Loren Pechtel

I think sexual norms are far more about protecting the Church's power than anything to do with children.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by luvluv
My father is always bugging me about a statistic that he read somewhere. Somebody went through the census from something like 1900 to 1960 comparing the date of marriage to the date of first born child. According to that study (if my father can be trusted) 60% of white brides before 1960 were pregnant at the altar!

My dad swears by this, though he can never find the book the stat supposedly came from.

While I haven't seen that stat it does not surprise me one bit.

I work with some people from a *VERY* conservative part of the country--arranged marriages *STILL* happen out there.
Of the marriages I have heard of since I took this job, 100% have been due to pregnancy. 100%.

I say all this to say that shotgun marriages can work in societies where there are strong enough social institutions to support them.

Well, I know several pregnancy-caused marriages. I know of none that still seem to be happy marriages.

Arranged marriages work remarkably well in societies that are arranged around them. For many cultures, marriage has always been a practical matter rather than a romantic one.

As an economic matter arranged marriages can work. It doesn't mean it will be a happy marriage, though.

scigirl

Who is doing that? Are these the only two choices?

scigirl

JamesKrieger

http://www.ncfr.org/pdf/PRESS RELEAS2.pdf

The data from other countries doesn't support your claim that increased sexual permissiveness results in these problems.

For example, in Sweden, there are lower STD rates, lower adolescent pregnancy rates, lower adolescent abortion rates, and lower adolescent birth rates (Darroch et al., 2001, Boethius, 1986). However, Sweden is more accepting of adolescent sexuality.

So is a sexually permissive attitude the problem? Probably not. The difference between Sweden and the U.S. is that, although Sweden embraces teen sexuality, it also emphasizes responsibility. The use of contraception and protection is stressed in the Swedish media. However, the American media displays an irresponsible image of sex.

Second, general media consumption is not very strongly associated with sexual permissiveness, at least in college students (Strouse et al., 1987). Not only that, but self-esteem was positively associated with sexual permissiveness and behavior.

So is the cause fatherlessness? Or is it poverty? Or could it be lack of education since lack of education is associated with poverty? The potential causes are multifactorial, and I would argue that you are committing the slipperly slope fallacy to try to tie all of this into the sexual revolution.

You have yet to provide data that these actually are products of the sexual revolution. I haven't seen pre-revolution/post-revolution stats from you. And I've provided you with data from Sweden, which is also permissive towards sex, yet doesn't have those problems. So is the sexual revolution really the cause? I doubt it.

You haven't dropped a huge pile of stats at my feet showing the pathologies resulting from the sexual revolution. I've seen a number of assertions. I've seen stats on fatherlessness, and you try to tie this into the sexual revolution. You are assuming that it's causally related to the sexual revolution. I have not seen pre-sexual revolution/post-sexual revolution data. Even if this data supported your case, trying to infer causality from it would be problematic.

I could show you a very strong correlation between ice cream intake and drowning incidence during the summer months, but I guarantee you that relationship is not causational. The strength of the association is not indicative of causality.

I would like to see these stats.

You continue to make this assertion but haven't supported it with any data even remotely suggesting a causal relationship.

Is having sex bad, or is having irresponsible sex bad? (again, see Sweden, or other European countries that are sexually permissive but preach responsibility)

I've seen nothing but one big slippery slope argument from you that a permissive attitude towards sex leads to all kinds of social ills.

It reminds me of the recent marijuana commercials that insinuate that smoking marijuana leads to all sorts of problems, from teen pregnancy to global warming to why my computer monitor isn't working correctly.

I've never bought "this must be good because I have nothing to compare it to" argument. That's like a person saying, "I know that I drive a beater car, but it's the only car I've ever driven...I'll never desire another car because I have nothing to compare it to."

scigirl

luvluv, you can't show causality by statistics alone. You have to do a very carefully controlled randomized trial, case study, or experiment. And even then, there could be confounding factors involved.

The fact that "corelation does not prove causation" is probably one of the least understood principles in science - even among the best scientists. It's so easy to make those leaps - our "common sense" tells us to. But it's very dangerous, and incorrect, to do so. For example, there was a study in JAMA recently about physicians and suicide. People had long assumed that the suicide rate in physicians was caused by having long stressful work hours and demanding tasks. But when the question was analyzed very carefully, with a control population - they found that these factors didn't correlate at all.

I challenge you to write up that study you were reading about in this fashion - if you want it to be accepted here (or at least by the science girl!):

Population studied:
Control population:
What survey did they do:
Results:

I repeat, the statistics alone are not ever, ever, going to prove causation. The methods behind the statistics are what do that - or at least come close to saying "we think x causes y." This of course applies to everyone's statistics. Does premarital sex cause sweden's great society? No, it's just related. Probably some other factor that at once allows the sex and creates the society does that. Perhaps it's lack of religious fundies! Or maybe it's lack of a national football league. Who knows - simple demographic studies are not designed, and cannot answer, our complex "why do humans do x and y" behavioral questions. They can only give us ideas - if x and y are not correlated, than x probably does not cause y.

Moving along...

I agree with JamesKrieger above - I'm all for responsible sex. Promote birth control, condoms, etc. If you eliminate pregnancy as a risk factor, tell me luvluv, what is your strongest argument against premarital or non-marital sex now?

scigirl

P.S. No offense to the NFL! Go Broncos!!

yguy

Among those who claim the profession of scientist in the modern era, there are those who seek the truth, and those who seek to create truth. Kinsey, it appears, was one of the latter, if this can be believed:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1..._05kinsey.html

Over the years, Kinsey's statistics and his methods have been debated at length, and found wanting in the rigor and precision he claimed for them. (A detailed analysis of the two reports can be found in the brilliant chapter on Kinsey in Paul Robinson's "The Modernization of Sex," published more than 20 years ago.)

Arguably, there was motivation on Kinsey's part to be less than rigorous in his investigations, considering this:

Just as one's eyes start to roll back in the head, however, comes one of the book's revelations. Kinsey was, by preference, mainly homosexual. He did date a woman, once, and very shortly thereafter asked her to marry him, which she did. Consumation was delayed for quite a while, because of their mutual ignorance of the mechanics involved. At some point in adolescence, Kinsey developed a taste for masochistic practices of a really cringe-inducing variety. (Two words here, and then I'm changing the subject: "urethral insertion.") He also had some pronounced voyeuristic and exhibitionistic tendencies. On bug-hunting field trips in the 1930s, he liked to march around the camp in his birthday suit, and he interrogated his assistants about masturbation. That his career was not destroyed by such behavior is, in itself, pretty remarkable.

Here's something which ought to make the likes of Pat Kelly want to sing Kinsey's praises:

And in his passion for gathering data, Kinsey's indifference to moral questions was exceptionally thorough. The most telling case was his amicable -- in fact, collegial -- relations with an interview subject known to posterity as "Mr. X," whose sexual history required 17 hours to record (most people took about two). Over the years, Mr. X had molested a few hundred children. When Kinsey learned that X kept exceptionally thorough notes on this activity, he came to think of the man as a pioneer in sexology. In the 1948 report, the data on the sexual capacity of preadolescents all came from the files of this amateur scientist, though Kinsey made some effort to disguise the fact.

It appears that the heralded Professor Kinsey had no greater quest than to make as many Americans as possible as much of a pervert as he was.

Hot enough for ya down there, Alfie?

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by yguy
Among those who claim the profession of scientist in the modern era, there are those who seek the truth, and those who seek to create truth. Kinsey, it appears, was one of the latter, if this can be believed:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1..._05kinsey.html

Yuck! That page is basically unreadable in Netscape 7! IE6 does it ok, though.

That article seems to be trying to bash the message by bashing the messenger.

Some of Kinsey's data on the frequency of various things in males are problematic as his interview populations weren't random--he aimed for those he thought more likely to be willing to do the interview and that biased his statistics somewhat. That doesn't mean there isn't a *LOT* of good information in his books, though.

yguy

I'm sure that Salon will be interested to hear that they are part of a fundy conspiracy to discredit Kinsey.

Considering his willingness to, among other things, make a certain serial pedophile's experiences part of his database, just how are we supposed to tell the good from the bad?

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by yguy
I'm sure that Salon will be interested to hear that they are part of a fundy conspiracy to discredit Kinsey.

So, they have one article that's unfair to Kinsey. So what?

Considering his willingness to, among other things, make a certain serial pedophile's experiences part of his database, just how are we supposed to tell the good from the bad?

And exactly what's wrong in accepting data from a bad source?

yguy

How is it unfair?

You didn't answer the question. We have clear evidence, it seems, that he was willing to use prejudicial data in some areas. That leaves all his data suspect; so the question, again, is how do we tell the good from the bad?