A favorite hobby of many people for the last few decades is to bemoan the moral decay of the younger generation. Like most topics that get a lot of people hot under the collar, this of course relates primarily to sex.

A lot of other moral issues get discussed; dishonesty, rudeness, the drug problem, and so forth. But talk to anyone who is concerned about moral decay and pretty soon they will start to focus on sex-related matters; the high teen pregnancy rate, abortion, single parenthood, and so on.

Not a lot is given as the cause for moral decay. Most so-called causes are either very nebulous or not easily definable. The closest that any commonly cited "reason" comes to being even somewhat concrete is the idea that moral decay is caused by "the media". Movies, television shows, popular novels, et cetera glorify nonmarital sex, which causes the younger generation (anyone more than twenty years younger than yourself) to act in a like manner.

I'm not about to say that "the media" are totally blameless, but it is true that they show what people want to see. Primarily, "the media" act as an amplifier of trends that are already present in society. Hence, they are rarely (if ever) the root cause of any problem. They may contribute to the severity of a problem, but they are not the cause.

So what can have caused the ongoing breakdown of moral values (specifically sexual mores) in contemporary American society?

I know the answer, but you might not like it. It's actually quite simple. It is caused by prudism.

Consider. For many years in this country adults have hidden their sexual nature from anyone and everyone, and most especially from children. We have succeeded so well in this endeavour that few people can imagine their own parents ever having "done it", often in spite of convincing evidence that not only did they "do it", they did it quite a lot. But parents hide all that from their children.

Did I hear an "Of course!" out there? It's actually quite uncommon, both across time and throughout the world. For good reason. It's an unhealthy trait. Consider some of the consequences:

• I have personally observed children become extremely agitated on seeing their parents act affectionately towards one another. They are not used to seeing it. Why not? Because parents don't normally treat each other with affection when children are present (which is almost always). By the time the children are grown and move out, the parents are well out of the habit of being affectionate on a day to day basis, and usually discover that they can't get it back. Not only is this a personal tragedy for the parents, it is also almost certainly the reason for the high divorce rate in this country.

• When children reach puberty, the last people they will turn to will be their parents. If they can't even imagine their parents "doing it", how can they possibly imagine that their parents know anything about it? Puberty is a rough time under the best of circumstances. The complete lack of a trusted and authoritative source of information on the subject can only make it worse.

• I have heard it said that every generation thinks it invented sex. Well, of course! It is presented to them almost as a discovery that they have to make for themselves. Hence, they have no guidelines on how to deal with it.

• If parents did not hide their sexual nature from their children (by which I do not mean flaunting it -- just not hiding it), then children would grow up thinking of sex as a perfectly normal and natural thing that parents do. How are children supposed to learn that marital sex is "the right way" or "the best way" or indeed any kind of way at all when they can't imagine it happening in the first place?

• Since parents do hide their sexual natures from their children, children do not associate sex with parenthood. Yes they know intellectually that that's where babies come from, but they don't feel it in their hearts. No wonder they don't think they need to get married before having sex! It's almost a truism in our society that your sex life is over when you get married!

• That's probably the main cause for the escalating trend in single motherhood. Sex is fun, and people don't want to stop doing it. Since "everyone knows" that their parents never had sex, then nobody wants to commit to the same deal. Forget the old joke about why buy a cow when milk is cheap. We're teaching our kids that buying a cow means never drinking milk again!

• All of this leads to the high teenage abortion rate as the night follows the day. Since teenagers do not feel that they can ask their parents for meaningful advice about something they can't imagine their parents doing, they get in trouble in ways that could have been easily avoided. Then they are unwilling to give up their newfound physical affection, as they imagine they would have to do if they were married and raising a child (since this is in fact what they have observed all their lives). This leaves few alternatives. The easiest for both is abortion. If that's not possible, then the easiest for the guy is to split and leave the girl to raise the child as a single mother. It should be no surprise to anyone that most people will do whatever is easiest.

We can make abortion illegal and also work harder at tracking down fathers and forcing them to marry the mother, or at least pay child support. I lump these together since people who are in favor of one are almost always in favor of the other. This is a classic Puritan ethic answer. By forcing people against their will to act in a moral manner, it makes almost everyone unhappy.

We can improve sexual education in the schools. This will accomplish nothing worthwhile. Even if you have a high level of confidence in the ability of our schools to teach a complex subject (which I do not), it still won't help, because the very people who oppose sex ed in schools are the very same people who are not going to provide it at home either. They will see to it that any school program is sabotaged such that their children will continue to grow up in ignorance.

As with most truly important issues, the real answer is not to be found in the waving of some government magic wand. We're not going to turn an entire society around in a day, or a year, or even a decade. It's enough to start in your own home and hearth. Like any true answer it is its own reward. Maybe you can't save all of society, but you can save your family, and rediscover your spouse in the process.

The answer for you, your marriage, and your family is obvious. Come out of the closet. Hug your spouse, nuzzle them and kiss them on the neck, even when the kids are around. Squeeze his ass, or stroke her tit. Hug, kiss, lie together on the couch watching TV, and if one thing leads to another, go for it! So what if the kids walk in? Just explain that you're doing things that mommies and daddies do. Not only will you make your own marriage worthwhile again, you'll be giving an object lesson in moral values.

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