Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World

Don't worry that this book about sex by an economist will be boring. Quite the opposite! This easy-to-understand treatise by Dr. Morse, a free-market economist and former professor at Yale and George Mason universities, is both rational and passionate. She uses enough good logic and hard data to be convincing without overwhelming and enough personal experience to be disarming. "Smart Sex" examines the idea that sex is nothing more than a private act between consenting adults with no moral or social significance. It explains how ideas about sex have consequences for individuals and society, in particular our society's erroneous idea that freedom means being unencumbered by relationships. The sections about how male and female hormones knit couples together are most interesting. Dr. Morse shows how these hormones can blind a cohabiting couple's judgment about their compatibility, just as these same hormones may make it difficult for a battered woman to leave her abuser and enable those in arranged marriages to fall in love.

I purchased this book for my grandaughter who is a graduate student with a major in psychology. I consider it one of the most valuable tools for her future career in clinical psychology. It is an accurate presentation of life as it is for women today. I have been in the work place most of my life; while retired now, I have seen the changes in the sex patterns of both women and men over the years. I don't like what I see. Jennifer Roback Morse, a bright and gifted professional woman has lived it and has written about it. Great job!

Dr. Morse speaks for a growing chorus of women my age who were duped by the false promises of feminism. We were sold the completely unsustainable notion that contraceptive sex....that is, recreational sex, is the ultimate sign of power and control over our lives. In fact, the opposite is true. Recreational sex has left a trail of tears, abortions, STDs, broken homes and children without in tact families. Perhaps, worst of all, recreational sex has left us with hardened hearts, incapable of hearing the good news about a truly humane version of sexuality......a quite revolutionary and seldom seen phenomenon today......monogamous, married sex! Dr. Morse has sharpened our cultural lens by revealing the truth about recreational sex. First, she explains that today's notion of sexual freedom has required an inhumane definition of freedom. Today's false notion of freedom, according to Morse, is being COMPLETELY unencumbered by relationships. To sustain such a tortured understanding of freedom, women have bought into the "Sex in the City" version of freedom, or as Dr. Morse coins it, "consumer sex." Trading boyfriends, girlfriends, marriages, children from multiple fathers, fathers acting as merely "sperm donors," all the while pretending that this is normal, healthy behavior, has left us in a permanent state of adolescence and chaos. The truth is that every human being is created for relationships because every human being is created for love. But love is not a sentimental momentary feeling of gratification, nor is it a domestic arrangement agreed to by consenting adults and it is most certainly not found in the promises of career success, financial security and autonomy. The most curious and beautiful irony of the human experience is that love is most deeply felt when it is given away. We find the gift of our very lives as we give our very lives away through our most fundamental and permanent family relationships: spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters. Lest you think that I am suggesting that only the married can be happy, I offer you the example of Mother Theresa....whose happiness and fulfillment were realized in the love and compassion she so generously gave to others. The ambitions of every human heart, it turns out, are truly realized when we are capable of self-giving love: our sexuality is only fulfilled when given in permanent, committed and exclusive love. These realities alone will leave the reader "weak in the knees" with much to contemplate about the meaning of their own lives, but Dr. Morse continues with an even more astounding proposition. She proposes that our very freedom as a society depends on this self-giving love. Her background as an Economist (Professor of Economics for Yale and George Mason Universities and a Senior Research Fellow for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University) serves her thesis well. She is uniquely qualified in her analysis as a committed libertarian and advocate for the free society, combin

Jennifer does an excellent job of highlighting a topic that needs to be discussed. With our media portraying casual sex as the norm and the nuclear family as being a relic of the past, it should not be surprising that our divorce rate is very high and too few children are being raised by both parents. Her message needs to be heard by this generation of young people. In this country, we desperately need to change the way we view relationships, families and raising children. Jennifer has provided a vaulable service that will hopefully lead to positive change in this critical area. Jeff Crouere Host, Ringside Politics