Is America’s embrace of sexual freedom hastening its collapse? A provocative new argument, drawing on nearly forgotten anthropological research from the 1930s, claims the answer is yes—and that the clock is already ticking.
The Unwin Thesis: A Warning From History
In a recent American Thinker op-ed, writer Paul E. Scates revives the work of British anthropologist J.D. Unwin, whose 1934 study Sex and Culture analyzed 80 tribes and six civilizations across 5,000 years. Unwin’s conclusion: Societies enforcing premarital chastity and marital monogamy flourished creatively and militarily, while those permitting sexual freedom stagnated—then collapsed within three generations of loosening restrictions.
Unwin, an agnostic, attributed this to ‘social energy’: the theory that sexual restraint channels human effort into art, science, and industry rather than immediate gratification. Even Freud, initially skeptical, later conceded in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) that sexual restrictions might be necessary for societal stability.
America’s Three-Generation Countdown
Scates ties Unwin’s framework to modern America, citing plummeting marriage and birth rates. In 1920, the U.S. had 92.3 marriages per 1,000 people; by 2021, that crashed to 6.1. Birth rates halved over the same period. He blames the sexual revolution’s ‘free love’ ethos, alongside abortion rights and pornography—a $13 billion industry consumed monthly by 69% of men and 40% of women, per 2023 data.
Echoing author Seth Gruber’s new book The Last Stand, Scates pinpoints 1973—the year of Roe v. Wade and obscenity law rollbacks—as Year Zero for America’s decline. If Unwin’s three-generation rule holds, he warns, collapse could arrive by 2048.
A Broader Cultural Critique
The argument extends beyond sexuality. Scates frames abortion, homosexuality, and transgender identity as ‘immoral’ disruptions to marriage’s biblical purpose: child-rearing within stable families. ‘Whatever your beliefs about God,’ he writes, plummeting birth rates ‘imply a possible collapse of American society.’
He concludes with a sweeping challenge: If centuries of biblical warnings about sexual morality were ignored, might prevailing views on immigration, socialism, or religion itself also be catastrophically wrong?
While secular critics will dismiss the premise as alarmist, the article’s revival of Unwin’s research—praised even by atheist Aldous Huxley—ensures this debate won’t fade quietly.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/11/slow-learners/