Socrates in the City Mary Eberstadt: The Dark Side of the Sexual Revolution
May 1, 2026
Mary Eberstadt, author and scholar of faith, culture, and family, explores consequences of the sexual revolution. She discusses contraception’s ripple effects on marriage, fatherlessness, and secularization. Short takes cover cultural narratives that erode intimacy, commercial profiteering from gender discord, and a case for reclaiming marriage, sacrifice, and community as antidotes.
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Childbirth Can Open People To The Divine
- Personal life events like childbirth can function as metaphysical awakenings that make belief more accessible.
- Eberstadt cites Whitaker Chambers' account of feeling 'the finger of God' when his first child was born as typical transformative experience.
Family And Faith Reproduce Each Other
- Family structure and religious practice form a mutual double helix that sustains both faith and family life.
- Mary Eberstadt argues rising singleton households, childlessness, and disrupted families since the 1960s have made hearing the divine far harder.
Contraception Triggered Unintended Family Breakdown
- The sexual revolution, enabled by mass contraception in the 1960s, had counterintuitive social effects contrary to early predictions.
- Instead of strengthening marriage and reducing abortion, contraception coincided with rising divorce, cohabitation, and abortion rates.
