Mark Regnerus is a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Premarital Sex in America, Forbidden Fruit, and other research on dating and relationships. In the wake of the hacking of Ashley Madison, the website that facilitates adulterous encounters, he took some questions about the miserable scene and the state of marriage in America.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: As someone who studies dating/mating/marriage, what are your thoughts about the Ashley Madison hack story?
Mark Regnerus: It’s sad, at a really deep level. I presume the hackers, whoever they are, feel like they are rendering a great justice, but I don’t share such confidence about it. A corrupt company was formed to meet (and let’s be honest, stimulate) demand for adultery, many people paid to get exactly that, and now havoc is being wreaked, divorces commenced, and there is news of not a few possible suicides over it. It’s this last part taking one’s own life – that reveals some of the depth of pain and guilt that some are feeling here. The context of their lives and marriages are unknown, but not their transgression. No one should take pleasure in any aspect of this.
Lopez: What do you make of the existence of Ashley Madison and that it apparently has some 30 million users throughout the world?
Regnerus: I’m not sure those figures will hold. My suspicion is that the real number of actual subscribers is dramatically lower than that. But its existence is not surprising. While capitalism may be the best system there is, when it is morally unregulated this is what you should expect – the rise of supply for longstanding demand in extramarital sexual partners.
Lopez: What does this all say about marriage today?
Regnerus: I don’t think it says a great deal about marriage today, except to remind us that the forces – and people with profit motive – seeking to tear it down are plentiful. The data continue to show that few Americans approve of extramarital sex, but some display more ambivalence than condemnation of the idea. In the Relationships in America survey I oversaw in 2014, we asked over 8,800 married adults whether they agreed that “it is sometimes permissible for a married person to have sex with someone other than his/her spouse.” Only 1.5 percent of them strongly agreed, and another 6 percent simply agreed. But a larger group, 12.6 percent, said they neither agreed nor disagreed. And yet among married adults up through age 60, just under 10 percent said they had had a sexual relationship with someone else at some point while they were married.
Lopez: Have you seen tried and true programs or organizations that help marriage stay out of the adultery zone?
Our problems are systemic. We don’t really need marriage anymore, and that fact is considered progress. It is bad anthropology.
Regnerus: I haven’t, which is not to say that they don’t exist. One of the problems here is that men and women often cheat for quite different reasons. And adultery is not always about dissatisfaction. The work of Don Baucom, a professor at UNC–Chapel Hill, in this area is helpful. He notes that men who cheat will often do so in spite of a decent marriage. He’s been part of a team developing effective cognitive-behavioral couples therapy to survive adultery.
Lopez: What do you say to single young people dismayed about the possibility for successful marriages?
Regnerus: I understand the dismay. It’s prompting lots of people to delay marriage or forgo it altogether. But a solid marriage is an amazing (and difficult) thing. And yet the marriage rate is declining; fewer are getting hitched. It is no longer the predictable anchor of the adult life course in the West. On the bright side, it tends to mean that those marriages that do exist will be of higher quality than in the past, when marriage was more of a cultural expectation and economic necessity. Those days are clearly behind us. Few cultural institutions, save for organized religion, care about marriage anymore. Kids lose out, because they don’t care nearly so much about the quality of their parent’s marriage (and certainly not their sex life) as their parents do. They just want them to stay together. As one of the interviewees in the Humanum film series put it, marriage “is your own sacrifice for the world.” Well put.
Lopez: Is talk of complementarity between the sexes relevant to anything anymore?
Regnerus: “Talk” of complementarity is often made fun of. The reality of complementarity, however, is everywhere. That’s not going away, since it’s built into the fabric of the social and sexual order. Human efforts to mimic it, while disparaging it, are humorous reminders of the limits of the social construction of gender.
Lopez: What do you find most troubling about marriage today? Most encouraging?
Regnerus: It’s more a lament than it is a specter, but I find it discouraging that people don’t seem to need their marriages. Even conservative parents don’t raise their children to value the sort of interdependence that marriage historically fostered. We’re in that in-between time where the unintended consequences of this mentality and practice have not yet fully come home to roost. Greater suffering and loneliness are ahead (and I’m not talking about religious persecution). But I’m encouraged that there are many around the globe who still recognize marriage’s value and struggle for it. May their kind increase (and they very likely will).
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Lopez: Pope Francis comes to the U.S. for the World Meeting of Families in a few weeks. Can he help?
Regnerus: Yes, although I anticipate any encouraging words of his on marriage and family to be a short-term shot in the arm rather than a game-changer. Our problems are systemic. We don’t really need marriage anymore, and that fact is considered progress. It is bad anthropology – a poor understanding of what human persons are and are for. The Holy Father understands that, but most who hear him won’t.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review Online. She is co-author of the new revised and updated edition of How to Defend the Faith without Raising Your Voice.