Time Immortal

John C. Wright has the details, linking to an article at First Things by Mary Eberstadt that looks at modern evidence, gleaned from sociological and sociobiological research and studies concerning the course and state of society, which demonstrates that the predictions of Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical have all come true.

Unfortunately.

Let’s begin by meditating upon what might be called the first of the secular ironies now evident: Humanae Vitae’s specific predictions about what the world would look like if artificial contraception became widespread. The encyclical warned of four resulting trends: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.

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Consider, as Wilcox does, the Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof. In a well-known 1996 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Akerlof explained in the language of modern economics why the sexual revolution — contrary to common prediction, especially prediction by those in and out of the Church who wanted the teaching on birth control changed — had led to an increase in both illegitimacy and abortion. In another work published in the Economic Journal ten years ago, he traced the empirical connections between the decrease in marriage and married fatherhood for men — both clear consequences of the contraceptive revolution — and the simultaneous increase in behaviors to which single men appear more prone: substance abuse, incarceration, and arrests, to name just three.

Along the way, Akerlof found a strong connection between the diminishment of marriage on the one hand and the rise in poverty and social pathology on the other. He explained his findings in nontechnical terms in Slate magazine: “Although doubt will always remain about what causes a change in social custom, the technology-shock theory does fit the facts. The new reproductive technology was adopted quickly, and on a massive scale. Marital and fertility patterns changed with similar drama, at about the same time.”

To these examples of secular social science confirming what Catholic thinkers had predicted, one might add many more demonstrating the negative effects on children and society. The groundbreaking work that Daniel Patrick Moynihan did in 1965, on the black family, is an example — along with the critical research of psychologist Judith Wallerstein over several decades on the impact of divorce on children; Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s well-known work on the outcomes of single parenthood for children; Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur’s seminal book, Growing Up with a Single Parent; and David Blankenhorn’s Fatherless America, another lengthy summarization of the bad empirical news about family breakup.

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In sum, although a few apologists such as Stephanie Coontz still insist otherwise, just about everyone else in possession of the evidence acknowledges that the sexual revolution has weakened family ties, and that family ties (the presence of a biologically related mother and father in the home) have turned out to be important indicators of child well-being — and more, that the broken home is not just a problem for individuals but also for society. Some scholars, moreover, further link these problems to the contraceptive revolution itself.

Consider the work of maverick sociobiologist Lionel Tiger. Hardly a cat’s-paw of the pope — he describes Religion as “a toxic issue” — Tiger has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of the sexual revolution to today’s unique problems. The Decline of Males, his 1999 book, was particularly controversial among feminists for its argument that female contraceptives had altered the balance between the sexes in disturbing new ways (especially by taking from men any say in whether they could have children).

Equally eyebrow-raising is his linking of contraception to the breakdown of families, female impoverishment, trouble in the relationship between the sexes, and single motherhood. Tiger has further argued — as Humanae Vitae did not explicitly, though other works of Catholic theology have — for a causal link between contraception and abortion, stating outright that “with effective contraception controlled by women, there are still more abortions than ever. . . . Contraception causes abortion.”

Catholics, and the Pope, were poo-pooed from pretty much every quarter for speculating that elevating birth control to the status of a social norm — or even a social expectation — would ultimately cause many more problems than it would solve. The opinion of the Church was considered to be one of ignorance, backwardness, and fear.

Instead, it has been shown to have been nigh-prophetic…which, unfortunately, means that society has indeed suffered a great detriment that it could potentially have spared itself.

Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred link to an article from Quadrant that discusses the pressures that modern young women often find themselves facing. It’s a pretty terrifying read, and I also think it’s a rather damning indictment of feminism and the various social changes that have emerged out of, or parallel to, that movement. Oh, don’t get me wrong — early feminism achieved some good ends. But suffrage and wage equity were one thing; abortion and the “liberation” of sexuality were quite a different thing, and then not nearly so beneficial.

Trends in popular culture, the insidious creep of the cult of bodily perfection, the dominance of fad diets, billboards and magazines depicting flawless female forms, all play a part. Then there’s the commercial interests of companies marketing the promise of success in life through the bowling-ball breasts preferred by readers of Zoo.

Another significant factor is that the movement for women’s equality was overtaken by the movement for sexual licence — the sexual revolution. To be free has come to mean the freedom to wrap your legs around a pole, flash your breasts in public, girls-gone-wild style, or perform acts of the oral variety on school-boys at weekend parties in lieu of the (as traditionally understood) goodnight kiss.

IN AN AGE OF “Girl Power”, many girls are feeling powerless. They are facing unprecedented social pressure, their emotional and psychological well-being at risk in ways never before imagined.

I understand that the 1950s weren’t exactly all that and a bag of chips for women, and that’s unfortunate. But it has to be said: back then, things were a lot more…well…wholesome. “Sex sells” was hardly the norm in marketing, and the televisions and billboards were not plastered with nudity and just-shy-of-soft-core-pornographic imagery. One might have been able to thumb through a Life magazine and note the presence of a lingere add or two, but even these were reasonably tasteful when compared against even what one can sometimes find in the Sears catalogue.

Heck, even the pinup girls were normally proportioned, and had figures that any reasonably healthy women wouldn’t have to starve herself to emulate. For whatever scandals might have surrounded Betty Page or Marilyn Monroe, their figures were normal and healthily proportioned; they weren’t Photoshopped, nor were they expected to be. Nowadays, one can hardly see a woman (or a man) in a magazine or newspaper who hasn’t had their picture retouched in some fashion.

The body has become a project that a girl has to work on full-time. If she stops to even take a breath, she might gain weight. Too many girls are trying to imitate half-starved celebrities, and are obsessed with trying to conform to impossible-to-attain highly sexualised images. Some sobering statistics:

A Mission Australia national survey (2007) of 29,000 young people aged eleven to twenty-four found that body image was the most important problem for them — ahead of family conflict, stress, bullying, alcohol, drugs and suicide.

The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health found that between 40 per cent and 82 per cent of young women were dissatisfied with their weight and/or shape.

Close to 20 per cent of adolescent girls use fasting for two or more days to lose weight. Another 13 per cent use vomiting. Others rely on slimming pills, chewing but not swallowing food, smoking and laxative abuse, as found in the 2006 National Youth Cultures of Eating Study.

One in 100 adolescent girls suffers anorexia.

An estimated one in five is bulimic.

One in four teenage girls wants to have plastic surgery, according to reports in August last year.

To say nothing of the hyper-sexualized images one sees constantly thrown at young women from every angle. Dove is maybe the one exception to this trend, what with their “Campaign for Real Beauty” and their use of normally-proportioned women in their marketing campaigns. Still, one notes that Dove does make and market products that ostensibly are to be used to “firm up” the skin and keep it “looking young”, thus stoking the fires of the dissatisfaction with body image that plagues many women today.

And much of this can be traced back, I think, to when feminism and other movements sought to “liberate” sexuality, especially female sexuality. The outcome of such a goal should have been predictable — once sex was no longer something “special”, titilation was fair game for marketers. And like the old maxim about Labour Day and white clothes, once sex was liberated it was only a matter of time before women who didn’t look and dress a certain way, and who didn’t “put out” when it was demanded of them, would be thought of as having committed some kind of faux pas.

Feminism, at its outset, did some great things for women. But in the wake of the sexual revolution and its disastrous results, it would seem that the drive to “liberate” women has only left them in heavier, more tightly fastened shackles.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!