One of the biggest societal issues that I have yet to write about is how contemporary western society fosters a prolonged adolescence. Anyone unfortunate enough to be present when I rant on the subject will surely tell you that you should be grateful I haven't written about it.

But a couple of pieces written have broached the subject that I feel obliged to share. The first is an Opinion Journal article written by Donald Sensing:

Today, though, sexual intercourse is delinked from procreation. Since the invention of the Pill some 40 years ago, human beings have for the first time been able to control reproduction with a very high degree of assurance. That led to what our grandparents would have called rampant promiscuity. The causal relationships between sex, pregnancy and marriage were severed in a fundamental way. The impulse toward premarital chastity for women was always the fear of bearing a child alone. The Pill removed this fear. Along with it went the need of men to commit themselves exclusively to one woman in order to enjoy sexual relations at all. Over the past four decades, women have trained men that marriage is no longer necessary for sex. But women have also sadly discovered that they can't reliably gain men's sexual and emotional commitment to them by giving them sex before marriage.

Nationwide, the marriage rate has plunged 43% since 1960. Instead of getting married, men and women are just living together, cohabitation having increased tenfold in the same period. According to a University of Chicago study, cohabitation has become the norm. More than half the men and women who do get married have already lived together.

The widespread social acceptance of these changes is impelling the move toward homosexual marriage. Men and women living together and having sexual relations "without benefit of clergy," as the old phrasing goes, became not merely an accepted lifestyle, but the dominant lifestyle in the under-30 demographic within the past few years. Because they are able to control their reproductive abilities--that is, have sex without sex's results--the arguments against homosexual consanguinity began to wilt.

When society decided--and we have decided, this fight is over--that society would no longer decide the legitimacy of sexual relations between particular men and women, weddings became basically symbolic rather than substantive, and have come for most couples the shortcut way to make the legal compact regarding property rights, inheritance and certain other regulatory benefits. But what weddings do not do any longer is give to a man and a woman society's permission to have sex and procreate.

In agreement with this, Lee Ann Morawsky writes:

Erich Frommer (I think, some shrink named Erik anyways) once said that fewer than 10 percent of all people really matured into true adults. Everyone else remained mental and emotional children. In the past, people were forced into adulthood by society. Society expected people to grow up and shoulder the burdens of manhood. Today, the opposite is true. Society encourages permanent childhood, the adolescence of Dorian Gray. Modern society, with its Pill and it s consumerism and its self-esteem, actively campaigns against adulthood. Adulthood involves responsibility and the shouldering of burdens. An adult takes responsibility not only for himself but also for those whose lives he impacts. Adulthood ain’t skittles and beer. The modern Adultescent wants the sensual games of childhood, with all the consequences tucked away, with pills and scalpels, into the ever expanding apron of Nanny State.

As it turns out, I'm something of a fan of the pill. For I suppose entirely selfish (and adolescent according to many) I don't particularly lament the disassociation of sex from procreation. Did that disassociation lead to the breakdown of the family that we see today? Both Sensing and Lee Ann make a pretty solid argument that it does.

That puts me in conflict. I find myself one of the most traditional and socially conservative people my age that I know (which says as much about my friends as it does myself). As I get older I find myself increasingly so. When politicians talk about family values, I no longer squirm.

At the same time, I have no desire to return to the way things were (or were supposed to be) in yesteryear. I believe that as a society we've screwed up a lot of useful norms and when I finally get on my soapbox you'll see that I do lament a lot of the changes made. But the notion of how the only way we as a society can be righteous is by being trapped is markedly disturbing to me.

On the other hand, if I lament the effects - such as a society that discourages maturity, stability, continuity, and morality - then am I somewhat obliged to lament the cause?

The easy out is to deny what Sensing and Lee Ann have to say, but I find myself agreeing with much of the premise. So then could the advent of the Pill have turned out any other way?

For me, it's a very important question.