James Schall reviews Jennifer Roback Morse's Smart Sex:
Jennifer Roback Morse has managed to give us a graphic look at why the supposed alternatives to the family in recent times have not worked and cannot work. But also, not to be purely negative, she explains just what it takes to reestablish, even amidst personal moral chaos, a real family based on principles and, yes, disciplines that will work. This is a blunt, straight-forward, indeed, amusing book, at the same time personal—Morse tells us that she has herself lived through most of the aberrations—and scholarly—Morse is a trained economist and brilliant logician. This is also a book about the culture, what is wrong with it and how to repair it. . . .
The book is a delight to read as well as an education in the contradictions of the literature that purports to defend abortion, divorce, cohabitation, college promiscuity, and a hundred other variants on the themes of “women’s rights,” careerism, sexual and political freedom. . . . This is a thinking-woman’s book, by a woman who thinks very clearly and carefully.
