The abstinence-until-marriage movement in the United States has been a positive and courageous response to the sexual revolution. As the basis for sex education it has met with determined opposition because of adult scepticism, and probably dislike of the very idea of abstinence. Now a sociologist who is also an Evangelical Christian is suggesting another reason for reviewing the way Christians promote abstinence.

…[A]fter years of studying the sexual behavior and family decision-making of young Americans, I've come to the conclusion that Christians have made much ado about sex but are becoming slow and lax about marriage—that more significant, enduring witness to Christ's sacrificial love for his bride. Americans are taking flight from marriage. We are marrying later, if at all, and having fewer children.

Professor Mark Regnerus, chairman of the sociology department at the University of Texas, specialises in the study of romantic relationship formation. He sets out his case for earlier marriage in the August issue of Christianity Today. There are pragmatic reasons, such as compelling evidence that marriage provides the optimal conditions for child-rearing and increases the wealth and independence of the individuals involved. But there is also the evidence that most people, Christians included, find the temptation to begin a sexual relationship irresistible. Regnerus argues that it defies nature for those aiming at marriage to postpone it beyond the early 20s and remain chaste:

Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It's battling our Creator's reproductive designs. The data don't lie. Our sexual behavior patterns—the kind I documented in 2007 in Forbidden Fruit—give us away. Very few wait long for sex. Meanwhile, women's fertility is more or less fixed, yet Americans are increasingly ignoring it during their 20s, only to beg and pray to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.

Delay, he says, suits men better than women; it means they can delay growing up, and this produces an increasing mismatch in maturity between men and women, making marriage more difficult to achieve. The difficulty is compounded by “Christian practical ethics about marriage” that have evolved into “a nebulous hodgepodge of pragmatic norms and romantic imperatives, few of which resemble anything biblical”.

Regnerus is not advocating teenage marriages, which, on the whole, are not successful, and he reviews the reasons for this. But he is advocating for marriage to be seen as a formative institution in which a couple mature together, rather than the “capstone” that completes a relationship where everything else has been put in place.

The response to Regnerus’ ideas, from both Christians and secularists, has been mainly in the range of sceptical to hostile. In April he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on the same subject and got 296 mostly negative online comments. The 240 comments posted on Christianity Today were not altogether favourable either.

But his ideas are well worth pondering and discussing.