Housing Prices, Kevin Bacon and Contraception
by Carol Kennedy of CarolsComments.com
As my husband Jim and I search for our first house here in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is difficult not to get discouraged. A decent, 30 year old, three bedroom, two bath house at about 1500 sq feet goes out in the low to mid 400's. This seems criminal!
I Can Name It in Four Steps
We talk disgustedly about the over priced housing all over California and search our minds for the cause. My husband finally states emphatically "It is all because of contraception!"
To those who know Jim, this doesn't come as a surprise. Some people have compared his talent to those who are exceptionally good at the Kevin Bacon Game. Apparently there are six degrees of separation between Kevin Bacon and almost any actor or actress. The point of the game is to make the connection by naming movies in which the given actor or actress has appeared and using a co-star to connect to the next movie. And within six moves you should be able to reach a Kevin Bacon movie.
For example, Kevin Bacon can be connected to the alien in Alien, in just five steps:
Kevin Bacon was in Footloose with Dianne Weist, who was in The Birdcage with Gene Hackman, who was in The Firm with Holly Hunter, who was in Copycat with Sigourney Weaver, who was in Alien with the alien.
(connections not my own, compliments of www.louisville.com)
What, you might be asking yourself, does this have to do with housing prices or contraception. Well, take the indisputable fact of inflated housing prices. We can connect this societal ill to contraception in....oh, say....four steps!
1. Contraception allowed many more women to go back to work
2. Two incomes in a family allowed couples to afford more expensive houses
3. These two-income-households were willing to pay more for a house
4. So housing prices have risen to the level at which two-income families are willing to pay
A Mile Away
There we go, if it weren't for contraception my family could afford to buy a decent sized house in a good neighborhood. But this isn't the only problem in today's culture that can be connected to contraception. And many of the connections are much more obvious.
Let's take the rise in marital infidelity, for example. Contraception allowed the sexual act to be divorced from having babies. Which meant that men, especially, could sleep around without fear of getting a woman pregnant. Which further meant that it was much easier to have extra-marital relations without fear of consequences.
How about the age-old problem of women being mistreated and not respected. Contraception allows the marital act to be separated from motherhood. Which allows men to stop caring for the physical, or even psychological, equilibrium of their wives. Which further allows them to see women as a mere instrument of their own selfish enjoyment.
These connections may seem obvious to some of you, and others may find them a stretch. But, Pope Paul VI, back in 1968, saw them coming from a mile away. In the Encyclical, Of Human Life (Humanae Vitae), he wrote about the dangers of artificial contraception at a time when the contraceptive pill was first being introduced to the market, and he named these two potential outcomes among others.
However, the problems of a contraceptive society don't stop at these few situations already mentioned. Just like the Kevin Bacon game, the Contraception game can go on with seemingly endless possible connections. Lets get back to the housing situation, for example. Have you looked through some model homes recently? One standard floor plan element would be the huge master suite next to two or three tiny bedrooms. What does that have to do with contraception you ask?
Well...contraception allowed the bearing and raising of children to play a very small part in the marital relationship; which allowed couples to become more selfish and indulgent; which led to the feeling that one deserved a palatial bedroom in which to enjoy the pleasures of marriage and life in general while your 1.2 children live down the hall in their perfectly decorated room(s). Family life becomes all about ME and what I get from it.
A Tree that Bears Fruit
A more serious problem, and one difficult to hear about, is the recent rash of kidnapping and child molestations. One particular incident in Southern California was especially shocking because the little girl was taken from her front yard in broad daylight. Most of us can remember growing up in neighborhoods flowing with children and with stay-at-home mom's on every other doorstep. A potential kidnapper had very little chance in a neighborhood like that. He would have to wait until a child was in a more isolated situation.
Again, it is contraception that allowed women to re-enter the workplace in such large numbers and that so significantly reduced the number of children in a family. The stay-at-home mom's that you and I know today usually find themselves in a quiet, isolated neighborhood situation in which they seldom see another family out in the middle of the day.
Unfortunately for us, and our children, the warnings in Humanae Vitae were not only ignored, but ridiculed by laity and clergy alike. And now the destructive effects of a contraceptive mentality that has poisoned our society since the early 60's goes far beyond Pope Paul VI's predictions.
However, we must not lose hope. Many young people today are seeing the culture of death and its effects and they want to counter it with fruitful marriages. And those that embraced the contraceptive mentality some 40 years ago are disappearing. Not only are they unable to reproduce themselves physically. They cannot reproduce themselves spiritually or intellectually. Remember, it is the tree that bears fruit that will survive the destructive forces of nature. And the fruitless will eventually die off.
In 1997, Carol Kennedy received her MA in Theology with a certification in Catechetics from Franciscan University. She spent the next year teaching catechetical methods at the university. She then moved on to Ann Arbor, Michigan where she worked with the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist as the DRE of the Spiritus Sanctus Academies. While in Ann Arbor she met her husband, Jim Kennedy, on the Ave Maria Catholic Singles website. Carol now lives in Northern California with her growing family.
