Daddy Issues All the Way Down

Mary Eberstadt’s first publication Adam and Eve after the Pill: The Paradoxes in the Sexual Revolution 2012 was a year that she criticized the reproductive dynamics of the post-liberation world. She also offered a contrarian message about large-scale contraceptive devices, such as the birth-control pill. This would have allowed couples to conveniently separate their sexual activity and its natural procreative end. Many were not ready to listen to what she had to share.

That was in 2000. In the ten years since, a lot has happened. Eberstadt admits this in the updated book. Adam and Eve after the Pill RevisitedThe rise in social unrest over the last 10 year has led to a growing suspicion of liberation’s false promises, sometimes even among the most skeptical. Unexpected sources.

It would be a good idea to start by saying that I was reading. Adam and Eve after the Pill Revisited I was also rereading Cormac McCarthy’s book. The RoadThe 2006 novel, titled ‘The Father’s Tortured Mission to Protect His Son’. It is a story about a father who attempts to save his son during a post-apocalyptic world that is hostile to the most vulnerable. Both of these books influenced my reading. So, I was struck. Like othersEberstadt’s discourse about the “fury of the fatherless,” This creates a link between a pill that allows fathers to give up their responsibilities and a fatherless generation who turns to activism and identity politics to foster a false sense kinship than a traditional family in an era gone by. This contrasts with the selfless, selfless father of The RoadHe willed his child’s good in spite of all odds.

Let’s examine this. Eberstadt’s argument is essentially this: The pill’s invention has undermined the natural law that conception can be co-creative. It suggests instead that the woman has more control over the outcome of her sex. It allows women to put off childrearing and pursue a career. This increases competition for higher education and discourages hypergamy (marrying too many). These conditions, along with government willingness to play, have made it difficult for male agency to be undermined. “super-daddy” America has seen fatherlessness worsened by giving welfare to single mothers. “Some 40 percent of all children lack a biological father in the home,” Eberstadt writes.

This is not new for the ultra-religious right. What is new is the colourful array of examples from the past