Ross Douthat Thinks We Should Bring Back Puritanism

Posted by Tana Ganeva at 4:00 PM on May 26, 2009.

According to the 5 millionth study released on the subject just this week, American women are afflicted with a deep-seated  dissatisfaction ... or  unhappiness ... or malaise ... you know, a "problem with no name", just like that other problem Betty Friedan wrote about in the 1960s. Except that this time around, everyone can blame feminism!

That’s what Ross Douthat does in a New York Times op-ed, (very loosely based on the study) that the NYT chose to highlight with a slot on their online front page.

On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex. But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness.

Douthat also chalks up the crushing dissatisfaction plaguing women to another terrible development: the "advance" of single motherhood:

[Conservatives and liberals] should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women. Here the public-policy options are limited; some kind of social stigma is a necessity. But a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.

Yes, instead of investing in resources to help single mothers, or a viable health care system, or secure reproductive rights, or a billion other public policy options, we should slut shame single mothers, and other alleged "sexual deviants". Then EVERYONE will be happy. Especially women.

But alas, in our hippie, anything-goes culture, publicly shunning people who have sex is not considered a viable policy option:

No reason, of course, save the fact that contemporary America doesn’t seem willing to accept sexual stigma, period. We simply don’t have the stomach for permanently ostracizing the sexually irresponsible — be they a pregnant starlet, a thrice-divorced tycoon, or even a prostitute-hiring politician.

In this sense, ours is a kinder, gentler, more forgiving country than it was 40 years ago. But for half the public, it’s an unhappier country as well.

With the failing conservative movement now primarily serving as a means for right-wing clowns to secure cushy, long-term contracts with Fox, the GOP is in dire need of fresh ideas to remain viable -- or in existence -- in the future. Ross Douthat's contribution? Advocating a return to Puritan America. 

Tagged as: sex, women, sexuality, ross douthat, single mothers