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Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World

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Dr. Morse speaks for a growing chorus of women my age who were duped by the false promises of feminism. We were sold the completely unsustainable notion that contraceptive sex....that is, recreational sex, is the ultimate sign of power and control over our lives. In fact, the opposite is true. Recreational sex has left a trail of tears, abortions, STDs, broken homes and children without in tact families. Perhaps, worst of all, recreational sex has left us with hardened hearts, incapable of hearing the good news about a truly humane version of sexuality......a quite revolutionary and seldom seen phenomenon today......monogamous, married sex!

Dr. Morse has sharpened our cultural lens by revealing the truth about recreational sex. First, she explains that today's notion of sexual freedom has required an inhumane definition of freedom. Today's false notion of freedom, according to Morse, is being COMPLETELY unencumbered by relationships. To sustain such a tortured understanding of freedom, women have bought into the "Sex in the City" version of freedom, or as Dr. Morse coins it, "consumer sex." Trading boyfriends, girlfriends, marriages, children from multiple fathers, fathers acting as merely "sperm donors," all the while pretending that this is normal, healthy behavior, has left us in a permanent state of adolescence and chaos.

The truth is that every human being is created for relationships because every human being is created for love. But love is not a sentimental momentary feeling of gratification, nor is it a domestic arrangement agreed to by consenting adults and it is most certainly not found in the promises of career success, financial security and autonomy. The most curious and beautiful irony of the human experience is that love is most deeply felt when it is given away. We find the gift of our very lives as we give our very lives away through our most fundamental and permanent family relationships: spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters. Lest you think that I am suggesting that only the married can be happy, I offer you the example of Mother Theresa....whose happiness and fulfillment were realized in the love and compassion she so generously gave to others. The ambitions of every human heart, it turns out, are truly realized when we are capable of self-giving love: our sexuality is only fulfilled when given in permanent, committed and exclusive love.

These realities alone will leave the reader "weak in the knees" with much to contemplate about the meaning of their own lives, but Dr. Morse continues with an even more astounding proposition. She proposes that our very freedom as a society depends on this self-giving love. Her background as an Economist (Professor of Economics for Yale and George Mason Universities and a Senior Research Fellow for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University) serves her thesis well. She is uniquely qualified in her analysis as a committed libertarian and advocate for the free society, combined with her experience as a mother, a foster mother and an adoptive mother and especially after many years as a career academic researcher and former devotee of recreational sex! (Oh, come on, we can all brag about that!)

Her life changing discoveries came as she learned about the irreplaceable role of the mother, father and immediate family that develops and the role that these relationships play in forming the human conscience. After adopting a two year old Romanian orphan who had been completely raised in an institution, Dr. Morse and her husband embarked on an amazing journey into child development as they learned how to parent a child with severe attachment disorder, the condition that often accompanies such children raised in chaotic, institutional settings. Dr. Morse's background as a libertarian immediately tuned into the socio-economic implications of a whole generation of children raised by day care centers, broken families and successive foster homes.

Turns out, that no society can truly be free if its citizens do not operate from a healthy, self possessed conscience and, further, it turns out that science is discovering that a human being's sense of worth and self possession is uniquely created by the care and nurturing of the relationships he or she is born into. The ability to attach to other human beings and to feel compassion for other human beings is developed in infancy and early childhood. The biological processes of brain development are dependent on early attachment to a loving family. Multiple caregivers and institutions can not create the necessary bonding that infants and children need for later brain development in language, relationships and learning. And a free society can not remain free when it's citizens are not nurtured and cared for by their families. In short, the family cannot be "out-sourced" as a free market commodity!

Read this book, but be ready to challenge the assumptions that you may have absorbed by our very self indulgent, self-loathing and sexually confused society-it will be the best present you can give yourself to ensure healthier and happier relationships....remember, it's what you were created for!

Angie Vogt, M.A.
Co-Host "Sound Insight"
Sacred Heart Radio AM1050
Seattle-Tacoma

As with all self-help books, Dr. Morse offers a promise to help us "Find Life-Long Love in a Hook-up World." But, unlike most self-help books with "sex" in the title, Dr.Morse offers no suggestions on how to choose the perfect lover, or how to improve our lovemaking techniques. Instead of reassuring us that we too can find the perfect mate, or have the perfect marriage, she reminds us that none of us are perfect in an imperfect world. And, those who seek such perfection in a mate are doomed. While she offers some practical suggestions on how to deal with feelings and communication, and she begins the book with the promise that Smart Sex "is about how and why to stay married," the real focus of Smart Sex is much deeper. Early in her book, Dr. Morse advises us that "the self help books aren't going to be enough because they deal with the superficial symptoms of much deeper problems." Instead of techniques, Morse focuses on the nature and meaning of sex and marriage. Instead of easy answers, Morse explodes some of modern society's most cherished and destructive myths about the "joys of recreational sex."Of course, this has not stopped amazon.com from suggesting on these very pages that customers interested in this title would be interested in a link that promises to help readers "Hook up with more women through doubleyourdating.com." Dr. Morse would probably be amused by this because it really proves the point she has made throughout her wonderful book--that the idea of sexual freedom has reduced sex to a commodity-and has left people more empty than before.

Jennifer does an excellent job of highlighting a topic that needs to be discussed. With our media portraying casual sex as the norm and the nuclear family as being a relic of the past, it should not be surprising that our divorce rate is very high and too few children are being raised by both parents. Her message needs to be heard by this generation of young people. In this country, we desperately need to change the way we view relationships, families and raising children. Jennifer has provided a vaulable service that will hopefully lead to positive change in this critical area.

Jeff Crouere
Host, Ringside Politics

I purchased this book for my grandaughter who is a graduate student with a major in psychology. I consider it one of the most valuable tools for her future career in clinical psychology. It is an accurate presentation of life as it is for women today. I have been in the work place most of my life; while retired now, I have seen the changes in the sex patterns of both women and men over the years. I don't like what I see. Jennifer Roback Morse, a bright and gifted professional woman has lived it and has written about it. Great job!

Don't worry that this book about sex by an economist will be boring. Quite the opposite! This easy-to-understand treatise by Dr. Morse, a free-market economist and former professor at Yale and George Mason universities, is both rational and passionate. She uses enough good logic and hard data to be convincing without overwhelming and enough personal experience to be disarming. "Smart Sex" examines the idea that sex is nothing more than a private act between consenting adults with no moral or social significance. It explains how ideas about sex have consequences for individuals and society, in particular our society's erroneous idea that freedom means being unencumbered by relationships.

The sections about how male and female hormones knit couples together are most interesting. Dr. Morse shows how these hormones can blind a cohabiting couple's judgment about their compatibility, just as these same hormones may make it difficult for a battered woman to leave her abuser and enable those in arranged marriages to fall in love.

SMART SEX is the second book I have read authored by Jennifer Roback Morse. Although I found her first book a fine effort, her second book is more clearly written and her central thesis is more practical and more effectively articulated. I read an excerpt from SMART SEX in class to my students. My efforts paid off, students had a clearer understanding of a complex theory.

I have two critical issues regarding the text that I feel will be useful to any potential reader. First, is the title [SMART SEX]. I wish it was entitled something else. I felt a bit embarrassed reading the book in an airplane or waiting for my daughter in my car. Initially, the title suggests that the book is a sex manual that offers 101 positions in order to increase satisfaction within a person's intimate life. Rest assured, SMART SEX is not a sex manual -- anything but. It is a snappy excursion into how Christian values relate to the sexual expression. Roback Morse doesn't preach, but rather she lays out Christian [particularly Catholic] values in a logical manner that reads rather sectarian. Many people who read this book will be placed in a position to assess their own sexuality from a value base. Such an outcome is not what one would expect from the title. Thus, I suspect that giving the book such a racy title was not an accident. It was meant to jockey readers into a position of self reflection. If my hypothesis is correct, the author and publisher did an excellent job in achieving their goal.

Second, I found chapter one a bit alarming and thought that the author made a fundamental change within her value-base expressed in her first book. Some years ago, I read a paper entitled, "When is enough, enough?" The paper took the position that some people are such poor parents, they groom children to become destructive psychopaths. Later, the author takes the position that our legal institutions need to reconsider forced tubaligation and abortions. Roback Morse, of course, doesn't take this position. I find it intellectually stimulating that a single set of empirical facts can be the foundation for both the pro-life and pro-choice positions. At any rate, the first chapter was an epiphany.

One day, I took this book with me to read while my daughter was in choir practice. A couple of church ladies approached me and wanted to know what I was reading (I was hiding the cover so no one could see the title). When they saw the title, I had to go into great detail about the content of the book. Although I felt a bit awkward in summarizing Roback Morses' book, the two women were mesmerized by my comments. Both agreed that there must be a linkage between Christian values and the sexual experience. When they parted, I suspect they logged on to Amazon to purchase the book. I think the book will be the central focus of an upcoming meeting of the church's book club.

jenny has done a great job explaining why many marriages suck worse than an airplane toilet, why we should care and what single and married people can do about it.

morse shows that if we want continued freedom then we'd better fix the fundamental infrastructure of the good society, i.e.-the home.

in addition, morse takes no prisoners slam dancing the nuevo sexual revolutionaries of the 21st centuries who are screwing up our neighborhoods, cities and nation by their mechanized view of sex and their low and lawless view of marriage.

also, this is a great read for the righteous rebels who want heavy verbal artillery to answer the licentious naysayers in the high school and college classrooms. do yourself and us a favor by both reading and implementing this book.

Doug Giles
ClashRadio.com

Smart Sex is a book that makes the thinking woman's case for treating sex as something important enough to save for marriage, as well as giving lots of clear and rational reasons against cohabitation and for making marriage last. The author is an economist and as such, she often uses economics, or the language of economics, to make her points with rationality.

Aside from the rational arguments, however, the author also shares parts of her own story. There is a lot of personal experience behind her words - she has done most of the very things that she has now realized lead to poor outcomes. At one point she admits: "I committed just about every sexual sin in the book: adultery, fornication, cohabitation, group sex, same-sex sex. I had an abortion; I was married and divorced." This book is clearly the outcome of a lot of personal anguish that forced the author to rethink her own life and to change her ways and her views.

Definitely worth the read, especially by those who are struggling for ways to explain these things to others, or by those who are wondering what ethics and rules about sexuality and marriage should govern their own lives.

As a Christian Apologist who is a single male, I take my interest in sex seriously and think of it from a theological perspective and see how our society has twisted it. When people ask me what books come to mind on the topic, I have two. I think of Lauren Winner's "Real Sex" and I think of Jennifer Roback Morse's "Smart Sex."

Morse's book is quite different from Winner as Winner writes more from a biblical perspective. Morse shares the worldview, but she writes from a perspective for the outsider. Thus, this book is far more helpful for those who don't share a biblical worldview.

Morse brings her economic mindset to the table and she does this though without quoting constant statistics over and over. She looks at the actions themselves and explains why these actions don't work and what they result in. For those who think this is a fundy writing, she admits also that she writes from experience as one who has tried these and found they don't fulfill.

Morse's work is gripping and has a unique gift many books and sermons on sex don't have. They often give only the negatives. Morse gives the negatives but in doing so, she shows the positives in what ought to be and leaves one with a desire of what that should be like so a guy like me who's single can read that and say "Yes. That's the way I want my marriage to be someday."

The format is also non-technical. This is an easy read that anyone can understand and hard-hitting. (It can definitely cause a stir also if you read this book in the break room at work. One great benefit of books like this is people will want to know what you're reading if they know that sex is involved in any way.)

Morse's reasons hit on all grounds. She covers the experiential side, the pragmatic side, and the moral side. In the end, she does reveal her theological perspective, but I don't think any reader would say that theism was being shoved down their throat.

In a day and age where we are constantly being told that we need to re-define our views on sexuality, Morse is right on. The Christian worldview on sex has stood the test of time and it is the view of sex that needs to be upheld.

Buy this book. You won't be disappointed and in the words of one of my favorite TV characters, Adrian Monk, "You'll thank me later."

Dr. Morse brings practical and scientific advice that explains the problems with the "sexual freedom" that has been pushed on us by Hollywood and the media. Sexual satisfaction only comes with love between a man and a woman. I have a 12 year old daughter, and a wonderful wife, and this book's wisdom will be very beneficial to me. Thank you Dr. Morse!