A recent study by the Pew Research Center purports to show that 39 per cent of young Americans say that marriage is becoming obsolete. This is alarming news and does not bode well for the future of the nation, because the basis of any society is the family, and the basis of the family is a marriage whereby a couple raises and trains the next generation to take their place in society as socialized, productive, contributing citizens.
The Pew Study reveals that twenty-nine per cent of children in this country are living with a parent who is divorced, separated or never married. This is a five fold increase from 1960. It is no surprise to learn that the younger generation has a dim view of marriage since one third of marriages in this country end in divorce. Those who are Christians may decry this state of affairs, but those who are identified as evangelical Christians by George Barna actually have a divorce rate that is slightly greater than the population at large.
Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University is quoted as saying, "Now there are several ways to have a successful family life, and more people accept them". Nothing could be further from the truth. More people may accept different definitions of family, but the trend away from the two parent, married heterosexual couple is a recipe for disaster for our country.
Today, most get married fully expecting their new partner to fulfill all of their expectations. When in the natural course of events, the partner doesn't, then the choice is usually to opt out of the marriage.
Divorce has been sold as a normal occurrence when one partner is not "fulfilled". We have bought into the lie that it is better for everyone involved to opt out of an "unhappy" marriage rather than remain and have everyone be miserable. Never mind research that reveals that those who stay and work out their problems claim to be happier five years later than they have ever been in their lives.
For Christ Followers, marriage has a religious aspect to it, but even for the non-religious it has utilitarian benefits that no other institution brings to the table.
When children are involved the absence of both a mom and dad in the home has a tremendous social cost. Of the children under age 6 who live below the poverty line, 59 percent live with single mothers, while a mere 6 percent live in households with married couples. Single parent families make less than one third of two parent families and the poverty rate for single parent families is six times that of two parent families. Divorce and out-of-wedlock births are extraordinarily costly to American taxpayers. The Institute for Marriage and Family puts the price tag at over $100 billion every year. We have spent billions on the "war on poverty", but if Congress wants to combat poverty, the place to start is to institute policy that strengthens marriage.
The financial cost is not the only price that America is paying for devaluing marriage. Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship says, "Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. .........Every time I set foot inside a prison, I see the results of splintered families. So many of the prisoners I talk to tell me about growing up without dad."
Indeed, the Department of Justice reports that more than 60 percent of prisoners grew up in households without a father. Some 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes. Without a doubt the absence of a father in the home contributes to the reason that we can not build prisons fast enough. If we want to solve the crime problem, we have to find a way to strengthen marriage.
The psychological effect of divorce on children is disastrous. By almost every measure, children in divorced families fare worse: emotional problems, early sexual experimentation, dropping out of school, delinquency, teen pregnancy and drug use. Adults may think that they are doing the right thing to abandon a marriage that no longer provides them the thrill of romance, but their inability to sustain the relationship that counted the most to them and the subsequent loss of connection to their fathers seems to have eroded the young peoples' sense of identity and ability to trust others and commit themselves.
Nor does remarriage seem to be a solution: children in step families were two to three times more likely than their counterparts to suffer emotional and behavioral problems and twice as likely to have learning problems. The associated social costs to American taxpayers for these social ills is in the billions every year.
After viewing how their parents have walked away from marriage, the young are trending toward co-habitation in an attempt to avoid the pitfalls, but this is not the answer either. Living together without commitment is not the same as marriage. One of the partners has his "stuff" and the other has her "stuff" with the idea that either can leave at any time. If a co-habiting couple does marry, they have an 80% greater chance of divorce, which puts them back at square one.
In an era when Americans are looking for answers to their economic, social and crime problems they have to look no further than the solution of strengthening the institution of marriage. Far from being obsolete, solid marriages are more in need than ever before.
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