Recent Historical Pressure on the Family: Damage and Hope

An individual can go along in life for a time without many apparent temptations. A change in life can increase the number and pressure of temptation. So too with times in social history. This article is simply intended to review some recent historical changes that have made family formation more difficult. Yet we should not forget that human family life was first disrupted by our first parents who gave in to the original tempter. Evil is boring because it is the deprivation of good – no new sins have been invented, only the rags they wear.

Marriage is a public act and institution. When a man and woman publicly vow fidelity for life they create a new society called family. Even if the couple cannot bear the obvious physical fruit of children they are already a family. Child-rearing or other contributions to the society as a whole was seen as a desired or natural consequence of family. In recent times we are subjected to thinking that would make a divorce between marriage and family, reducing marriage to a mere going public with a private friendship or relationship.

The Industrial Revolution

The history of civilization is largely in the context of agriculture. During historical times most humans have farmed. When a couple married it was with the ready-made family business of attempting to grow crops. The Industrial Revolution began in England with the disruption of traditional farming. As it increased it furthered the decline of farming. But it was not the invention of technology in itself that pressured the family. The way the modern industrial system developed was injurious. Instead of families, clans, monasteries, or villages owning the capital necessary to efficiently use the new technology, private individuals were able to hire those they had no personal connection with or responsibility for in order to do the work of their “private enterprise”. Human beings were on their way to being sexless replaceable parts.

Malthus

His “Essay on the Principles of Population” was published in 1798. He spent his years in the 19^th century retracting or adding to this work. He started with basic premises that he readily admitted were unoriginal: population can rise 2-4-6-8 but agriculture can only rise 1-2-3-4 to a set limit. Therefore the only real check on “overpopulation” is malnutrition. Agreement and opposition to Malthus marked economic thinking for the rest of the 19^th century. Arnold Toynbee (not his nephew Arnold J. Toynbee) in his small but important “Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England” devotes a whole chapter to Malthus. The Lectures were the pinnacle of Toynbee's thinking, published in 1884, a year after his death. What is of special interest for our topic is the following quote:

“I wish to speak of one more remedy, which Malthus himself repudiated, namely, that of artificial checks on the number of children. It has been said that such questions should only be discussed 'under the decent veil of a dead language.' Reticence on them is necessary to wholesomeness of mind; but we ought to face the problem, for it is a vital one. These preventive checks on births excite our strong moral repugnance. Men may call such repugnance prejudice, but it is perfectly logical, because it is a protest against the gratification of a strong instinct while the duties attaching to it are avoided...It is wrong to consider this question from the point of wealth alone; we cannot overrate the importance of family life as the source of all that is best in national life...Above all, it must be remembered that this is not a purely economic problem, nor is it to be solved by mechanical contrivances. To reach the true solution we must tenaciously hold to a high ideal of spiritual life. What the mechanical contrivances might perchance give us is not what we desire for our country. The true remedies, on the other hand, imply a growth towards that purer and higher condition of society for which alone we care to strive.

{pp 85 – 87; Beacon Press, The Industrial Revolution, Arnold Toynbee, published 1956}

1930

In spite of the very English sentiment expressed by the above quote, the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops removed the ban on artificial contraception in 1930.

Kinsey Report of 1948

The Kinsey report on “male sexual behavior” was published in 1948. This “report” was used for at least the next thirty years to claim unnatural sexual behavior as really not far from the norm. Some historical cultural sense is needed here: what kind of American male in the 1940's would sit and answer 500 personal questions about their sexual acts asked by the Kinsey “researchers”? The problem with the Kinsey reports (a female version was produced in 1953 and the question asked above becomes even more pointed) was not only the culturally abnormal population used for the statistics but the very notion that statistics can be used to argue for unhealthy behavior. What percentage of the population in the United States used tobacco in 1950? Since almost all of us have some unhealthy behaviors in other areas of life perhaps rather than trying to change those behaviors society should accept them or even promote them. Yet the morally anchorless world not only accepted the Kinsey facade of numbers but through the educational system set about to conform social reality to those numbers.

Technology and Medicine

All of the preceding is joined with the general developments in machinery and medicine that make the average life easier and longer. But this has been mostly a 20^th century event. When Queen Victoria died in 1910 the average life expectancy for American men and women was just under 49 and 52. Which was not much more than during the Roman Empire. That meant that at 25 or 26 half your expected life was over. As discussed elsewhere in this blog, this puts off maturing to a later time in life and puts us in greater disconnect with our biological potential.

1960 Hormonal Contraceptive Pill

The FDA approved the first contraceptive pill in 1960 and many women since have been harmed by this “treatment”. It took over twenty years for the profit makers to lower the dosage enough to remove the most obvious side-effects.

Damage

When family formation is no longer seen as the reason for marriage, shifts in society take place. Rather than union and procreation as the meaning of the marital act, the reassurance of companionship and sexual satisfaction are intended. That means, in other words, the marital act becomes merely a private pleasurable experience between companions. The entire biological structure of reproduction is defaced. Why even need public marriage?

Then why should anyone, even “married” men and women, resent or object to homosexual couples who are doing under the temptation of their mental health problem the same as they – engaging in bodily acts solely to produce sexual pleasure and re-enforce the ties of companionship?

In this unnatural view of human sexuality pregnancy becomes an “unwanted outcome”. Those brainwashed by our diseased cultural attitudes then continue to deny the biological reality of the presence of another human being. Shortly after the legalization of hormonal artificial contraception, nation after nation in the 1960's began to legalize abortion.

Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae – Guidance Now and Hope for the Future

When the Anglican Lambeth Conference approved artificial birth control in 1930 the Catholic Church had an immediate response. Pope Pius XI by the end of that same year issued the encyclical Casti Connubii. In this apostolic letter he re-affirmed the constant Christian teaching that anything that deliberately tried to remove procreation from the act of marriage was immoral. Thirty years later hormonal artificial contraception was embraced by the society that gave us trench warfare, atheistic communism, nazi concentration camps, the conventional and nuclear mass burning of Japanese civilians. Humanae Vitae in July 1968 was issued in the face of much misunderstanding and opposition. Even loyal members of the Church thought the new invention of the hormone pill could be viewed as a “regulation” of the menstrual cycle and not as a direct intervention in the marital act. Pope Paul VI with the help of the Holy Spirit saw clearly through this mistake. His encyclical has provided a guide for all subsequent Church teaching in the medical revolution we have been subjected to.

Throughout the Church's history challenges to faith and morals have been met by true and inspired prophetic teaching. Pius XI's Casti Connubii and Paul VI's Humanae Vitae are in that Tradition. They give us a blueprint and hope for the future. When our present culture is swamped by history these encyclicals will remain. Just as St. Augustine's thought in “The City of God” in the fifth century as the Roman Empire collapsed shaped the culture of Europe in the Middle Ages, so will these and other Church documents help us to survive and flourish as this culture passes away.

Addendum
This article was published April, 2013. On July 11, 2013 The Catholic Light of the Diocese of Scranton published a column by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, Ph.D in which he highlights the perversion of marriage and the role of contraception. He includes an apropos quote from Sigmund Freud: "The common characteristic of all perversions...is that they have abandoned reproduction as their aim. We term sexual activity perverse when it has renounced the aim of reproduction and follows the pursuit of pleasure as an independent goal."