Where why are there two versions of your book . Mary there are actually two books. The first was written about 10 years ago called adam and eve after the pill. It is about about a decade later, i published adam and eve after the pill, revisited which looks at society and christianity itself. We are taking in the biggest possible terrain. Host what are some of those macro trends that you have noticed . Mary it is a big story, but lets try to do the short version. I have been interested in tracing the faultlines that are beneath society as we know it. I am not a reporter. I tried to get underneath at the big things that are transforming our world. One of these things is the sexual revolution and the collapse of christianity, which begins in the early 1960s. Now, what is the effect of these trends . One thing that has happened is that emilys have gotten smaller. Families are more broken than they used to be. Many people live alone, who did not used to. This has been a transformative effect on our world, i think. The collapse of the family has meant that we are sending more people into the world that do not have asked. With the primal community, the community of the family. This is what we talked about on the surface, when we talk about the divisiveness of our politics, for example. When we talk about the fact that people seem polarized and at each others throat, i believe that this are they cumulated back that have resulted in children who are less socialized. They have resulted in people who know less about each other as human being. Host we are going to show a headline on the Boston Herald in the 1960s. This is about the fdaron contraceptives pill. You can see it on the screen. You can see it there. In your view, that event changed the world. Is that fair to say . Mary i think it was the most transformative thing since eve took the apple from the garden of eden. A transformed relations men and women, first of all. We have to go back to the early 19 to realize that people thought this would be a positive thing. They thought it would strengthen marriage by giving people more power over their fertility. They thought it would strengthen society because women would be able to join the work force in droves in longer tied to a large family. But something strange happened during the next few years. Instead of strengthening marriage, contraception had a distrust is effect. Suddenly, divorce is skyrocketed and cohabitation also skyrocketed. Abortions became legal and there were millions of those. So what happens here . Why is the thing that was supposed to liberate humanity having such a negative effect . Economists have looked at this and they believe that what happened was that the Birth Control pill meant that men were no longer responsible. There was no such thing as a shotgun wedding, which is a phrase that some listeners may not have heard. But if a woman. Pregnant, the man was held responsible. Birth control was a game changer in this way because it meant that women were how were held accountable, usually exclusively , whether or not they became, it was a womans problem, a womans issue. Simultaneously, that makes the man less relevant. There is a wonderful sociologist who wrote a book called the decline of males over 20 years ago, and he argued that the pill had essentially sidelined men. They were not needed anymore. Only when are in control of their fertility. These are seismic changes in relationships between men and women. Today, then we talk about men, i think that we are is the latest in this trend that i am describing that began in the early 1960s. Host you write a in adam and eve after the pill, revisited, that since the pill has been introduced, there has been a rise in abortions and unwanted pregnancy is. Mary that is why my first book talked about the paradoxes of the sexual revolution because a lot of the fallout was unexpected. I once me clear that i am not being mono causal. That is a bad word. Im not saying there is one cause or the deterioration that layers around us that is the one cause that has not been addressed sufficiently in sociology or by church leaders, or by others in authority. It is something that has become hard to talk about. I think we need to talk about it. What we did in the 1960s and beyond it began some of the worst problems of our time, i believe. Host just to give you is an idea of the themes that you are talking about in your book, you can expand on any of them that you want. A short quote, the sexual revolution endures, second to none. Second quote, six decades of social science establish that the most fish and play to decrease dysfunction is to increase fatherlessness. Third quote, christian believers are in open, Uncharted Waters and finally, post 1960s disorder was indeed generating casualties of all kinds. Anything that you would like to expand on . Mary all of it. I went to start with the idea of casualties. Everybody knows that these subjects are difficult. Everyone is in a family that is affected by all of the train under discussion. When i raise the issue of fatherlessness, i am not trying to point and make people do bad, i am trying to connect. So that the generations to come after may suffer a little less from the trends that we are describing. After the first adam and eve looked came out 10 years ago, there was one thing that surprised, the emotional resident of the book. This was not a selfhelp book. It was an undertaking to discuss the effects of the sexual revolution, anthropology it had nothing to do with theology. None of my books depend on the elegy at all. But i was very surprised by leaders who got in touch by email to say that this chapter on pornography really resonated with me. Let me tell you this story about how it destroyed my marriage. And they were even harder stories that i heard from all over. The sexual revolution is having negative consequence is that were not well understood. It seems to be vindicated by these personal stories, these raw testimonials people who wanted to talk about how they were worried about raising their child without a father, for example. There was a lot of emotional resonance and intensity that i did not expect. That is part of why i continue to look at that subject, resulting in the second book. Host one of the adam and eve books, you talk about a High School Girl in 1972, who was, and it was quite a scandal. Today, that does not raise an eyeblink. Mary that is a snapshot that tells us how the world changed after the 19. The story goes like this. I grew up in upstate new york. Down the street, at one point was a young teenager who got pregnant. It was the talk of the neighborhood because the father, who was a young soldier, did not intend to marry her. Needless to say, the scandal was not about her. What was thought scandalous was that she would be a single mother. She went away and had the baby, and returned to school. There was no social program, to my knowledge, that was directed at her. 20 years later, i lent back and was talking to a former teacher. She said a third of the girls graduating high school that year were pregnant. None of them were married. In this 20 year gap, i see what was repeated in america by the millions, where no longer was it thought that pregnancy is something that two people are responsible for. Suddenly, only one person, a frightened young woman, was responsible for it. That was a civilizational backwards. Host how to did you go from rural new york to washington . Mary i was fortunate. I went to Cornell University on eighth ownership. After that, i thought i might want to be last professor. I double majored, but i decided to take a year off. I started writing and i became involved in the work of you are journalism, especially the smaller, intellectual magazine. Back then, in the 1980s, they were very exciting place is to write for and to hang out in. I ended up as the assistant editor. And from there, i ended up doing some loose writing for some major officials in the reagan administration. One was Jeanne Kirkpatrick and from there, and it up each writing secretary of the george shultz. Host what is your fulltime job, currently . Mary we have four children and there is that. I did very little writing for about the, as they were growing up. Once they were in school, i came back to this. I am a Senior Research scholar and also, i hold a chair in washington dc. Host is it fair to say that you are a practicing catholic . Mary i try. Host your book adam and eve after the pill, revisited was written after Cardinal George fell. Who is that . Mary he was a very inspirational spiritual leader. I would not pretend that i knew him well, but he was kind enough to take an interest in of my writing. We had corresponded about some of the scenes in my book. For example, one thing that caught his eye was a meditation that i will about the theme of chaos. In 1930, when the great novelist converted to catholicism, he was asked by a newspaper why he did that. He just said, because in our civilization the chaos of his time was very different in the 1930s, the interwar. There was the carnage of the century. The chaos in our time is very different, yet you are seeing a in more detail than ever specified. I wrote an essay about that, answering chaos within christianity self. Cardinal george powell, because of the essay offered to write a forward for the book. Host he went on to write that the Church Teaching over the years had been coherent and inconsistent. What did he mean by that . Mary he meant that the Catholic Church stood as a sign of contradiction in the world, that whatever was going on around it, it would continue the same teaching. Teachings go all the way back. When jesus tells the disciples that unlike the jews, his people are not allowed to divorce, for example. The disciples become the first christians complained that these are hard teachings, but there is a consistent there that has drawn people in. All things available to the romans, you name it. Divorce etc. They were off limit to christians. This teaching has not changed. Of course, we talk about mercy and redemption because those are also teaching, but the idea that human beings, if they were christians, were held to a higher standard has been consistent. It has repelled many people end up with the century. It has also drawn many others in. Host i want to go back to a quote that we read earlier. I want to talk about this. Christian believers are in open, Uncharted Waters. Mary under the pressure since the sexual revolution, Chris Kennedy has buckled. What i mean by that is, there is only the desire to accommodate these radical changes in the way that people live. Lets not be judging. Lets just soft peddled the teaching of christianity that people do not like and talk about the teaching they do like. Some churches, mainly protestant churches have completely abandoned these kinds of teachings that go all the way back to jesus. He lightened up on divorce and homosexuality. They lightened up on pretty much anything that the sexual revolution would claim was a prerogative. The interesting thing is the result has been institutional decline for the churches that ran this experiment. The anglican communion, for example, comes to mind. It is collapsing. I read a story recently with a headline that led, will the person to leave english schism please turn out the light . It is not only the anglican communion, every church that went in the nice direction has not flourished as a result. Here we have a paradoxical. Because he would think that being nice would make it more likely that people would show up in your church, but in the opposite is true. What has been learned is that strong churches or strict churches are strong, as the saying goes. The more the churches stick to their original foundations, the more likely they are to pull people in. This does not mean that that cap charge is thriving these days. But the collapse seems to have been worse with the churches that decided to get his the most unwanted teachings, the teachings that make our contemporaries the most uncomfortable. Host tie that into the 19 sees approval of the contraceptive live contraceptive pill. Mary the pill is the biggest temptation of all time. I think sex without consequence would be up there on what people want the most. It was widely embraced by catholics. And yet, what lease always that the churches, including the Catholic Church, shied away from traditional teachings because they did not want to make people uncomfortable in the post revolutionary era. So we have this dynamic where the decline of the family brought on by the pill fuels client and the practice of institutional religion and organize legion. We can talk a lot more about that. Host lets look at your book it is dangerous to believe. For more than two centuries, americans have prided themsves on their commitment to freedom of religion. Leaders who lead in a more secular direction maybe surprised to hear, but in recent years, that historic commitment has come under siege. Mary this is because the sexual revolution is on a collision worse with traditional christianity. There is no getting around it. Traditional christianity had a bedrock of that were unpopular in roman times and when unpopular ever sent. Along comes sexual revolution and its devoted partisans obviously, the opinions i am describing our minority opinions, but the question is, how destructive is that fight . I think it is very destructive of the u. S. Lets talk about how christian adoption agent has been shut down in some. Clearly, the pressure coming at them is from people who want to replace the teachings of christianity with the anything goes sexual revolution. I really believe this has become a rivals to christianity. We have to ask ourselves, is it good for those adoptees to miss out on a loving home just because the parents and it our christian . Is it good for the poor among whom the Little Sisters work with lawsuits about contraception, of all things . Well, who does that help . It does not help the Little Sisters or the poor, so my point is, when we see this collision will receive a 10 to cap good works done by christian, we are seeing something that is bad for the worst off among us, and i do not think this is well understood, but people who are ideological about the sexual revolution go after christian good work, routinely. This is not called out the people who it is hurting called out. Host i want to ask you about the Supreme Court decision on roe v. Wade last year. It affected years of eagle abortion. Should abortion be legal, in your view . Mary i am a constitutionalist and turning the question back to the state was an overdue constitutionalist correction. Dobbs was a very important decision and represent the first time the 1960s that there has been serious, institutional rollback on a question involving the sexual revolution. The Supreme Court says that it is wrong. We need to turn it back to the state. I think it may be a game changer, not only in the u. S. , but elsewhere in the world. What happened after roe v. Wade is that country after country came to adopt similar laws, came to legalize abortion red had always been criminalized. Both countries, i think, both leaders are having second. As well. This decision will reverberate, and i would predict that it would have it affect u. S. Because if there are more babies among us, that would be a humanizing thing, not a bad thing. This is another issue that we should talk about. What humanizes people . It seems like a question. Taking care of those smaller and weaker or older and sicker is one of the ways we are humanized. Additional families, up until the interruption of the 19, this was done routinely. Old people are taking care of and everybody knew what to do with a baby, etc. Im not saying we should go back to the 1950s, which is a decade i live in, but what im saying is babies have good effects, not the thanks, just as having to take care of other people has a good effect on people. With the collapse of the family, i think we have seen a generalized it has increased in our society, as people are out of the pack this of taking care of others. Simultaneously, as christianity is in decline, they are not being told that one of their jobs on earth is to take care of others. These two things have impacted us negatively. Host when you look at the election result, it favored those who are prochoice or favored abortion rate. Realistically, did this decision hurt your view, and a sense . Mary no. I am not a politics first kind of person. I want to know what is really going on out there and i would rather be right than to see my party. Host Mary Eberstadt is our guest and is the author of many books. We want to include you in this as well. Here is how you can participate. The numbers are on your screen. If you cannot get through on the phone line and still want to make a comment, try texting. This is texting number. If you do send a text, please include your first name and your city, if you would. Social media, several ways to contact us as well. Just remember at facebook and twitter. We will begin taking those calls in a few minutes. Mary eberstadts first book came out 2004 called home alone america. She wrote the loser letters in 2010. It is dangerous to believe just freedom and enemies in 2016. And adam and eve after the pill, revisited came out in 2023. The first book came out in 2013, and. We will begin taking questions. Mary eberstadt, the subtitle, how the sexual revolution needed identity politics. Put that together for as. Mary not only the u. S. Many countries in the modern world are in the of an identity crisis. Identity is all around us. Where is this coming from . Getting back to the world before the 1950s there were two answers that russian. One was horizontal and could be answered by my relationship with other men being in a family. If you were to say, who are you . A common response would be, i am a mother, and aunts, a sister, a cousin, and we could find our valves relationship wise that way. Most people have had them believe in the cosmos, and a deity, and a vertical relationship. So what happens when the family scatters and the churches go mute . What happens is that mention a wave of answering that russian of who mis off the table for many people. We see this migration into politics, into identity politics. And there is an important point here that i think is not well understood, especially among conservatives. Conservatives like to poke fun at the idea and call them snowflakes and say that jim he and lemuels are impossible to understand and they are so since it is. But when i look at those generation, i see suffering. I see real suffering, on account of not having what most human beings before us had. Robust families to give them connections, protection and love. A connection to or