Does marriage have a future? New data on marriage and fulfillment for women and a new study from the UN on the current state of women under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I'd say one story is moderately encouraged, another one very encouraging, and the third one, very discouraging.

But these are the stories we'll cover today. We'll answer some of the questions that you all have. I'm your host Scott Ray. And filling in for Sean, who is in Egypt this week, is my colleague at Talbot, Dr. Eric Tonnis. This is the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update, brought to you from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Eric, welcome. Great to have you back with us. Really looking forward to

hearing your take on some of these stories. Thanks, Scott. Good to be with you.

So here's the first one, which I found moderately encouraging. Does marriage have a future

from a publication called The New Atlantis, which is a, it's a scholarly journal, but it seeks to

connect science, technology, and humanity

from two authors who are not Christian to my knowledge, both employed by Harvard Business School.

They claim that social trends going back to the Industrial Revolution are unbundling what used to be marriage's package deal.

They cite the conventional wisdom for marriage

rates plummeting, that women's lives are improving, working-class jobs are becoming more

scarce for single men, and the cost of marriage, particularly a family, are more daunting

than they've been in the past. They even point out that sex is on the way with millennials

reporting fewer sexual partners than their parents and even

their grandparents.

However, these authors point the fingers somewhere else at technology, and specifically

technology related to economic life.

So these, I think, are more subtle, maybe start more in the distant past.

But just to briefly summarize this, in ancient times, nomadic times, marriage is centered around alliances among competing clans, primarily, to keep the peace.

Marriage was in, once they settled, marriage was a way to produce economic assets and heirs, children for an agricultural society, and heirs to the land that would pass on to succeeding generations.

With the industrial revolution and urbanization, things changed again, separating the home and the workplace, and children became seen more as net cost instead of net assets.

The authors argue that marriage is changing again with digital technologies and assisted reproduction.

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