ABSTRACT
For generations Americans have assumed that there is a natural order linking sex to
procreation, and procreation to the making of families. This sex-procreation-family ‘‘chain’’
has served as a powerful social belief shaping people’s ideas of what constitutes ‘‘normal’’
sexuality and family relations. This belief or ‘‘ideology’’ was very powerful in eighteenth-and
nineteenth-century America. Among the middle class, many Americans seemed to have
at least tried to conform to this norm. However, by the twentieth century, it was clear
that this chain had been broken. Americans no longer necessarily link sex to procreation
or to family-making. However, the sex-procreation-family chain is still a powerful
ideology.
