Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

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Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Joseph27 » 25th Sep, '10, 09:48

This article is from todays Australian newspaper... The only reason I post it is because of the following quote "Women take nine months to make a baby, while it takes a man 10 minutes"... I would like to ask Cardinal Pell if that is meant to include foreplay? I need ammunication in communications with my wife on longevity.... [smilie=groovy.gif]


FAR from bringing equality, contraception has redistributed power away from women, says George Pell.
THIS year is the 50th anniversary of the contraceptive pill, a development that has changed Western life enormously, in some ways most people do not understand.

While majority opinion regards the pill as a significant social benefit for giving women greater control of their fertility, the consensus is not overwhelming, especially among women.

A May CBS News poll of 591 adult Americans found that 59 per cent of men and 54 per cent of women believed the pill had made women's lives better.

In an article in the ecumenical journal First Things that month, North American economist Timothy Reichert approached the topic with "straight-forward microeconomic reasoning", concluding that contraception had triggered a redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.

Applying the insights of the market, he points out that relative scarcity or abundance affects behaviour in important ways and that significant technological changes, such as the pill, have broad social effects. His basic thesis is that the pill has divided what was once a single mating market into two markets.

This first is a market for sexual relationships, which most young men and women frequent early in their adult life. The second is a market for marital or partnership relationships, where most participate later on.

Because the pill means that participation in the sex market need not result in pregnancy, the costs of having premarital and extra-marital sex have been lowered.

The old single mating market was populated by roughly the same number of men and women, but this is no longer the case in the two new markets.

Because most women want to have children, they enter the marriage market earlier than men, often by their early 30s. Men are under no such constraints.

Evolutionary biology dictates that there will always be more men than women in the sex market. Their natural roles are different. Women take nine months to make a baby, while it takes a man 10 minutes. St Augustine claimed that the sacrament of marriage was developed to constrain men to take an interest in their children.

Men leave the sex market at a higher average age than women to enter the marriage market.

This means that women have a higher bargaining power in the sex market while they remain there (because of the larger number of men there) but face much stiffer competition for marriageable men (because of the lower supply) than earlier generations.

In other words, men take more of "the gains from trade" that marriage produces today.

Reichert also claims that this market division produces several self-reinforcing consequences, including more infidelity.

From a Christian viewpoint it is incongruous and inappropriate to consider baby-free infidelity as an advantage for women or men.

But younger women are likelier to link up with older, successful men than older women with young men, as any number of married women can attest after rearing children, only to find their husband has left for a younger woman.

Another consequence is a greater likelihood of divorce. Because of their lower bargaining power, more women strike "bad deals" in marriage and later feel compelled to escape. This is easier today because the social stigma of divorce has declined and because of no-fault divorce laws.

More women also can afford to divorce and, in some cases, prenuptial agreements provide insurance against the worst.

Only the official teaching of the Catholic Church remains opposed to the pill and indeed all artificial contraception, but this is not even a majority position among Catholic churchgoers of child-bearing age. Indeed, this particular Catholic teaching is often cited as diminishing the church's authority to teach on morality among Catholics themselves, as well as provoking disbelief and even astonishment among other Christians and non-believers.

Catholic teaching does not require women to do nothing but have children but it does ask couples to be open to kids and to be generous.

What this means in any particular situation is for each couple to decide.

Progressive Catholic opinion 40 or 50 years ago urged believers to follow their consciences and reject the church's opposition to artificial contraception. Today's advocates of the primacy of personal conscience urge Catholics to pick and choose among the church's teachings on marriage, sexuality and life issues, although they generally allow fewer liberties in social justice or ecology.

These changes, regarded as progressive or misguided depending on one's viewpoint, are not coincidental but follow from the revolutionary consequences of the pill on moral thinking and social behaviour; on the broadening endorsement of a moral individualism that ignores or rejects as inevitable the damage inflicted on the social fabric. This revolution was reinforced by the music of the 1960s, for example Mick Jagger's Rolling Stones, or the Beatles.

While early Catholic supporters of the pill claimed it would diminish the number of abortions, this has not eventuated. Whatever the causes, abortion rates have increased dramatically since the mid-60s in Australia and the US, although the number has peaked.

Real-life experience suggests that the "contraceptive mentality" pope Paul VI warned about in 1968 has had unforeseen consequences. To paraphrase Reichert, an unwanted baby threatens prosperity and lifestyle, making abortion seem necessary.

It is the women who bear most of the burden of trauma and grief from abortions.

Even women who believe deeply in the Christian notion of godly forgiveness, and those who do not believe in God at all, can battle for years with unassuaged guilt.

In support of his claims that women are bearing a disproportionate burden in the new paradigm, Reichert cites evidence that in the past 35 years across the industrialised world women's happiness has declined absolutely and relative to men.

We have a new gender gap where men report a higher subjective wellbeing. This decline in women's happiness coincides broadly with the arrival of the sexual revolution, triggered by the invention of the pill.

The ancient Christian consensus, which lasted for 1900 years, linking sexual activity to the lovemaking of a husband and wife to create new life, was first broken by the Anglican Church's Lambeth Conference approval of contraception in 1930.

In this new contraceptive era, where no Western country produces enough children to maintain population levels, the Catholic stance is isolated, rejected and often despised.

But the use of the contraceptive pill not only changes the dynamics within a family between husband and wife, it is also changing our broader society in ways we understand imperfectly.

But 50 years is not a long time; it is still early in the story.

Cardinal George Pell is the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney.
"truth is a group of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms; a sum of human relation which is poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed and adored so that after a long time it is then codified in the binding canon."

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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Fat Bob » 29th Sep, '10, 19:33

Why did you post that? I mean, how can a committed to being single and celibate (not to mention being a member of a society that has covered up paedophilia for years) give a balanced view on how the contraceptive pill has made a difference to modern life?

So, what are your views, Joe?
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Tas » 30th Sep, '10, 07:24

I just saw the name George Pell and moved along. Ditto Bobbus.
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Joseph27 » 30th Sep, '10, 13:01

Posting was akin to taking the piss - the notion that a celibate guy can make such a comment on this issue whilst the church he represents has engaged in a smear campaign against any form of contraception resulting in real world devastating consequences. The advantage now, at least is South America, is that the catholic church has lost its monopoly status to modernities 'evil ways'. We only have africa left where they still argue that condoms have small holes in them and that abstinence is the only way. In time the Valican will be a museum
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Snaffled » 30th Sep, '10, 14:42

Have you visited the Vatican? More like a museum, it could not be.

I agree that his comments in my opinion are mad and the organisation he represents is utterly discredited, but being celibate shouldn't mean one is forbidden from commenting on sex. I am not a red-shirt protester, but I certainly air my views on them candidly.
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by cromasaig » 30th Sep, '10, 19:49

Snaffled wrote: being celibate shouldn't mean one is forbidden from commenting on sex.
I don't think anyone is suggesting he doesn't have the right to comment. Merely that in so doing, he sounds like a right tit.

Still, how lovely to hear that the Catholic Church is so concerned with ensuring equal treatment of the sexes. I must mention it to the next female Priest I see.

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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Fat Bob » 30th Sep, '10, 22:56

You may find it difficult to find a female priest in any religion, never mind in Roman Catholicism.
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Burbage » 1st Oct, '10, 04:37

Fat Bob wrote:You may find it difficult to find a female priest in any religion, never mind in Roman Catholicism.
Bring on the Vestal Virgins.

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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Joseph27 » 1st Oct, '10, 08:50

My sister in law is a priest... then again anglicans allow for everything.

I was watching the Yes Primeminister episode yesterday in which the PM has to appoint a Bishop - the dialogue was gold and always fresh no matter how many times you watch it... 'a modernist is another way of saying an atheist'... very funny stuff.
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Fat Bob » 1st Oct, '10, 10:57

I disagree, she is not a priest.
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Joseph27 » 1st Oct, '10, 17:04

Thats true - shes a minister - priest requires a certain predisposition towards young boys
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Lichtgestalt » 1st Oct, '10, 17:23

Snaffled wrote: being celibate shouldn't mean one is forbidden from commenting on sex.
As we know now the priest actually did have a lot of experience on that sex topic... just not in a good way

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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Fat Bob » 2nd Oct, '10, 09:59

Joseph27 wrote:Thats true - shes a minister - priest requires a certain predisposition towards young boys
I was more thinking she was a priestess. Even burb the pedant didn't get that one. See, I'm above you all!
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Re: Relationships market after 50 years of the pill

Post by Burbage » 2nd Oct, '10, 17:44

Actually, to be pedantically correct, she is a priest.

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