The return of the bitter pill argument

The bitter pill argument (see here and here), for those who aren't familiar with it, is the claim that the sexual revolution has been a bad deal for women. That they were pushed into accepting greater sexual freedom and birth control and now are in a bad position where men have all the power in sexual relationships and are not marrying because it's so easy to get "cheap sex".

The share of Americans ages 25-34 who are married dropped 13 percentage points from 2000 to 2014. A new book by sociologist Mark Regnerus blames this declining rate on how easy it is for men to get off. 

Regnerus calls it “cheap sex,” an economic term meant to describe sex that has very little cost in terms of time or emotional investment, giving it little value. 

Regnerus bases his ideas, in part, on the work of British social theorist Anthony Giddens, who argued that the pill isolated sex from marriage and children. Add online pornography and dating sites to the mix and you don’t even need relationships.

"Isolated sex from marriage and children" in this context means that it used to be that sex carried a high risk of pregnancy and, therefore, women were very unlikely to give it outside of marriage. The pill and abortion removed this possibility and made pre-marital sex common. This gives men too  much power and leaves women their victims because men no longer feel they have to get married in order to get sex.

That's an interesting claim to say the least given that many feminists would argue the exact opposite saying that the high risk of pregnancy forced women into marriages they did not want along with a life of economic servitude. I'm inclined to give the most credence to feminists here as I don't see any evidence that most women are anything less than very enthusiastic for the pill and the freedom it gives them. In addition, I've never heard a man say that he wasn't getting married because he was already getting all the sex he wanted. Indeed, I've never heard a man say that he was getting married because that way he could get regular sex. The more common answer is that we get married because we are in love.

The more likely explanation, it seems to me, is on the other end of the equation: marriage has gotten too expensive. Marriage always was an expensive proposition for men not just in terms of financial exposure but, more significantly, in terms of emotional exposure. The situation for men has gotten much worse with divorce laws that make it easier for women to leave us and courts that tend to rule against men on matters of custody and child support. As the risk associated with marriage for men have gone up, fewer men are signing on.

But there is more than that as Dr. Helen, who also makes the point about the expense of marriage, notes.

It is harder to control men now than it was in the past and many control freaks don't like that sort of thing. Men are doing more than going their own way: they are finding ways to maintain autonomy and freedom in a world of increasing restrictions on their sexuality and livelihoods. Sex may be "cheap," but marriage is not -- and until our society understands that men are not pawns to be used by women and politicians for their own purposes, men will continue to go their own way, whether researchers want to believe it or not.

I'd go on to make a couple of other points that Dr. Helen is perhaps too polite to make.

1. One of the consequences of the sexual revolution is that most men now have first-hand experience with multiple women. When you do that you can't help notice that there are huge differences between women sexually. To be blunt, some women are better than others and, more to the point, some women are a lot worse at sex that others.
2. On top of that, women's enthusiasm for sex drops off considerably after an initial honeymoon period. That is inevitable and no one's fault. That said, there are huge differences in the way women react to this cooling off. Some take it as their responsibility to keep the flame alive and some don't. Some treat it as not their responsibility or even assume that it's a sign that love has died row as just an illusion and want to leave. 

Marriage is about more than sex but it is a sexual relationship at base and being married to a woman who doesn't care enough to put a lot of effort into sex is like slow death. In the past, it was just part of the deal. You made your vows and you took your chances. Most men didn't know there was any other possibility than what they got. Our expectations are now changed and we're simply not going to settle for the deal that was good enough in the past anymore.

Final point, even marriage-minded men will be very cautious about entering into a deal because it is no longer possible assume that women will hold to their commitments. Calling me sexist for saying so but most women are far more susceptible to the mood of the moment than men are. A woman's feelings about her marriage, about sex and about her job are highly influenced by the way she feels right now. Even her memories are conditioned by what she feels right now.  Only a woman who feels that marriage is a sacred trust that must be held out even through her dark times can be depended on and they are few and far between.

Bottom line: if you want more men to marry you'll have to make marriage a better deal for us. Dr. Helen nails it, "men are not pawns to be used by women and politicians for their own purposes." So stop trying to treat us as if we were.