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Is America Entering a New Victorian Era?
Townhall.com ^ | July 28, 2015 | Michael Barone

Posted on 07/28/2015 5:03:15 AM PDT by Kaslin

Forty-seven years ago, the musical "Hair" opened on Broadway. Elderly mavens -- the core theater audience then, unlike the throngs of tourists flocking to cheap movie adaptations today -- were instructed that America was entering an "Age of Aquarius." The old moral rules were extinct: we were entering a new era of freedom, experimentation and self-expression.

In some ways, the prediction came true. Rates of divorce, cohabitation before marriage and illegitimate births rose sharply in the years after 1968. The percentages of children living with two parents fell sharply. The "Hair" version of history -- hundreds of years of oppression followed by a sudden trend toward evermore liberation -- seemed plausible, even persuasive.

But history is not unidirectional. Trends get reversed or arrested sooner or later. Behaviors that at first seem modern and refreshing come to seem antique and old-fashioned. People adjust to new experiences just as they adjusted to old.

Today, several widely unanticipated trends -- certainly unanticipated by me -- suggest that America is in some significant respects entering a new Victorian Era. Some may regard that as regrettable, others as welcome, still others as a mixture of good news and bad news. But it's certainly news, especially to the aging baby boomers who expected the Age of Aquarius to continue indefinitely.

One such trend is the sharp decline in teen sexual activity. A Center for Disease Control survey showed that less than half of teenagers over 14 in 2013 have engaged in sexual intercourse, a sharp decline from 1988 -- and the decline is sharper among males than females.

Commentators are puzzled as to why this has been happening. Sexual appetites have surely not diminished and popular culture has hardly encouraged abstinence. The trend started well before teens got hold of smartphones or received HPV vaccines.

An accompanying trend is a sharp decline in births to teenage mothers. Increased use of contraceptives, including morning-after pills, may explain some of this. But abortion doesn't: the number of abortions has been declining since the 1980s.

Conservative millennial author Ben Domenech sees these trends as a "triumph of soft conservatism over time," but also as "another aspect of modern risk aversion." That latter trend is also apparent in the decline in unsupervised play for children and removal of jungle gyms and slides from playgrounds.

A tendency to risk aversion also helps explain the movement against the supposed plague of sexual assaults in colleges and universities, with administrators running kangaroo courts in which the accused (almost always men) are assumed guilty and denied due-process rights. This has been carried, as my Washington Examiner colleague Ashe Schow has documented, to ridiculous extremes.

But one can also see it as an updated version of the college rules against male-female sexual contact that were being dismantled as "Hair" was premiering on Broadway. Students, headed to Aquarius then, are subjected to quasi-Victorian restrictions now.

California and New York legislators have chimed in with "yes means yes" statutes applicable to students (but not other adults). The American Law Institute is considering a similar approach, which Judith Shulevitz in The New York Times called "the criminalization of what we think of as ordinary sex."

The 1960s saw a sharp decline in birth rates -- the end of the baby boom -- especially among the highly educated and affluent. But as Charles Murray documented in his 2012 book "Coming Apart," the highly educated abandoned Aquarian rates of divorce and extramarital sex in the 1980s, while these rates have remained high among the less educated.

Now there's been a trend since the 1990s toward higher birth rates at relatively late ages, and lower childlessness among highly educated women. And more women with higher educations are deciding the stay at home with children and pause their careers. Queen Victoria, a teen bride and mother of nine (the last at age 37), might approve.

Even the legalization and vastly increased approval of same-sex marriage has a Victorian aspect. The early same-sex marriage advocates Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch argued that marriage would domesticate homosexuals. There's logic to that -- marriage inevitably includes elements of restriction and restraint -- and we will see how it works out.

The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 63 percent of Americans are uncomfortable with the nation's direction on social issues, even though 52 percent supported the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling overturning bans on same-sex marriage. Perhaps that apparent ambivalence is an understandable response as America moves in some significant ways from the Age of Aquarius to a new Victorian Era.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 07/28/2015 5:03:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Sure looks like it.


2 posted on 07/28/2015 5:08:52 AM PDT by Biggirl ("One Lord, one faith, one baptism" - Ephesians 4:5)
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To: Kaslin

What Barone describes is hardly Victorian in character. There is nothing to suggest that our dismal modern literature, dress habits, personal appearance, religious attitudes or popular culture has moderated. A couple of statistics on abortion and marriage do not a trend made.... unfortunately.


3 posted on 07/28/2015 5:13:42 AM PDT by yetidog
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To: Kaslin

Chalk it up to the internet, media & tyranny:

“sharp decline in teen sexual activity.”and the decline is sharper among males “

Why risk being called a rapist when you can pound pud in front of the machine.

“sharp decline in births to teenage mothers”

Since birth is preceded by certain male activity, the reason for this is probably the same as above.

“decline in unsupervised play for children and removal of jungle gyms and slides from playgrounds. “

In addition to the machine, there’s also the parental fear of nazis ratting you out for you having your kids out of sight. Safety nazis, have been routinely eliminating the fun stuff too.

Many teens today don’t even want cars. No surprise there either. Can have fun w/the machine and the cars suck now anyway. Have to be an engineer to deal w/the eco nazi computerized stuff. Ethanol burns out older engines so good luck w/that classic unless you want to just display it.


4 posted on 07/28/2015 5:20:39 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: fruser1
Many teens today don’t even want cars.

Can confirm! My 23 year old cousin only recently got her driver's licensing. My 21 year old brother still doesn't have his. I couldn't get to the DMV quick enough when I turned 15 (to get my permit).

5 posted on 07/28/2015 5:29:26 AM PDT by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: Kaslin

“Long ago, life was clean
Sex was bad, and obscene
And the rich were so mean
Stately homes for the Lords
Croquet lawns, village greens
Victoria was my queen
Victoria, Victoria, Victoria, ‘toria...”

Somehow, I don’t think Queen Hillary will quite do!


6 posted on 07/28/2015 5:34:16 AM PDT by proxy_user
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To: Kaslin
The Victorians ... were mere amateurs in hypocrisy compared to our own brainwashed, sanctimonious, self-censoring and terrified generation.
George Macdonald Fraser
7 posted on 07/28/2015 5:35:13 AM PDT by agere_contra (Hamas has dug miles of tunnels - but no bomb-shelters.)
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To: Kaslin
The Victorian era started about 20 years after the major crises of the American and the French revolutions. A similar moment for us would be about 30 years hence; sometime around 2045.

I think Neil Howe's insight into generational history gives us a good model for thinking about societal changes. Check out this YouTube interview

8 posted on 07/28/2015 5:49:07 AM PDT by captain_dave
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To: Kaslin

More like a Victoria’s Secret era.

(*if you’re a guy, who obtains his wardrobe at Victoria’s Secret)


9 posted on 07/28/2015 5:53:54 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Kaslin

How f-ing out of touch can this jack ass MSM’er be? We just got gay marriage rammed down out throats(pun intended). In the Victorian age if you had suggested that being queer and buggery was in any way normal you would have been thrown in the looney bin.


10 posted on 07/28/2015 5:56:07 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Kaslin
Conservative millennial author Ben Domenech sees these trends as a "triumph of soft conservatism over time," but also as "another aspect of modern risk aversion." That latter trend is also apparent in the decline in unsupervised play for children and removal of jungle gyms and slides from playgrounds.

"Conservative millennial author"? This business of taking away the fun of childhood is not conservatism of any sort. If this is the direction conservatism is going, then I want no part of it.

11 posted on 07/28/2015 6:34:16 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: Kaslin

Funny, there’s no mention of the impact that sexually transmitted diseases might be having on the population or the stress of not being able to find work or provide for yourself. There’s no real turn to the right socially without an accompanying turn to Godliness - and that, at present, seems to be nowhere in sight across the American landscape. Godliness was once here and valued in our culture but surely God has move on to places where He is wanted and welcomed now.


12 posted on 07/28/2015 6:57:03 AM PDT by Lake Living
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To: Fiji Hill

I don’t think the author was suggesting that “conservative millennial” Ben Domenech supported extreme risk aversion, only that he observed it.


13 posted on 07/28/2015 8:49:22 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("All the time live the truth with love in your heart." ~Fr. Ho Lung)
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To: Kaslin
a sharp decline from 1988

Internet porn.

14 posted on 07/28/2015 9:35:19 AM PDT by Impy (They pull a knife, you pull a gun. That's the CHICAGO WAY, and that's how you beat the rats!)
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