Correct.

And all of this goes back to how people were called cranks for correctly foretelling in the 1910s that ice cream parlors would be the decay and ruin of society.

(Think I'm joking? Buckle up.) https://twitter.com/ahaacksucks/status/1141136784316723205

The traditional outlook on sex as tied to the purpose of reproduction, and therefore best occurring within marriage, is heavily dependent on all the pieces of the puzzle staying together.

Mess with any of these connections and the whole thing looks less coherent.

Why get married? To have a stable arrangement for bringing kids into the world.

Why stay married? To have a stable arrangement for child care, raising money, consistent values, and a stable home environment.

But it goes beyond that: when will you think of marriage? How will you know you are ready? How will you choose a good partner?

What is marriage?

Traditionally, community (or Church) elders were involved here, intended to impart information on better and worse choices.

So, where can the edifice be broken?

- Atomization of people away from tight-knit communities
- Increased "independent" (time preference) decision making
- Increased "sexual agency" (the Pill)
- Decreased need for a male breadwinner
- Decreased need for dedicated child care

It's important to note that marriage is a complex construct, like an airplane, or Chernobyl.

An airplane can still fly on one engine. Chernobyl didn't blow up as a result of one bad decision, but several bad decisions that lined up to spell catastrophe.

So with marriage, we had many changes that were individually seen as harmless or even positive, but on the whole, were not good for the structural integrity of marriage.

To continue the airplane analogy, this is like when the in-flight entertainment sparked a fire on a plane and wound up killing everyone.

Building a more entertaining experience can sometimes come at the cost of the basics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111

Of course when talking of changes to marriage, everyone thinks of the Pill. But technological change only occurs when culture permits or desires it.

The Pill: 1950

1950s female labor force participation: 34%

1978 female labor force participation: 50%

#history

Universal male suffrage movements: 1820s-1850s

Female suffrage movements: 1860s-1920

Industrial refrigeration: 1870

Rapid spread of ice cream parlors: 1890s-1920s

#history

So what was the objection to ice cream parlors in the 1910s?

They were places where teens could meet, unsupervised by parents or church elders.

This is no big deal to anyone now, but was definitely unheard of in many communities then.

This timing brought several things together: right on the heels of men without property getting the vote and becoming legally equal to men of quality, women were getting the vote, and coming into seemingly unprecedented power.

And there were these new meeting spots.

#culture

So, eager to try out their newfound power to decide things for themselves, and at a time when all society seemed to be minimizing the difference between cads and men of substance, women were offered unfiltered access to a variety of men.

This was the birth of #dating culture.

While many women persisted in thinking of dating as for the purpose of marriage, many others began to see it as something where they could have fun and try things out before settling down.

New customs began to spring up. A girl asking for a new pair of shoes was hinting a man might get lucky with her.

Not for nothing did H. L. Mencken write, "For $20 one cannot buy a good pair of shoes, but one can buy human dignity."

It is into this dating culture - of liberation from tradition, of liaisons for fun, of separating sex from marriage and procreation - that the Pill was brought.

The culture desired the Pill before the Pill was discovered.

And the result of this anti-natalist culture which desired the Pill, and eventually found it?

Recall that for the vast majority of human history, births were taken as a measurement of the health of a Nation. https://twitter.com/moritheil/status/1034864657427775489

People complaining about the social decay attending ice cream parlors were ridiculed for a few reasons:

1. There did not seem to be any immediate ill social effects.

Teens who got swept up in dating still got married and had kids, for the most part.

2. The technology did not really exist to make other ends happen, even if the logical conclusion of the teen dating attitude was fruitless sex to the point of artificial barrenness.

That would only come later, with the Pill, and with economic power.

Consequentialism - the idea that you can judge whether something is bad by its results - seems to be a poor way to judge long-term cultural shifts, which conclude very differently once technology advances.

The data we have now look different from the data of the 1910s.

#history