Proof premarital permissiveness is a major cause of divorce

Just read a fascinating paper by Muhammed A. Asadi , which readers can check out HERE :

PREMARITAL SEX AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY .

It's pretty technical, but here are some highlights :

It was confirmed that premarital sexual permissiveness is a "cause" of divorce through cohabitation permissiveness. Literature review and existing data research showed that by affecting other variable, premarital sexual permissiveness weakens the marriage institution and affects divorce through multiple paths.

I argue that this "proximate cause" is the acceptance attitude towards premarital sex.

Structural-Functionalism regards regulation of sexual activity as one of the primary “functions” of the family. If you take this function away from the family, by liberalizing attitudes towards premarital sex (since nuclear families are formed via marriage), theory would predict a weaker family. Weaker families are more susceptible to divorce and being broken up.

Decrease in post-partum marriages: In the 1950s before the wide scale acceptance of premarital sex, most pregnancies that preceded marriage resulted in the man who had impregnated the woman marrying her (over 51%). This has changed since the acceptance of premarital sex and cohabitation (Wilson 1996). By the 1990s less than 25% of women who conceived a child before marriage got married before the child’s birth (Smith 1998:5).

According to the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS), a survey of 3432 adults in 1992, conducted among those born from 1933-1942, 94% of women married their first sexual partner compared to only 35% of women born from 1963-1970 (Schaefer & Lamm 1998:56).

cited in ed. Edwards, Demo 1999 :

“.... Attitudinal research strongly supports premarital sexual permissiveness as the most significant correlate of Extramarital sexual permissiveness (EMSP)." Evidence in support of other predictors is tenuous.”

Thus, the more permissive a person is regarding premarital sex, the more likely that he/she will cheat on their spouse.

Divorce rate for those who have cohabited before marriage is higher than those who haven't cohabited before marriage by over 10% (Kornblum 1997

What is ironic in the practice of premarital sex related to attitude today is that most of the post 1960 birth cohort, consider premarital sex “revolutionary,” “cool,” and “good.” What they don’t realize is that there is an almost universal acceptance of premarital sex among primitive people (Kinsey 1948 et.all).

Therefore there is nothing “advanced” about premarital sex.

By presenting women’s nudeness to sell everything from ballpoint pens to automobiles, they desensitized the public to viewing women as sex objects.

Women’s status and respect in society plummeted, compared to the 1950s, and crimes against women and domestic violence went up. According to psychologists, once a group is dehumanized and “objectified” as a thing, it becomes very easy to use violence against it (Kilbourne 1999 ). Women were being dehumanized and “objectified,” and being programmed to hate everything about themselves, by the media. Commercials and advertisements showed that every part of the female anatomy had to be given a new look in order to make it socially acceptable according to the “Barbie” image.

What was truly amazing was the deceit by which women were programmed to believe that this was something that built status and that they were being “liberated.” Women thus turned against themselves following the permissiveness of premarital sex. It is also interesting to note that most businesses displaying the “sexuality” of women, through the popular media and through their “respectable” trades, the “entertainment industry”, are owned by men.

society has convinced women that hating every part of their body, gives them “status”, that changing everything that is their true self is “liberating.” Once the image of women as “object”, whole or dismembered (as displayed in advertisements) was established, it became very easy for society to become violent against them. As expected, we saw a big escalation in rape and domestic violence. Studies find that over 60% of college women have been sexually assaulted after the age of 14.

It would not be wrong to theorize that this permissive attitude, according to the conflict school of thought, was: (i) introduced by men, who (ii) were always engaging in premarital sex,

even before the sexual revolution, (iii) to increase the number of women engaging in premarital

sex, (iv) desensitizing and perpetuating it through the media, owned by men, (v) so that they could be made objects of pleasure for men and kept subordinate through the “feminization of poverty.”

Shallower Relationships:

1. The permissiveness of premarital sex (+) led to greater individualism (via the breakup of the family as we saw earlier) (axiom 5(a)).

2. Individualism going up (+) led to shallower husband/wife & parent/child relationship (-) (axiom 5(b).

Thus, the greater permissiveness of premarital sex (through a contextual effect) led to shallower relationships in society (Proposition 5 logically deduced from axiom 5(a) and 5(b).

Marriage is seen as something that restricts freedom. However sociological research finds that:

. i) Married couples have a greater incidence of sexual activity, than the never married or
divorced. Activity and sexual pleasure is 25% to 300% greater among married couples
compared to non-married people at various age levels (Smith 1998).

. ii) Married people are “happier” in their sexual life than non-married people (the total
“amount” of sex among married couples is greater also than non married couples)
according to the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS) (Schaeffer 2000: 29).

. iii) Marriage reduces crime and juvenile delinquency according to crime analysts (Siegel
1994:69).

. iv) Marriage reduces the incidence of domestic violence (Blackenhorn 1996).

. v) Married couples with children have higher household wealth and income than divorced or
single parents.

As society became more permissive towards premarital sex, we saw the number of

women engaging in premarital sex increase by leaps and bounds. As a result, sexual dysfunction, described as a lack of interest in the enjoyment of sex, performance anxiety or inability to have an orgasm, increased. Therefore we saw that sex in a marriage results in greater happiness than

“single sex.” (According to NHSLH narrated above). A 1999 study narrated in the Journal of American Medical Association, considered the most comprehensive look at American sexual behavior since the Kinsey Report, stated that sexual dysfunction affects 43% of women and 31% of men. What was surprising was that this was not correlated with age and that the birth cohort of the pre 1960 period were less likely to report dissatisfaction or lack of interest than the post 1960 birth cohort (Kilbourne 1999:266).

Originally Published at: Disfigured Praise

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