But in France, an unconstrained, boundless, and wildly optimistic view of human nature supplied the grounds for recklessness about what reason could achieve. Whatever the differences, however, the Scottish Enlightenment led the way to the French version. Once reason is separated from experience and thought is freed from tradition, people increasingly challenge any arrangement that seems to be grounded in experience and tradition as opposed to cognition and ideals. The emancipation of reason from custom and tradition will embolden some people to think that any arrangement that does not immediately and palpably harm another person is legitimate, provided only that it has been freely chosen. But the problem with untrammeled choice lies in human nature.
Men impregnate women, but women bear and nurse children.
In every culture, a man wants action and a woman wants commitment. Technology has separated sex from procreation, the economy has separated marriage from work, the schools have separated marriage from education, and day care has separated marriage from child rearing. Marriage today is often about nothing more than sex and companionship, but history shows that those have never been enough. I should close by explaining that this is a crisis and urging new measures to overcome it. But I do not think that, taken as a whole, it is a crisis.