The share of Americans ages 25-34 who are married dropped 13 percentage points from 2000 to 2014. A new book by sociologist Mark Regnerus blames this declining rate on how easy it is for men to get off.<\/p>\n
Regnerus calls it \u201ccheap sex,\u201d an economic term meant to describe sex that has very little cost in terms of time or emotional investment, giving it little value.<\/p>\n
Regnerus bases his ideas, in part, on the work of British social theorist Anthony Giddens, who argued that the pill isolated sex from marriage and children. Add online pornography and dating sites to the mix and you don\u2019t even need relationships.<\/p>\n
The result is \u201ctwo overlapping (but distinctive) markets, one for sex and one for marriage, with a rather large territory in between comprised of significant relationships of varying commitment and duration,\u201d Regnerus writes in \u201cCheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy<\/a>\u201d (Oxford University Press).<\/p>\n