Sex, Robots, and the Future of the Family

The dystopia in Huxley’s Brave New World is quickly morphing into a terrifying reality.  According to the Wall Street Journal, within the next 10-15 years people will have the ability to customize lifelike robots to fulfill their sexual demands. Far from sexual liberation, intercourse with robots will inevitably yield a hedonistic cult of emotionless humans enslaved to their lustful passions and devoid of love or reason. Emotionally and economically, it will radically expedite the crumble of western civilization.

Sexual intercourse with customizable robots is akin to pornography on steroids—it will emotionally destroy human-human relationships and consequently eliminate the very basis of society: marriage. As “The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Family, and Community” shows, social scientists, clinical psychologists, biologists, and neurologists have all found that pornography distorts sexual relations. Men who habitually look at porn have a higher tolerance for sexual aggression and rape, tend to view women as “sex objects,” and generally experience sexual dissatisfaction. Because pornography is highly addictive, many users fall into sexually compulsive behaviors that render them unable to carry out a meaningful social and work life. Actually having sexual intercourse with a robot will exacerbate the consequences of pornography. Fewer human-human relationships will form because humans are not customizable like robots, and will simply be sexually unfulfilling. At the same time robots will not be sufficient because they lack any emotional connections. The human-human relationships that do form will be unstable because they do not provide the “perfect” physical sexual satisfaction that the robot once provided. Fewer children will be born since a robot cannot beget a child. And children who are artificially conceived will only have one parent (or perhaps one human parent one robotic stepparent?). The days of intellectual and spiritual conversations with your loved one, laughing to the point of tears, or cuddling while watching a movie will be over. Humans will be reduced to an animalistic state of solely fulfilling their appetitive soul. Nay, humans will fare worse—even animals cuddle.

Although it’s not too difficult to understand the emotional deprivations of having sexual intercourse with a robot, the negative economic implications are less apparent. But they are there, and they are extreme. First and foremost, intercourse with robots will deplete stable intact families because it will distort the basis of the family unit: a healthy sexual relationship between a married man and woman. MARRI research repeatedly proves that the intact married family (with a human mother and a human father) is the basis of economic security. “Marriage and Economic Well-Being: The Economy of the Family Rises or Falls with Marriage” shows that the intact married family produces the best economic outcomes of all family structures. On average, married-couple families generate the most income and have the greatest net worth. Poverty rates are significantly higher among cohabiting families and single-parent families than among married families. “The Divorce Revolution Perpetually Reduces U.S. Economic Growth” shows that marriage is a causal agent of economic growth. Specifically, it constitutes one third to one fourth of the human capital that household heads contribute to macroeconomic growth. “Non-Marriage Reduces U.S. Labor Participation: The Abandonment of Marriage Puts America at Risk of a Depression” and “Our Fiscal Crisis: We Cannot Tax, Spend, and Borrow Enough to Substitute for Marriage” explain how marriage protects the economy. Married men have a higher employment rate than unmarried men, and married families produce more children who are equipped with the essential skills to compete in the modern economy. The population shift towards non-marriage causally determines a large share of the decline of the adult male labor participation. Less Labor force participation plus less human capital equals a slowdown of economic growth. A slowdown of economic growth plus an increasing dependency on welfare equals an increasing budget deficit. As sexual intercourse with robots intended for lust replaces sexual relationships with humans intended for building families, economic decline will accelerate. 

Simply put, sexual intercourse with robots will emotionally destroy stable human-human relationships that produce intact families; a shortage of intact families will divest the economy of its greatest contributors. Sexual intercourse with robots will corrupt because it will violate the laws of nature and nature’s God; it will dehumanize because it will defy the rational and intellectual capacities of man; it will pervert because it will eliminate love from relationships. Ultimately, sexual intercourse with robots will be fatal because it will destroy the emotional and economic functioning of civilization.  

The Closing of the American Mind: The Data That Do Not Fit

Almost thirty years ago Allan Bloom wrote the wakeup call to America with the Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students.  All of those students who were students then have grown up and a number occupy chairs of sociology in our leading universities and sadly are now an even more problematic part of academia.  

Nowhere is the closing more obvious, more openly practiced than in sociology when the issue is one relating to sexuality:  be it abortion, contraception and, these last few years, on homosexuality. 

It is a given in all sciences that the most important data is the data that does not ‘fit’ the preconceptions of practitioners and commentators in a field.  It is the most important because it is from such data (once confirmed as reliable) that new insights arise.

It is also a given of human nature that data which disturbs preconceptions will be resisted by most, because of entrenched ideas, attitudes or interests.  However it is the role of the sciences to foster amongst its aspiring practitioners intellectual habits and attitudes that will override these normal reactions.  But in American sociology the opposite is the case when the sacred cows of sexuality are crossing the street.  In this case, not only are these normal human proclivities not eradicated, instead they are aggressively fostered and formed in undergraduates, doctoral candidates, post-doc researchers and young untenured professors. They are all being shaped to not pay any attention to contrary data on the sexual.  Should they dare to do so they will suffer the consequences that range from failing grades, denial of entry to graduate school or tenure or publication. No American journals now carry contrary data in the area of homosexual parenting since the Regnerus dust-up as no editor wants to suffer the harassment James Wright, eminent editor of Social Science Research suffered, nor any professor to suffer as Regnerus did.  

The bullying is not subtle. Yet it is effective and, in the land of the free, has closed down the debate on campus.  The grandchildren of the “greatest generation” are no match for the “thought-dictators” in this sector of the social sciences. But contrary data can never be made non-contrary. It just is. It just will be.  It will continue to be the prime way forward in the discipline.  It is a respecter of no political alliance, right, left or center.  It cannot be. It will always be a thorn.  And a boon to true science. 

More About the Relationship between Blacks and Their Government in Baltimore

By Henry Potrykus


In this blog, we recently announced the release of a MARRI overview on “Violence in Baltimore.”  In one part of the overview, we focused-in on black children in Baltimore.  I produced some statistics on the family life and poverty situation these children find themselves in. This post goes into further explanatory detail on that situation.

As background let’s quote from the report:

“The city of Baltimore has just under 4,000 white 15- to 17-year olds.  Just over half— nearly 2,000— have seen the break-up of their family of origin.* This is in line with the national experience.

The experience of black Baltimore teens on the cusp of adulthood is different.  Over 15,000 have seen the break-up of their biological parents.  But only 1,500 black 15- to 17-year-old residents of Baltimore have not experienced that act of rejection.  So, for every one black teen of Baltimore who does not experience family rejection, there are ten who do.  More than 90 percent of black Baltimore teens on the cusp of adulthood witness parental rejection. 

Poverty in Baltimore is strongly influenced by this gaping calamity.  The influence of family intactness (for children of any age; see “The Fifth Annual Index of Belonging and Rejection”) on the probability of a child (0- to 17-years old) being poor dwarfs the influence of race.

The influence of parental rejection is also greater than that of living only with parents who have dropped out of high school.  The “adjusted mean” level of child poverty in Baltimore is about 29 percent.** Being black raises this rate of poverty by almost 9 percent.  Living in a household only with parents who have dropped out of high school further raises this number by around 13 percent.  Living in a home where no parent has rejected the other lowers this rate of poverty by better than 15 percent, more than half the baseline rate of childhood poverty in the city.”

Further Findings

Now, simple accumulation of the baseline, racial, and family relative risks of poverty, shows that family intactness brings childhood poverty among blacks in the city effectively down to the national level (around 22%).  (29 % + 9% - 15% yields less than 23%.)

In fact, the complete (technical) result is even stronger than this.  Intactness cuts poverty by more than half among black children in Baltimore.  (There is a 15 percent residual poverty rate for black children who live in their family of origin, which is below the average for the nation’s children as a whole.)***

Unsurprisingly for Baltimore, then, food stamp (SNAP) dependency and public healthcare (e.g., Medicaid) dependency are more strongly influenced by intactness than they are by the race a child is born into or by parents’ high school completion.

Regarding food stamp dependency: Family intactness shows itself to be more important than either race, or if parents have dropped out of high school. The “adjusted mean” rate of food stamp receipt in Baltimore is an impressive 42 percent for children. Living in a home where no parent has rejected the other lowers this rate of dependency by almost 17 percent.  Black children have a higher recipiency rate by almost 16 percent.  Statistically, then, intact families alleviate the need for Baltimore anti-hunger campaigns targeting minority children.  Living in a household only with parents who have dropped out of high school raises this dependency rate by almost 9 percent.

For public healthcare dependency (in the years 2008 through 2013), intactness is also more important than either race, or if parents have dropped out of high school. The “adjusted mean” rate of public healthcare enrollment in Baltimore is a yet more impressive 61 percent for children. Living in a home where no parent has rejected the other lowers this rate again by around 17 percent.  Black children have a higher enrollment rate by almost 11 percent.  Living in a household only with parents who have dropped out of high school raises the enrollment rate also by almost 9 percent.

These additional empirical facts make it plain: The major factor influencing the (difficult) condition that black children and teens on the cusp of adulthood find themselves in in Baltimore is the lack of family intactness.  This finding becomes plain by testing one influencing factor against the other - family intactness against education, intactness and education against race--as is reported on here. 

Does poverty or a lack of economic opportunity cause violence?  Perhaps dispossessed persons are more likely to riot.  Economics would certainly say that in the absence of strict-enough penalties the dispossessed are more likely to break things they don’t have an ownership interest in.  Want to fight black poverty or dispossession in Baltimore?  There’s an obvious place to start: The intact family unit.

Endnotes:

*Population counts, taken from the American Community Survey 2008-2013, are known to a precision of about +/- 200 kids.  There are 137,400 children (of any age) found in Baltimore.

**This mean is adjusted for race (i.e., if one is non-white), parents not being high-school graduates, and the intactness of a child’s family of origin.  The adjustment is computed by an ordinary least squares regression on sampled Baltimore children (N 6440; R^2 0.14). Only significant factors (p < 0.05) shall be reported for any regression.  I also tested models with controls for parental age.  The results are pretty much the same for race and family intactness’ influences (i.e. - to statistical uncertainty:  the influences reduce in magnitude by about 1.5 percent). There are fundamental, sociological reasons why these two factors behave this way; reasons I eschew elaborating on in this post.

***Intactness also nullifies most of the negative influences of having only parents who have dropped out of high school. (There is a 5 percent residual [pejorative] influence of parental education among black childhood poverty.  Intactness better than completely compensates for the influence of low parental education attainment among whites:  There is a 4 percent net reduction in poverty off the baseline when intactness is faced off against low education attainment among white parents.)

This is the result of the saturated model for the adjustment factors of the foregoing endnote (“mean adjustment computation”).

Violence in Baltimore Report

This week, MARRI released a report looking at the social science behind the violence in Baltimore. This report offers a different outlook on the social issues surrounding Baltimore than many other institutions. It shows that family intactness, education, and economic outcomes are a far higher predictor of violence and crime than race. The following is an excerpt from that report:

There is a clear and even desperate need to restore marriage among the poor in inner-city Baltimore. This task, however, is beyond the competence of government. That is not a fault in government—it is the nature of the problem.  No one goes to government for love.

Marital stability depends on affection, care, loyalty and sexual fidelity, which is formed in the home. If the City Councils, the State of Maryland, or federal Cabinet members want to combat the social collapse of American cities, they must ask parents, church leaders, school principals and teachers to take on this work of the mind and heart.

An impoverished boy from inner-city Baltimore will not escape criminal activity because the city of Baltimore receives a stimulus bill from the President; he will escape it if a caring teacher, compassionate pastor, or thoughtful adult mentors him so that he feels the support necessary to finish school, work at a job, and marry the mother of his children.

Government is not capable of doing everything, and clearly does not know how to heal the social brokenness of such communities.  It will continue to fail the youth of Baltimore unless it looks to other institutions—the church, the school, the family and the influential business leaders—to restore the family by restoring marriage in inner city Baltimore.  Until that day comes the problems will only worsen; but when that day does come hope will already have arrived.

To read our entire analysis on the violence in Baltimore, visit our website: http://www.marri.us/baltimore-violence

Debunking Three Cohabitation Myths

Cohabitation does not replace marriage. Instead, it lays the groundwork for breaking up many marriages. Further, it significantly lacks the benefits of marriage. Despite this, the percentage of women who have ever cohabited has almost doubled over the past 25 years. A number of myths about cohabitation have blinded couples to its harmful realities.

Myth #1: Cohabitation is necessary to “test-drive” a marriage, and will produce stronger marriages by allowing couples to determine whether they are compatible living partners.
Fact: According to the American College of Pediatricians, cohabitation increases the risk of divorce by 50 percent, and is associated with lower marital satisfaction, dedication, and confidence.

Couples sometimes claim that cohabiting allows them to determine whether they can tolerate their partner’s everyday habits such as not doing the dishes or picking up their dirty laundry. But this “test-drive” takes out the commitment necessary for marriage to work; it separates fidelity from love. It may speak more of distrust when trust is the foundation of all successful marriages. If dirty dishes or laundry could break up the relationship, then neither the couple’s love nor trust nor commitment is very deep.

Myth #2: Cohabitation is cost effective because it allows couples to pool their finances.
Fact: Cohabitation is financially risky, and lacks the financial benefits of marriage.

At first glance cohabitation appears financially practical: half the rent, half the utilities, maybe even half the grocery bill. But cohabitation also creates many complicated financial decisions: splitting bills between two partners with different incomes, choosing a name to put on the lease, agreeing who owns the furniture in the case of a split. Cohabitating relationships have the uncertainty of dating joined to the dependence needed for marriage—a hazardous mix.

Furthermore, cohabitation does not provide the same economic benefits found in marriage. According to MARRI research, cohabiters grow their net worth less than all other family structures. On average, cohabiting men have less stable employment histories than single and married men, and cohabiting fathers are less likely to have consistent, full-time work than are married fathers.

Myth #3: Cohabitation is a great way for busy couples to spend more time together.
Fact: The American College of Pediatricians found that cohabitation before marriage is associated with increased negative communication, couples spending less time together, and men spending more time on personal leisure.

Thus when unmarried couples live together they are less likely to go on dates and get to know one another, and more likely to go about their individual activities in each other’s presence. For many this breeds resentment and moves them further away from marriage.

Many couples see the frequency of celebrity divorces and resort to cohabitation to avoid a similar fate. Marriage has been disparaged as complicated and short-lived, while cohabitation has been exalted as simple and easy. The truth is, however, most of these divorced celebrity couples experienced an unstable marriage because they cohabited and had multiple sexual partners prior to that marriage.  In contrast to cohabitation, marriage—and reserving sex for marriage—is the best way to secure a loyal, loving, and lasting marriage.

Are Children Harmed When Raised By A Homosexual Couple?

The American Sociological Association (ASA) filed a friend of the Court brief, or amicus brief, on the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges. In this brief, the ASA states, “The clear and consistent social science consensus is that children raised by same sex-parents fare just as well as children raised by different-sex parents.” This consensus, however, is far from clear.

Paul Sullins, a Senior Fellow at the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) and Research Professor at The Catholic University of America, has recently published four research studies on this issue. When taken collectively, these studies pose, at a minimum, a challenge to the ASA’s research and have the potential to discredit the ASA’s amicus brief altogether.

Three of Sullins’ studies measure the outcome of children raised by same sex parents (single, cohabiting or married) found significant deficits among the children. The first study looks at those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), while the second study looks at emotional problems in children. Sullins’ third study is a methodological critique of five major studies used by the ASA in its amicus brief. In his study, Sullins concluded that the ASA’s sampling method (opportunity non-random samples) resulted in false positive outcomes while random samples resulted in negative outcomes. This is bad news for the ASA.

The fourth study reanalyzes Wainright and Patterson’s three research publications, and found that almost half of the samples of homosexuals were incorrectly coded and included heterosexual participants, thus upending their work. Within the number of true homosexuals left in the sample his conclusions are the opposite of Wainright and Patterson’s and found that children raised by same sex parents suffer significant deficits.

The ASA amicus brief repeatedly uses biased sample research to reach their conclusion that there are no differences between children raised by homosexual parents and those raised by married heterosexual parents. The research of Paul Sullins’ (and other social scientists) discredits this position, making the final two sentences in ASA’s amicus brief ironic: “Claims by Marriage Opponents about the wellbeing of children are unsupported by any social science study published to date. Their claims neither undermine the social science consensus nor establish a basis for upholding the Marriage Bans.”

Atlantic Article Misrepresents Catholic Take on Contraception

A recent Atlantic article used fatally flawed data to misrepresent Catholic women’s support of the contraception mandate.

According to author Patricia Miller, debate over the Affordable Care Act has mischaracterized women’s healthcare interests. Miller cites a study led by Elizabeth Patton of the University of Michigan to assert that, although a small cohort of Catholic leaders may oppose contraception and abortion, Catholic women are very supportive. There is just one problem: Patton’s study relies on a disastrously biased sample of Catholics.  

According to Ms. Patton’s breakdown of religious service attendance by religious affiliation, zero percent—not one—of the surveyed Catholic women attend Mass weekly. It hardly takes an experienced demographer to realize that Patton’s sample does not accurately represent the Catholic population. A central component of Catholicism includes weekly celebration of the Eucharist, which means going to Mass. However, 190 of the 198 Catholics Patton queried disregard this core tenet of their Faith.  (Eight women surveyed were found to attend Mass more than once a week.) Patton’s 190 women do not represent how practicing Catholic women feel; rather, they represent how women indifferent to the Catholic Faith feel.

So, Patton’s survey essentially interviews Catholic women who are apathetic to their Faith. It is not surprising that this class of Catholics (“nominal” Catholics?) is apathetic to whether their Church is forced to provision abortifacients and contraceptives. Sociologically relevant studies would rather measure how the average Catholic—indifferent or not to her Faith—feels about the mandate. Such unbiased data would represent Catholic women and more honestly shape public debate.

According to a Pew study, 63 percent of weekly church-going Catholics – men and women – believe religiously affiliated institutions should be exempted from the HHS Mandate.  (Only 25 percent say their Church should be required to cover contraceptives; 11 percent respond “Other/ Don’t Know.”)  Importantly, 48 percent of Catholics who do not attend Mass weekly (about half of those Catholics) still oppose mandated coverage. Scientifically sound data indicates that the majority of Catholics do, indeed, oppose the contraception mandate. (This majority feeling is the averaged feeling of all Catholics, indifferent or not to their Faith.)

Patricia Miller’s conclusion that Catholic women support contraception coverage, and that only Catholic pundits oppose it, cannot be held. Ms. Miller has made a career on asserting that “good Catholics” (her phrase) can support contraception and abortion despite the Church’s teaching.  Unfortunately for her assertions, the data show the opposite:  It is the most lax, the most cherry-picked, Catholics that agree with her.