Sex is an organic reality, with two natural purposes written on the human body. The first is procreation. The second is not so obvious but equally important. Sex builds up and solidifies the relationship between the members of the couple. We know now that sexual activity physiologically creates a bond between the partners.

Women connect to their sex partners, and to their children, due to a hormone called oxytocin. Women secrete this hormone during orgasm, and while breast feeding. Oxytocin creates a response of “attach and connect.” It promotes attachment between a mother and her newborn infant, so that she will enjoy taking care of the helpless infant’s needs. Oxytocin promotes her connection with her sex partner, who after all, may become the father of her child. All this is nature’s way of keeping the woman bonded to her child and to her child’s father.

These natural purposes build the community of the family. Procreation brings new life into the family. Because sex supports the relationship between the parents, it helps them work together long enough to raise their children to adulthood. The fact that sex is fun is along for the ride. The fun is nature’s way of getting us to keep the species going.

But the modern world has completely lost sight of the social purposes of sex. We now regard sex as a private recreational activity, with no moral or social significance. Unlimited sexual activity without a live baby resulting is the quintessential modern entitlement.

I call this modern view, consumer sex. Sex is a consumer good and our sex partners are objects that please us more or less well. When I am speaking at college campuses, and feeling particularly mischievous, I call it Wal-Mart sex. (I myself have no problem with Wal-Mart, but I can always count on finding Wal-Mart haters on college campuses.) The modern sexual ethos provides us with large amounts of low-cost sex, without ever taking into account the spill-over costs associated with our behavior.

I submit that this view of sex is at the root of the West’s demographic death spiral. Sex is naturally a force for sociability. Consumer sex inverts the whole natural order of sexuality. Instead of drawing us out of ourselves and into relationship with others, we turn sex inward, on ourselves and our own individual pleasure. The natural purposes of sex, both procreation and spousal unity, have become strictly optional. We think we are entitled to have sex with someone we’re not married to, or not even in a relationship with. And we have created a conspiracy of silence around the sad fact that no one really wants to be on the receiving end of this “use and be used” culture.

Demographic collapse is hardly surprising. Many commentators have observed that children have become a commodity, an extra line on the accomplished woman’s resume. Few have noticed the short, direct line from sex as a commodity, to sex partner as commodity, to babies as commodities.

Without permanent bonds between parents, having babies is a risky business. Marriage is the healthiest, most reliable environment in which to bring children from helpless infancy to productive adulthood. But our society has become indifferent as to whether parents are married or not. We are even on the verge of becoming indifferent as to whether children have two parents of the opposite sex or of the same sex. Hardly a cultural environment conducive to having a higher than replacement level of fertility. Continued...