Review of Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution by Mary Eberstadt

Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution by Mary Eberstadt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Title: (Brief) overview of (mostly) current societal problems with no (readily apparent) solutions

I came late to the party on this one (it was published in 2012), and I think I've learned my lesson from now on: reconsider reading a book on the social sciences that is more than, say, two years old. Our times are moving too fast. So, even at 7 years out, I find this work somewhat dated already.

I read this book immediately after reading Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones, and there are certain similarities. Jones and Eberstadt are both Catholic. Both sometimes wear their Catholicism on their sleeves as they write. (Jones more than Eberstadt.) Both drop Latin phrases here and there throughout, so have your laptop or mobile handy for translation services. Both assume much previous reading from their audience; Jones is much worse than Eberstadt in this regard; still, Eberstadt drops such names and terms as the Monyihan Report, Kant, Aquinas, the Anglican Church, Casti Connubii, blog posts and opinion pieces in the popular press, novels, movies, etc ec often providing little or no context. In other words, if you've never heard of the blog post, article, movie, or novel, you'll be lost. And, like Jones, Eberstadt could have used scripture to support her reasoning and arguments more effectively.

And then there's the title. Yes. The title. If you want to put off a majority of your readers at the outset, go for the jugular, is that it? Because most readers believe Adam and Eve is a fairy tale. A quaint fairy tale that pisses them off because of its many-layered ramifications for life, belief, faith (or lack thereof), relations between the two genders (if you still believe there are only two genders), and God (or lack thereof).

Setting all that aside, there's much to enjoy about the book. Eberstadt has done a real service, I think, by simply writing and publishing a book like this, to even question the validity of progressive ideals ("progress" = societal good; in this equation, "progress" generally means tearing down the perceived establishment). For example, for decades, and even today, the normal family unit (father-mother dyad with biologically conceived children) has been the target of feminist-marxist thought leaders and activists. And she does a very good job of collecting together and presenting popular and scientific thought on a variety of related topics (sex, porn, sex education, family structures) and what it all means for society. Mostly.

In some cases she stumbles.

For example, Eberstadt truly seems puzzled by the lack of logical thinking among progressives and The Left, often wondering aloud in the text why they see the bad results of the sexual revolution in front of their faces (in the form of the general lowering of moral standards in Western societies; a rise in infidelity; rise in fatherless homes and the subsequent rise in juvenile delinquency; a lessening of respect for women by men; coercive use of reproductive technologies by government) but yet seemingly don't recognize it. Solzhenitsyn drew the same parallels for leftists in the West who not only failed to see the degeneracy of communism staring them in the face but rather *embraced* it. The same applies today, and there's nothing puzzling about it, I think, unless you're unwilling to recognize it for yourself. And that is simply this: some people love the darkness. Progressives cannot learn because it is not in their nature to learn; they must always be "progressing," always be tearing down some establishment, some established order; because this is what they do. Evidence abounds all around our society of this type of decay. Scriptural application here would be: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly", and: "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness."

Like a good Catholic, Eberstadt is quick to showcase Catholic thinkers, theologians, and popes, but she's short on actual scripture. It's a weakness of her work because she missed some real opportunities to share life wisdom.

And, unfortunately, in later parts of the book her logic becomes convoluted. For example, she quotes the female Roman Catholic philosopher Anscombe: "If contraceptive intercourse is permissible, then what objection could there be after all to mutual masturbation, or copulation in vase indebito, sodomy, buggery..." (p. 150). I had to really pause over this passage to take it in and marvel at it. And I still can't get to a place in my thinking where every sexual act must necessarily be tied inextricably to the possibility of creating human life.

Another example: "By giving benediction in 1930 to its married heterosexual members purposely seeking sterile sex, the Anglican church lost, bit by bit, any authority to tell its other members--married or unmarried, homosexual or heterosexual--not to do the same. To put the point another way, once heterosexuals start claiming the right to act as homosexuals, it would not be long before homosexuals started claiming the rights of heterosexuals." (p. 150)

I had to read that twice to try to understand its logic, but I still can't do it. Better to simply state the obvious points on heterosexuality vs. homosexuality, I think. That is: if everyone in the world were homosexuals practicing exclusive homosexual sex, the human race would die (but there are some extreme progressives who think humans are a disease on the earth, so perhaps this isn't a good example); so heterosexual intercourse is needed to continue the human race. Ergo, homosexuality is not a natural state of being.

Her logical connections between pedophile priests and contraception seem absurd to me.

Is abortion repugnant to me personally as a Christian? Yes, it is. And at the same time I completely understand that public policy must make way for human laziness and stupidity. (Why don't all the people put away the weights at the gym after they're done using them? Because certain people are lazy and selfish.) Thus, some reasonable accommodation must be made in the public sphere on this issue.

In the end, Eberstadt is short on real-world answers and useful solutions, and at times seems simply naive. For example: "Seen in the light of actual Christian tradition, the question is not after all why the Catholic Church refused to concede the point [on contraception use]; it is rather why just about everyone else in the Judeo-Chrisitan tradition did. Whatever the answer, ..." (p. 156). Well, here's the answer: a little leaven leavens the whole bunch. (But, what exactly is this "Judeo-Christian tradition" anyway? Can there be such a thing with such hatred and animosity from one group to the other? See Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them?
Liberalism can’t abide conservative evangelicals. James Q. Wilson, Winter 2008, City Journal.)

And again: "From time to time since 1968, some of the Catholics who accepted 'the only doctrine that had ever appeared as the teaching of the Church on these things,' in Anscombe's words, have puzzled over why, exactly, Humanae Vitae has been so poorly received by the rest of the world." She then lists out a few possible answers--bad timing, the secular media, lack of full explication of the matters, such as addressed decades later in John Paul II's Theology of the Body. She lands on "contraception itself"; borrowing the phrase from Archbishop Chaput. This view is sorely mistaken, though, because it focuses on a man-made invention to sidestep the most fundamental issue: man's broken heart, and man's broken relationship with God. This is foolishness to the unbeliever, of course. Which is why, I think, she's grasping at secular straws to make a spiritual argument. But it won't ever work, because I think you must dig much deeper, to the fundamentals, for the answer.

And again: "What happens when, for the first time in history--at least in theory, and at least in the advanced nations--adults are more or less free to have all the sex and food they want?" (p. 95) This is a terribly misguided statement, considering that women are the gatekeepers of sex (eggs are valued, sperm is not; women are a protected class, men are a disposable class) and that hunger is still a very real issue for 40 million Americans.

In other spots her analogies don't hold, for me. For example, Chapter 7, Is Pornography the New Tobacco? posits that, yes, porn can be compared to where tobacco was in the early/mid 1960s. Creators/distributors are opening new markets (money) by targeting women. The analogy doesn't hold because it's known that "men have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex, making sacrifices for sex, and other measures. No contrary findings (indicating stronger sexual motivation among women) were found. Hence we conclude that the male sex drive is stronger than the female sex drive." (Source: Is There a Gender Difference in Strength of Sex Drive? Theoretical Views, Conceptual Distinctions, and a Review of Relevant Evidence. Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen R. Catanese, Kathleen D. Vohs. Personality and Social Psychology Review. First Published August 1, 2001. Simply stated: women don't like, want, seek, or need sex as much as men do. Armed with information like this, it's hard to see how pornographers are going to make much economic inroads with female audiences. So, no, in the final analysis, porn is *not* the new tobacco.

All in all, though, I found this to be an interesting book with important things to say on the topic of sexual relations between men and women (specifically in the West) and how those have devolved since the invention of the pill. I suppose answers will only be forthcoming, though, when enough people look around and see the host of problems we've created for ourselves with our inventions. But by then it may be too late.

I liked it
3/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon



View all my reviews