Rather than reveling in their satisfying liberation from the bonds of the sexual act's natural and normal effects, women, both single and married, are suffering from, at best, a lingering unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their relationships, and, at worst, are using divorce as the trapdoor to escape from their sexless, miserable marriages. Women, she says, are at the heart of the paradoxical effects of the sexual revolution. Frequently her arguments are bolstered by thoughts and details pulled from the work of those who are unlikely to want to make a case friendly to the Catholic Church or her allies in the stand against contraception, which further serves to convince the reader of the pervasiveness of the problems at hand. Armed with secular, scientific data (often ignored, she points, out by many intellectuals and academics), as well as common sense, Ms Eberstadt uncovers the hidden and not-so-hidden victims of the sexual revolution, highlighting its specific effects on women, men, children, and college-age young adults, respectively. It is to be noted that Mary Eberstadt is not blind to the purported success stories of the sexual revolution - the childless female CEO unencumbered by family demands the happy couple well-off and child-free vacationing in exotic locales instead of surrounded by children playing in their local campground. The book, in large part a collection of essays from other publications, opens with the assertion that the 'amputation' of sexual activity from the procreation of new life 'has proved a disaster for many men and women' and, interestingly, that 'its weight has fallen heaviest on the smallest and weakest shoulders in society - even as it has given more strength to those already strongest and most predatory' (p.

One would hope it would be similarly disturbing for those who herald the so-called advances of the sexual revolution, given the clarity with which Ms Eberstadt lays bare the sociological evidence of the various damages wrought by modern contraception and the accompanying 'destigmatization of all varieties of nonmarital sexual activity' (p. Mary Eberstadt's Adam and Eve After the Pill is a satisfying, albeit disturbing, read for those already convinced of the perils of tinkering with the divinely designed structure of human sexuality and procreation.

Adam and eve and the pill