The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century

by Louise Perry

Fatherlessness is associated with higher incarceration rates for boys,25 higher rates of teen pregnancy for girls,26 and a greater likelihood of emotional and behavioural problems for both sexes.27 This is not only because children are denied the material support their fathers might have given them but also because single mothers are obliged to take on the almost impossible task of doing everything themselves: all of the earning, plus all of the caring, socialising, and disciplining of their children. Then there’s the sometimes malign influence of step-parents – mostly, in practice, stepfathers, since in the vast majority of cases it is mothers who are awarded primary custody, and therefore mothers who are likely to bring a new partner into a young child’s home. Evolutionary psychologists refer darkly to a phenomenon known as ‘the Cinderella effect’: the higher incidences of child abuse by step-parents than by biological parents. The effect is so marked that Steven Pinker has described step-parenthood as ‘the strongest risk factor for child abuse ever identified’. A step-parent is forty to one hundred times more likely than a biological parent to kill a child,28 and stepfathers are also far more likely than genetic fathers to sexually abuse children. Stepchildren, on average, find home life more stressful than other children do. They leave home younger and are more likely to report that family conflict was their key reason for moving out. They have chronically higher level...