Capital Letters: Linear Thinking

In which our man in Washington contemplates the virtues of urban planning, literacy, and marriage

Michael W. Lynch from the May 1999 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

What social scientists refer to as the "selection effect"--that people who cohabit are, as a group, more adverse to commitment that the population at large, and therefore more likely to split up--is no doubt also at work. This, Popenoe explained, has been the chief area where other academics have focused their attacks on his report. In retrospect, Popenoe allowed, he wished he had used more ink addressing this issue.

In the Q&A period, Wade Horn attacked the authors for obscuring the issue of sex outside of marriage. "It's just easier to have sex a lot if it's OK to have sex before marriage, if you're living with the person, than if you have to take them out to dinner first," he said. I turned to the woman to my left, and embellished, "Even better, you can have them make you dinner first." She didn't find any humor in my thoughts and soon left the room.

A red-faced fellow jumped in, complaining about the lack of focus on the real problem: premarital sex. My notes read, "People were pissed that they didn't piss on premarital sex."

What do these people hate more, premarital sex or divorce? Divorce, for very good reasons, many of which were first articulated by folks such as these, is out of fashion. So to be sure that they only walk down the aisle once, individuals put off marriage as they establish themselves financially and personally. But individuals also feel the urge to merge--consider it a biological thing.

The choices for young people are early marriage, cohabitation, casual sex outside of cohabitation, masturbation, or complete celibacy. Early marriage leads to divorce. So, in social scientific terms, it's bad. Casual sex is out, on any number of grounds. We know, thanks to Joycelyn Elders, what people think about public policy discussions of masturbation. Complete celibacy? The report itself raises this idea in a dismissive way: "Cold showers anyone?"

The preferred prescription for the Heritage crowd appears to be young marriage, driven by the desire for sex, and no possibility of divorce when the couple finds the sex has gone flat and they don't really like each other any more. But this idea, in the words of Popenoe, is not "saleable." So we get thin social science.