions of women in the third world who suffer from a lack of family planning resources like effective contraception.
Finally, Dr. Franks did not acknowledge that married women with children in stable relationships may want to have access to contraception and abortion to assert more control over the number and spacing of their children. She seems to assume that once one is in a marriage, the need or desire for control over family planning evaporates. This is obviously untrue.
It seemed like Dr. Franks' talk was designed to go beyond preaching to the choir, attempting to reach a secular audience with social scientific evidence. One person who stayed for the Q&A session remarked that it was nice to see that the empirical evidence validated what Catholic doctrine had asserted all along. This is a common refrain from Catholic defenders of the Humanae Vitae (written in 1968) -- it has been proven right. Based on what I heard from Dr. Franks, I think it has only been proven right to people inclined to believe it.
Links:
Angela Franks official web site
The following are some books, articles, and scholars cited by Dr. Franks:
- Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying, by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker. (NB: Mark Regnerus, of the University of Texas-Austin, has been in the news recently for authoring a highly controversial study that concluded that children of same-sex couples don't succeed in life as well as children of traditional parents.)
- The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, by Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher
- The work of Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono
- Sex and Consequences: Abortion, Public Policy, and the Economics of Fertility, by Phillip B. Levine
- Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student, by Miriam Grossman
Comments