The Costs of the Sexual Revolution

In The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind Jason Weeden & Robert Kurzban claim on the basis of a survey they mention in their appendix, but whose name I unfortunately forget, that when both marriage partners are virgins there is am 85% chance that they will stay married.

Currently, the divorce rate is over 50%. The illegitimacy rate is over 40%. Plenty of evidence exists that when children are raised by both parents living together in matrimony they tend to do much better in life than children no so raised.

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Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with profound economic disadvantages, but are also far likelier to eventually get into trouble with the law. As a Heritage Foundation analysis notes, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are much more likely to be physically abused; to be treated for emotional and behavioral disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to behave aggressively and violently; to engage in criminal activity; and to be arrested for a juvenile crime. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes.
Poverty and Crime - Discover the Networks

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When Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 many Americans were shocked by his assertion that fifty percent of American brides were not virgins. Now it seems unusual that fifty percent of American brides were virgins. Nevertheless, Kinsey seems to have overestimated the percentage of American homosexuals, so it is reasonable to suspect that he underestimated the percentage of bridal virgins.

In a country like the United States there is little the government can to do influence sexual behavior. Consequently, sexual behavior is not really a political issue. This is why the religious right has been unable to restore the ethos of the 1950, when the illegitimacy rate in the United States was six percent.

Nevertheless, I think it is beneficial to look back on the 1950's and measure what we've lost.

For the record, I am a Democrat who is in favor of legalized abortion and gay marriage. However, I have always viewed the religious right with interest, and a degree of sympathy.

In a country like the United States there is little the government can to do influence sexual behavior

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We sure do spend a lot of money, air a lot of government written PSA's and write a lot of laws on the subject.

SmartCat said:

In The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind Jason Weeden & Robert Kurzban claim on the basis of a survey they mention in their appendix, but whose name I unfortunately forget, that when both marriage partners are virgins there is am 85% chance that they will stay married.

Currently, the divorce rate is over 50%. The illegitimacy rate is over 40%. Plenty of evidence exists that when children are raised by both parents living together in matrimony they tend to do much better in life than children no so raised.

---------

Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with profound economic disadvantages, but are also far likelier to eventually get into trouble with the law. As a Heritage Foundation analysis notes, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are much more likely to be physically abused; to be treated for emotional and behavioral disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to behave aggressively and violently; to engage in criminal activity; and to be arrested for a juvenile crime. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes.
Poverty and Crime - Discover the Networks

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When Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 many Americans were shocked by his assertion that fifty percent of American brides were not virgins. Now it seems unusual that fifty percent of American brides were virgins. Nevertheless, Kinsey seems to have overestimated the percentage of American homosexuals, so it is reasonable to suspect that he underestimated the percentage of bridal virgins.

In a country like the United States there is little the government can to do influence sexual behavior. Consequently, sexual behavior is not really a political issue. This is why the religious right has been unable to restore the ethos of the 1950, when the illegitimacy rate in the United States was six percent.

Nevertheless, I think it is beneficial to look back on the 1950's and measure what we've lost.

For the record, I am a Democrat who is in favor of legalized abortion and gay marriage. However, I have always viewed the religious right with interest, and a degree of sympathy.

Click to expand...

Evidently, we must have gained much more, since all forms of violence and destitution have been consistently falling since 1950.

While visibly broken families are undoubtedly more of a problem today, it seems self-evident that oppressing people into strict and shame-based lifestyles isn't the solution, since their rates were worse. And that's stunning, when you keep in mind that in 1950, many forms of domestic violence weren't even considered to be crimes. So the crime rate from 1950 actually looks better than it actually was... and yet it's still worse than the rate today.

Oh, that's another thing that's improved for families since 1950. Stuff like raping your wife is actually a crime now. So, in 1950, there were an awful lot of broken families that simply weren't visible because they didn't divorce, and violence was a lot easier to get away with.

I think it would be much more worthwhile to examine the way we conduct ourselves and our expectations of relationships, growing up in a culture with so many unrealistic depictions and that discourages clear communication.

It might also be worthwhile to look at the fact that the vast majority of divorces are gotten by people who had little access to education and married young. Lack of education and youth at the time of marriage are the two biggest predictors of divorce. The people who have embodied the revolution the most either by choice or by the luck of having access to it -- those who prioritize education, marry later, and dated more prior to marriage -- have a divorce rate of only 20%.

In other words, the people who divorce the most are the ones who closest follow the "old way" of the 1950's. Not exactly a stunning endorsement.

SmartCat said:

In The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind Jason Weeden & Robert Kurzban claim on the basis of a survey they mention in their appendix, but whose name I unfortunately forget, that when both marriage partners are virgins there is am 85% chance that they will stay married.

Currently, the divorce rate is over 50%. The illegitimacy rate is over 40%. Plenty of evidence exists that when children are raised by both parents living together in matrimony they tend to do much better in life than children no so raised.

---------

Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with profound economic disadvantages, but are also far likelier to eventually get into trouble with the law. As a Heritage Foundation analysis notes, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are much more likely to be physically abused; to be treated for emotional and behavioral disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to behave aggressively and violently; to engage in criminal activity; and to be arrested for a juvenile crime. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes.
Poverty and Crime - Discover the Networks

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When Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 many Americans were shocked by his assertion that fifty percent of American brides were not virgins. Now it seems unusual that fifty percent of American brides were virgins. Nevertheless, Kinsey seems to have overestimated the percentage of American homosexuals, so it is reasonable to suspect that he underestimated the percentage of bridal virgins.

In a country like the United States there is little the government can to do influence sexual behavior. Consequently, sexual behavior is not really a political issue. This is why the religious right has been unable to restore the ethos of the 1950, when the illegitimacy rate in the United States was six percent.

Nevertheless, I think it is beneficial to look back on the 1950's and measure what we've lost.

For the record, I am a Democrat who is in favor of legalized abortion and gay marriage. However, I have always viewed the religious right with interest, and a degree of sympathy.

Click to expand...

This does nothing to persuade me to think that the Religious Right are correct on any aspect of this discussion, including the very notion and idea that the institution of marriage itself is a worthwhile, praiseworthy institution.

Let's flip the question around and ask the real questions that have been smuggled into this:

1.) Why is it bad for children to be born out of wedlock? Who does this hurt?
2.) Why is the institution of marriage praiseworthy in the first place?
3.) Why is divorce immoral?

70% of criminals grew up in fatherless homes? My question is simply: So what? Overall crime rates, police officer deaths, etc, have been going down since the 1990's. Do you realize how many children have been born into single-parent homes? What percentage of them grow up to be criminals? A tiny few. So you're trying to imply that it's important that we keep women and men bound to an economic and sexually repressive relationship in order to protect the children and try to keep crime down? There's not even a hint here of a serious causal relationship between any of these things.

Please check out your own assumptions, because I can't quite seem to follow you on any of these logical leaps.

FieldTheorist said:

This does nothing to persuade me to think that the Religious Right are correct on any aspect of this discussion, including the very notion and idea that the institution of marriage itself is a worthwhile, praiseworthy institution.

Let's flip the question around and ask the real questions that have been smuggled into this:

1.) Why is it bad for children to be born out of wedlock? Who does this hurt?
2.) Why is the institution of marriage praiseworthy in the first place?
3.) Why is divorce immoral?

Click to expand...

First of all, my factual assertions are valid. That alone that alone provides strong evidence that it is bad for children to be born out of wedlock.

Children raised by biological parents united in matrimony are more likely to be raised by loving, nurturing adults. That is the answer to each of your questions.

Teenage girls are more likely to be sexually abused by step fathers and the boy friends of their mothers, than by their biological fathers.

FieldTheorist said:

70% of criminals grew up in fatherless homes? My question is simply: So what? Overall crime rates, police officer deaths, etc, have been going down since the 1990's.

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There are several reasons for the decline in the crime rate since 1991. The tripling of the prison rate since 1980 has been one. The increase in the abortion rate since 1973 has been another.

SmokeAndMirrors said:

Evidently, we must have gained much more, since all forms of violence and destitution have been consistently falling since 1950.

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According to the FBI UCS Annual Crime Reports in 1960 the annual rate of violent crime per 100,000 inhabitants was 758.1 was 160.9. This rose to 758.1 in 1991. By 2014 it declined to 375.7.

United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2014

The decline can be attributed in large part to the tripling of the prison population since 1980.

http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/lawenforcement/punishment.pdf

The Atlantic APRIL 1993

Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth are transforming the lives of American children. In the postwar generation more than 80 percent of children grew up in a family with two biological parents who were married to each other. By 1980 only 50 percent could expect to spend their entire childhood in an intact family...

According to a growing body of social-scientific evidence, children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being...

Stepfathers discriminate in their abuse: they are far more likely to assault nonbiological children than their own natural children...

Children who grow up in single-parent or stepparent families are less successful as adults, particularly in the two domains of life--love and work--that are most essential to happiness...

Only 11 percent of children born in the 1950s would by the time they turned eighteen see their parents separate or divorce. Out-of-wedlock childbirth barely figured as a cause of family disruption. In the 1950s and early 1960s, five percent of the nation's births were out of wedlock.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/

SmartCat said:

According to the FBI UCS Annual Crime Reports in 1960 the annual rate of violent crime per 100,000 inhabitants was 758.1 was 160.9. This rose to 758.1 in 1991. By 2014 it declined to 375.7.

United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2014

The decline can be attributed in large part to the tripling of the prison population since 1980.

http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/lawenforcement/punishment.pdf

Click to expand...

Like I said, this is all pretty irrelevant in the context that so many types of violence were perfectly legal back then, including many types of domestic violence. So, in reality, what this means is that today's numbers are in fact dramatically lower for reasons that can't even begin to be explained by the prison industrial complex alone. Especially since the greatest block of criminals are the least likely to be arrested, in the US.

And if you'd read the rest of my post rather than just stopping at the first sentence, you might have noticed that. Plus a bunch of other things, like the fact that the people from today who follow 1950's model divorce 3 times more than those who live by more post-sexual revolution standards.

Haven't lost a thing in this regard.

I loved the sexual revolution.

SmartCat said:

Currently, the divorce rate is over 50%.

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50% is a bad thing?! I think that's a pretty decent and solid score. I mean compare it to another "lifetime commitment". How many people are still in their first job? First career path? Or are actually using their bachelor's in a relevant industry? Right now I have no idea and my Google-Fu is lacking tonight ... but I'd guesstimate that it's a hell of a lot more than 50%!

Rather I think believing a 50% divorce rate is bad is a vast underestimation of humankind's dynamics. We're changing individuals. Each of us is the summation of every successive day in our life. Constant new experiences shape our personalities, our perspective, our skill-sets, our behavior and there on. We encourage young people to embrace change and to face new challenges in their education, careers and social circles. Why can't that attitude be applied to our relationships as well? Sure, there's children to be considered. However ignoring that for a second ... why shouldn't a childless, young married couple split after 10 years? When both have learned all that they can from their experience and need to move on? Or when the couple have grown apart. I hardly think such events and the resulting raw divorce rate should be considered a bad thing.

SmokeAndMirrors said:

And if you'd read the rest of my post rather than just stopping at the first sentence, you might have noticed that. Plus a bunch of other things, like the fact that the people from today who follow 1950's model divorce 3 times more than those who live by more post-sexual revolution standards.

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An assertion like that should be documented.

I have read on many occasions, so I suspect that it is true that when people live together before getting married they are less likely to stay together after they get married.

What matters is that as pre and extramarital sex have increased, divorce and illegitimacy have increased. As I pointed out earlier, divorce and illegitimacy are usually bad for children.

brothern said:

50% is a bad thing?!

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I have already explained why, from the standpoint of the children, it is.

I do believe that a strong family unit is key to successful child rearing. However, families come in different shapes and sizes. I support gay marriage, open marriages, or no marriage at all. And I'm not all that concerned about other people's choices on the matter.

Also, the sexual revolution gave women more control over their lives. That is something I fully support.

SmartCat said:

First of all, my factual assertions are valid. That alone that alone provides strong evidence that it is bad for children to be born out of wedlock.

Children raised by biological parents united in matrimony are more likely to be raised by loving, nurturing adults. That is the answer to each of your questions.

Teenage girls are more likely to be sexually abused by step fathers and the boy friends of their mothers, than by their biological fathers.

Click to expand...

1.) More assertions, no links to evidence. But let's assume that this is all correct anyways. How often are children raped by their stepfathers/mother's boyfriends? What's the relative damage? Just how prevalent are all of these issues? If we suddenly started slut-shaming, limiting divorces, and trying to role back the sexual revolution, just how much of a positive change would there be in any of these?

2.) Just because something harms society doesn't mean we should prohibit or shun it. Almost everyone dies of heart disease, should we ban fatty foods, regulate people's dietary intake, and so forth. Should we do this? Most people would argue "No," and for the reason that we value freedom and price of freedom. There are many opportunity costs to freedom, and I'll gladly pay them or risk my own interests to continue people's right to self-determination.

3.) Finally, you've ignored quite a few of the most "virtuous" aspects of 1950's marriage: The belief in male superiority, the disbelief in women's ability to control her body, the prevalence of spousal abuse and rape, the belief that the sole purpose of women is to bare children and tend the home, the belief that the sole value of men is his paycheck, and so on. If you think all of that is just great, then I suspect that there's no amount of discussion that will change either of our minds. Personally, I will not bend my knee to these doctrines.

SmartCat said:

There are several reasons for the decline in the crime rate since 1991. The tripling of the prison rate since 1980 has been one. The increase in the abortion rate since 1973 has been another.

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Agreed. In fact, the push for abortion couldn't have happened without the sexual revolution, because it took a rather substantial push by women's rights movement to get abortion legalized in all 50 states.

SmartCat said:

An assertion like that should be documented.

I have read on many occasions, so I suspect that it is true that when people live together before getting married they are less likely to stay together after they get married.

What matters is that as pre and extramarital sex have increased, divorce and illegitimacy have increased. As I pointed out earlier, divorce and illegitimacy are usually bad for children.

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The link between a college education and a lasting marriage | Pew Research Center

The people following the 50's model of settling down young and dumb don't do so well. So poorly, in fact, that they're similar to the disadvantaged in their marriage outcomes.

Not really. Depends on why they moved in together. If they moved in for convenience, yes. If they moved in as a marriage-like commitment, no -- they're actually less likely to split up.

And yet, apparently it's still better than what we had before. Children of single parent homes do worse relative to intact homes TODAY. But on the whole, all these things are improving, so obviously intact families then weren't as positive as they are now. And that would make sense, when they had problems like the courts refusing to let them escape their rapist.

And "illegitimacy" is just nonsense that means nothing. You don't have to have a piece of paper to have an intact home. Lots of people are opting out of the piece of paper and having their families anyway, and there is nothing "illegitimate" about a child born of parents without a piece of paper.

SmartCat said:

In The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind Jason Weeden & Robert Kurzban claim on the basis of a survey they mention in their appendix, but whose name I unfortunately forget, that when both marriage partners are virgins there is am 85% chance that they will stay married.

Currently, the divorce rate is over 50%. The illegitimacy rate is over 40%. Plenty of evidence exists that when children are raised by both parents living together in matrimony they tend to do much better in life than children no so raised.

---------

Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with profound economic disadvantages, but are also far likelier to eventually get into trouble with the law. As a Heritage Foundation analysis notes, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are much more likely to be physically abused; to be treated for emotional and behavioral disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to behave aggressively and violently; to engage in criminal activity; and to be arrested for a juvenile crime. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes.
Poverty and Crime - Discover the Networks

---------

When Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 many Americans were shocked by his assertion that fifty percent of American brides were not virgins. Now it seems unusual that fifty percent of American brides were virgins. Nevertheless, Kinsey seems to have overestimated the percentage of American homosexuals, so it is reasonable to suspect that he underestimated the percentage of bridal virgins.

In a country like the United States there is little the government can to do influence sexual behavior. Consequently, sexual behavior is not really a political issue. This is why the religious right has been unable to restore the ethos of the 1950, when the illegitimacy rate in the United States was six percent.

Nevertheless, I think it is beneficial to look back on the 1950's and measure what we've lost.

For the record, I am a Democrat who is in favor of legalized abortion and gay marriage. However, I have always viewed the religious right with interest, and a degree of sympathy.

Click to expand...

This sounds like "For the Children"!

Which pretty much causes me to pass ...

brothern said:

50% is a bad thing?! I think that's a pretty decent and solid score. I mean compare it to another "lifetime commitment". How many people are still in their first job? First career path? Or are actually using their bachelor's in a relevant industry? Right now I have no idea and my Google-Fu is lacking tonight ... but I'd guesstimate that it's a hell of a lot more than 50%!

Rather I think believing a 50% divorce rate is bad is a vast underestimation of humankind's dynamics. We're changing individuals. Each of us is the summation of every successive day in our life. Constant new experiences shape our personalities, our perspective, our skill-sets, our behavior and there on. We encourage young people to embrace change and to face new challenges in their education, careers and social circles. Why can't that attitude be applied to our relationships as well? Sure, there's children to be considered. However ignoring that for a second ... why shouldn't a childless, young married couple split after 10 years? When both have learned all that they can from their experience and need to move on? Or when the couple have grown apart. I hardly think such events and the resulting raw divorce rate should be considered a bad thing.

Click to expand...

This too. Especially for childless/free couples, I just don't see what the big deal is.

People view relationships as something to own and control that has to be dogmatically forced onto each other, rather than something we do to enrich each other's lives. If you stop enriching each other, why enforce your misery on your partner until the whole thing just explodes? Why not just be real with each other, move on, and maybe keep a friend?

Possessive and insecure notions of relationships destroy a lot more of them than the alternative. I have found much greater success in love since I stopped dating people who valued the model of the relationship more than they valued the person it's with. Oddly enough, valuing the person more than than model tends to make for much more peaceful and enduring relationships, in my experience.

The illegitimacy rate was 6% back then because it was social and career suicide. Very often she'd discover she was pregnant and then they'd hurry and marry before any found out. In addition, paternity tests didn't exist.

Basically what you're arguing is for the shackles to be returned. There are many things that can be done to lower rates of divorce that has nothing to do with promiscuity, such as a safety net for when one or both parents losing their job

You might also want to ponder whether it's human nature for people to live to 70 with a single partner

SmartCat said:

I have already explained why, from the standpoint of the children, it is.

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Not if the kids have moved out already. Your data includes divorces that occur at any time

And if the kids are the only thing holding a loveless marriage together....yikes, i feel bad for the kids too then

A lot of blatant nonsense in this thread. :roll:

Yes, crime and violence are down. I really don't have the foggiest idea what gives anyone the notion that the decline of marriage, or the greater acceptance of Social Libertinism brought on by the so called "Sexual Revolution," has anything to do with that, however.

At best, one could make the argument that abortion played a role in creating this state of affairs by simply making there be fewer people around to commit crimes or violence in the first place. Frankly, even then, I'm not really sure if "We cull the degenerate poor people in our society before they're even born, so they don't have any chance to commit crimes (while finding excuses to throw most of the rest of them in prison for decades on end in order to keep our streets safe from those who are born, and feeding those who avoid prison like particularly useless cattle on the Government dole)" is really something to be particularly proud of.

It's not like the American poor are legitimately any better off because of any of this, after all. In point of fact, most of them seem to have basically locked themselves into an inescapable cycle of endemic poverty, being enabled by counter-productive government programs, and fueled by unwed single mothers raising children ill-equipped to do anything other than live in, and ultimately bring their own children into, the same state dependent poverty that they themselves were born into, with little chance of escape.

Hmmm... This reminding anyone else of the "Proles" from George Orwell's 1984?

Meanwhile, in the name of raw, nihilistic, and supremely self-centered hedonistic materialism, the Middle Classes are slowly screwing themselves over by failing to reproduce to a large enough degree to actually replace their numbers in the population (how on Earth we're going to support all of the - essentially useless - state dependent persons mentioned above, or even the Middle Class persons living today once they retire in their old age, without a viable population capable of actually paying the taxes necessary to provide for their care is anyone's guess, but I digress). Furthermore, in many cases, they are even falling from their Middle Class status by engaging in the same economically precarious "children out of wedlock" idiocy as the lower classes even when they do reproduce.

Oh! And they're inventing God only knows how many new and exciting strains of sexually transmitted disease that our medical system will subsequently be taxed with having to cure in the process as well. :roll:

For that matter... Yes, marrying when one is economically stable enough to actually support a family certainly is preferable to doing so when one is desperately poor with no prospects. However, I don't think anyone ever disputed that, so I'm not even really sure why we're debating it.

I mean... Do any of you think that actually changes what the OP stated? Even if you do wait until after college and economic solvency to marry, it's still going to be (statistically speaking) religious conservative types with smaller partner counts, stronger morals, and less wild personal histories who are going to have the best chance of actually making their marriages work. :shrug:

Overall, it's a giant ****ing mess. It's going to remain a giant ****ing mess until people get serious about actually cleaning the ****ing thing up.

SmartCat said:

What matters is that as pre and extramarital sex have increased, divorce and illegitimacy have increased. As I pointed out earlier, divorce and illegitimacy are usually bad for children.

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Premarital sex goes up as divorce does - correlation not causation

Extramarital sex goes up as divorce and illegitimacy does - again, there are many reasons for divorce, not just sexual betrayal. Often they're economic, and i see little that the right wing ever does to help these families hold together

I was born a month before my parents married, aka illegitimate. I didn't even know until a few years ago. How could this possibly be bad for me? Again, your data includes such a wide array of circumstances

SmartCat said:

First of all, my factual assertions are valid. That alone that alone provides strong evidence that it is bad for children to be born out of wedlock.

Children raised by biological parents united in matrimony are more likely to be raised by loving, nurturing adults. That is the answer to each of your questions.

Teenage girls are more likely to be sexually abused by step fathers and the boy friends of their mothers, than by their biological fathers.

Click to expand...

If someone gets married, does that automatically make them loving and nurturing, or are loving and nurturing people more likely to stay married? I think you're confusing cause and effect here.

FieldTheorist said:

This does nothing to persuade me to think that the Religious Right are correct on any aspect of this discussion, including the very notion and idea that the institution of marriage itself is a worthwhile, praiseworthy institution.

Let's flip the question around and ask the real questions that have been smuggled into this:

1.) Why is it bad for children to be born out of wedlock? Who does this hurt?
2.) Why is the institution of marriage praiseworthy in the first place?
3.) Why is divorce immoral?

70% of criminals grew up in fatherless homes? My question is simply: So what? Overall crime rates, police officer deaths, etc, have been going down since the 1990's. Do you realize how many children have been born into single-parent homes? What percentage of them grow up to be criminals? A tiny few. So you're trying to imply that it's important that we keep women and men bound to an economic and sexually repressive relationship in order to protect the children and try to keep crime down? There's not even a hint here of a serious causal relationship between any of these things.

Please check out your own assumptions, because I can't quite seem to follow you on any of these logical leaps.

Click to expand...

i actually think there's evidence that 2 parents who are around a lot produces better outcomes on average than single parent. There are of course exception, such as parents who are constantly fighting or broke. However, i find a return to the repressive 50s to be an unjust sacrifice. Better off making birth control widely available and encouraging those not in a stable relationship and stable income to make use of it, but that is something the right wing hypocritically would never get behind

SmartCat said:

In The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind Jason Weeden & Robert Kurzban claim on the basis of a survey they mention in their appendix, but whose name I unfortunately forget, that when both marriage partners are virgins there is am 85% chance that they will stay married.

Currently, the divorce rate is over 50%. The illegitimacy rate is over 40%. Plenty of evidence exists that when children are raised by both parents living together in matrimony they tend to do much better in life than children no so raised.

---------

Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with profound economic disadvantages, but are also far likelier to eventually get into trouble with the law. As a Heritage Foundation analysis notes, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are much more likely to be physically abused; to be treated for emotional and behavioral disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to behave aggressively and violently; to engage in criminal activity; and to be arrested for a juvenile crime. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes.
Poverty and Crime - Discover the Networks

---------

When Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 many Americans were shocked by his assertion that fifty percent of American brides were not virgins. Now it seems unusual that fifty percent of American brides were virgins. Nevertheless, Kinsey seems to have overestimated the percentage of American homosexuals, so it is reasonable to suspect that he underestimated the percentage of bridal virgins.

In a country like the United States there is little the government can to do influence sexual behavior. Consequently, sexual behavior is not really a political issue. This is why the religious right has been unable to restore the ethos of the 1950, when the illegitimacy rate in the United States was six percent.

Nevertheless, I think it is beneficial to look back on the 1950's and measure what we've lost.

For the record, I am a Democrat who is in favor of legalized abortion and gay marriage. However, I have always viewed the religious right with interest, and a degree of sympathy.

Click to expand...

A couple of questions quickly come to mind.

Do we know how many surveyed, who professed to be virgins before marriage, were able to independently verify it?

Are people who wait to have sex until they are married more conservative and more religiously active or more likely to come from religious families than people who don't wait?

Are people with strong religious convictions more likely to remain in a bad marriage while those less religious are not?

What percentage of people with strong religious convictions cheat on their spouses compared to those who aren't very religious or not religious at all?