MercatorNet: Pre-marital sex, cohabitation in place of marriage, marital infidelity, increased divorce rates -- these and other ills besetting marriage and the family have been traced to contraception. Is that too simplistic? Is the so-called contraceptive mentality really that pivotal to trends in society today?
Dr Tollefsen: It is difficult to overstate how deeply contraception has affected our social world. It is not simply that there is always a direct causal connection – no one is saying “Well, because people contracept, their marriages will fail,” for example. But contraception makes possible a world in which pre-marital chastity is no longer necessary; and this creates a world in which marital chastity is more difficult. It creates a world in which there is tremendous pressure on both spouses to work, and to postpone children, and this also creates new tensions in the family. And it seems plausible that the idea that we are entitled to the unrestricted satisfaction of our sexual desires has played a considerable role in the growth of the pornography industry, which also has wreaked havoc on the family. So the end result of a world broadly shaped by contraception is a world that is far from friendly to marriage and family.
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