We last encountered Mark Regnerus in the pages of the Washington Post, singing the praises
of early marriage. Last week, while I was blissfully unawares on
vacation, he took his argument to a friendlier audience with a cover
story in Christianity Today.
In the new piece, Regnerus casts himself as a truth-teller to
evangelical America, informing them that in their emphasis on sexual
purity, chastity, and virginity, the movement has forgotten to
encourage healthy marriages, particularly among the young. He writes
(emphasis mine):
Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other
Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their
mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of
them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their
mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain
from sex. It's battling our Creator's reproductive designs. The
data don't lie. Our sexual behavior patterns—the kind I documented in
2007 in Forbidden Fruit—give
us away. Very few wait long for sex. Meanwhile, women's fertility is
more or less fixed, yet Americans are increasingly ignoring it during
their 20s, only to beg and pray to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.
This message will be, I think, powerfully attractive to many
progressive Christians. It accepts -- and even celebrates -- the
naturalness of sexual desire. Regnerus writes, "sex feels great, it
feels connectional, it feels deeply human. I never blame [young adults]
for wanting that."
And yet, if you plumb Regnerus' worldview, you see that just beneath
the sex-positive surface is a deep yearning for traditional gender
roles. He's upset with Christian America not just because it has made
sex so shameful, but also because the community has bought into a trend
in the wider culture: that of encouraging both men and women to delay
marriage into their late-20s, in order to focus on education, career
success, and financial stability. "Most young Americans no longer think
of marriage as a formative institution, but rather as the institution
they enter once they think they are fully formed," he laments.
That's true -- and there are major benefits to that. As Regnerus
admits, financially-stable, highly-educated, slightly-older couples are
much more likely to avoid divorce. His solution to this problem is to
encourage parents and communities to offer more "support" to young
couples in love. He seems to envision all these young lovers as
middle-class college students with bright futures ahead, and parents
able to offer a gentle push toward bourgeois marriage, preferably with
open checkbook in hand. With their families' and ministers' approval
and counsel, Regnerus imagines, young people can reasonably marry at
the age of 20 or 21, and thus engage in guilt-free, God-sanctioned sex.
But in his enthusiasm for young women hunkering down at home with
hubby and kids -- they must not "ignore" their reproductive destinies!
-- Regnerus simply ignores the class implications of his argument. Poor
people in their early 20s don't have the inherited socioeconomic and
educational advantages that would make success at early marriage more
likely. Economic instability and early marriage are leading predictors
of divorce. Put together, they are disastrous for a couple's future.
If Regnerus really wanted to encourage early marriage and more
stable, young families, he might support government social safety nets,
such as universal health care, child care, and maternity and paternity
leave. All of these make parenthood and marriage more tenable for the
young and poor. Yet he describes himself in the piece as a lifelong
"fiscal conservative." It's hard, then, not to conclude that, like the
evangelical Christian movement as a whole, Regnerus is really more
interested in promoting "traditional" family life -- with a woman at
home -- than in revisiting notions of sexual abstinence.
cross-posted at TAPPED