Getting Married · Chapter
The New Attack on Marriage explained
This chapter argues that the contemporary attack on marriage is no longer based on romantic or libertine objections, but on the demographic crisis caused by declining birth rates.
What happens
This chapter argues that the contemporary attack on marriage is no longer based on romantic or libertine objections, but on the demographic crisis caused by declining birth rates. It contrasts the old religious revolt against marriage, exemplified by St. Paul's reluctant sanction, with the modern realization that marriage, now failing to reproduce the population, is destroying society. The chapter criticizes defenders of marriage for focusing on outdated threats while ignoring the real danger of depopulation.
Themes in this chapter
Population and Social Consequences
The chapter centers on the claim that marriage is now depopulating the country, framing the new attack on marriage as a response to demographic decline rather than individual freedom.
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
The author criticizes defenders of marriage for ignoring the real crisis while clinging to outdated moral positions, and contrasts the supposed libertinism of free lovers with the hidden 'licentiousness' within marriage.
Critique of Marriage as an Institution
The chapter presents a sustained critique of marriage as a 'sanctuary for pleasure' that now fails to fulfill its reproductive function, echoing St. Paul's instinctive recoil from marriage as a form of mutual slavery.
Key passages
“What is driving our ministers of religion and statesmen to blurt it out at last is the plain fact that marriage is now beginning to depopulate the country with such alarming rapidity that we are forced to throw aside our modesty like people who, awakened by an alarm of fire, rush into the streets in their nightdresses or in no dresses at all.”
Religious and political leaders are finally speaking openly because the declining birth rate linked to marriage is so severe that it forces them to abandon all pretense of modesty, much like people fleeing a fire without regard for proper attire.
This metaphor emphasizes the urgency and embarrassment of the demographic crisis.
“The fictitious Free Lover, who was supposed to attack marriage because it thwarted his inordinate affections and prevented him from making life a carnival, has vanished and given place to the very real, very strong, very austere avenger of outraged decency who declares that the licentiousness of marriage, now that it no longer recruits the race, is destroying it.”
The imagined figure of the free lover, who opposed marriage for selfish romantic reasons, has been replaced by a serious moral critic who argues that marriage's own indulgence, now that it fails to produce children, is leading to societal destruction.
This contrast shifts the critique of marriage from personal freedom to social responsibility.
“St. Paul’s reluctant sanction of marriage; his personal protest that he countenanced it of necessity and against his own conviction; his contemptuous 'better to marry than to burn' is only out of date in respect of his belief that the end of the world was at hand and that there was therefore no longer any population question.”
St. Paul's grudging acceptance of marriage, which he saw as a necessary evil, is now outdated only because he thought the world would end soon, making population growth irrelevant.
The author uses St. Paul to show that even early Christian objections to marriage were based on different premises than the current demographic crisis.