Mary Eberstadt: The Dark Side of the Sexual Revolution

In this episode of Socrates in the City, host Eric Metaxas engages in a profound and urgent conversation with Mary Eberstadt, a senior research fellow and author of influential works on secularization and the sexual revolution. Eberstadt argues that the West’s decline in faith is not due to wealth or education, as commonly believed, but rather to the collapse of the family structure since the 1960s—particularly the advent of the birth control pill and the resulting rise in divorce, cohabitation, abortion, and fatherlessness. She presents a compelling 'double helix' model: faith and family are mutually reinforcing, and their disintegration has left people isolated, miserable, and spiritually adrift. Drawing on personal stories, historical evidence, and cultural analysis, Eberstadt exposes how commercial and intellectual elites—including figures like Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown—profited from promoting a narrative that equated sexual liberation with freedom, while obscuring the deep human costs. Despite the bleak reality, she finds hope in the growing awareness among young people of the emptiness of modern individualism and the rediscovery of community, sacrifice, and meaning through faith. She emphasizes that true freedom lies not in autonomy but in love, commitment, and the noble vocation of marriage and parenthood.