Why are young Americans having less sex?

Parson Weems, the popular author of the early American republic who first invented the apocryphal story of George Washington and the cherry tree, achieved his greatest commercial success as a pamphleteer with Hymen’s Recruiting-Sergeant; Or the New Matrimonial Tattoo for Old Bachelors (1799).

In this booklet, the amiable old clergyman suggested that young people ought to get married not only for financial security and in order to bring up young Americans but “for pleasure.” His racy pamphlet went into thirteen editions, and copies were still being sold fifty years later.

The new report from W. Bradford Wilcox and Nicholas Wolfinger of the Institute for Family Studies has a much less catchy title: Men and Marriage: Debunking the Ball & Chain Myth. But the problem is the same: Not enough young people are getting married.

More dire than that, young Americans are having less sex. As Wilcox pointed out in Politico Magazine, sexual frequency among adult Americans is down 14 percent compared to the late 1990s.