I would go so far as to say that the majority of the problem, in a manner of speaking only, is a *lack* of cohabitation before marriage. Now, I did not say “sex”. Here is the predicament.
1) Boys and girls, and later young men and young women, are kept apart until they are of marriageable age. Then they are put together, told to marry and have children, and live in a balanced, stable relationship, knowing absolutely nothing about the opposite sex.
2) As bad or worse, boys and girls, and young men and young women, have unrestricted sex with each other for a great length of time before they would normally want to get married.
In *either* case, this sets them up for a failed marriage.
What they *need* is non-sexual socialization, hopefully under the watchful gaze of a chaperon. They have to learn how to work together, play together, exercise together, communicate with each other, learn how the other gender functions as human beings, and talk about their dreams and ambitions.
Today, children in public schools get nothing like this. They are “alone in a crowd” of the other gender. Girls segregate with girls, and boys with boys. At the same time, both genders get extreme and intense propaganda, starting at a very young age, that tells them they *should* be hyper-sexual, and in warm, loving relationships with multiple partners. Impossible goals, met by no one. But if they fail to achieve these things, they are “undesirable.”
Then along comes the charming brain tumor known as pornography, utterly twisting their expectations beyond any hope of normality.
So how hard is it, for society to set up some relaxed situation, where young people can just socialize, without *doing* anything, or being pushed and in a hurry, where politeness is the norm, and gender segregation is not encouraged?
“They have to learn how to work together, play together, exercise together, communicate with each other, learn how the other gender functions as human beings, and talk about their dreams and ambitions.”
Good point.
See Tax-chick for the other elements you are missing.
For my own two cents, the additional problems are the hypersexualization of the culture, from beer commercials to girls' clothes; the demeaning of the Father-figure; and the two-income family leading to a blurring of the gender roles *in the family*, and the ease of no-fault divorce.
All these together tend to remove the impetus for *raising children* in a marriage.
Which then has predictable consequences.
NO cheers, unfortunately.