Sex, Children, and Marriage in the Natural Order

Imagine marriage, sex, and the procreation and rearing of children as three spheres united reciprocally. As recently as the time many of us were born and passed our childhood, every major social institution agreed that these things ought to be joined together. Today we are witnessing the severance of these three entities to a degree that most people even a hundred years ago, including many self-identified progressives even a couple of decades ago, would find stunning. We are constantly seeing new ways these breakages are occurring, some of which are exceedingly extreme and even, occasionally, downright bizarre.