Sex and Marriage Through a Religious Perspective

The religious perspective of sex presented during the Health movement focused on the sensations and divine purposes of sex. Sensations that were as necessary to life as the need for food [1]. Having sex was an important part of men and women’s happiness and therefore was encouraged to take place if men and women were careful about childbearing and preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Authors of marriage guides often educated the public about contraception and practices to stay healthy during sexual experiences.

     In addition to the message of sex being natural the texts often gave advice to improve happiness within marriage. It was important that both sex and conception were consensual because a woman would not truly love a child if she did not plan to have the child. The ideal age for childbearing was after a woman had turned twenty and once a man was in his mid to late thirties. For women, having children too young or birthing too many children would be detrimental to their health causing a shorter life. Women living long was important because their primary purpose for life was providing men with companionship, and their second purpose was childbearing [2].

1. Winder, Daniel, Reproductive control, or, A rational guide to matrimonial happiness: the right and duty of parents to limit the number of their offspring according to their circumstances demonstrated: a brief account of all known modes of preventing conception, with their physical and social effects: the only preventive in harmony with nature, requiring no sacrifice of enjoyment, of money, of health, or of moral feelings: reproductive control the only antidote to the early decay of American women, and the increase of poverty, Vol. 2. Cincinnati, OH: Publisher not identified, 1855.
2. Ibid.