In The State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America 2007, Rutgers
University’s National Marriage Project echoed the sentiments of Michael Murphy
with sobering data:
- Americans marry less and divorce more - “Marriage trends in recent decades indicate that Americans have become less likely to marry, and the most recent data show that the marriage rate in the United States continues to decline. Of those who do marry, there has been a moderate drop since the 1970s in the percentage of couples who consider their marriages to be ‘very happy,’ but in the past decade this trend has swung in a positive direction.”
- 40 to 50% of those who marry will divorce - “The American divorce rate today is nearly twice that of 1960, but has declined slightly since hitting the highest point in our history in the early 1980s. For the average couple marrying for the first time in recent years, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation remains between 40 and 50 percent” [An oft overlooked caveat: “if you are a reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after age twenty five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are very low indeed.”]
- Lots of couples are “living together” - “The number of unmarried couples has increased dramatically over the past four decades, and the increase is continuing. Most younger Americans now spend some time living together outside of marriage, and unmarried cohabitation commonly precedes marriage” [Two oft overlooked caveats: There is a widespread “belief that living together…is a useful way ‘to find out whether you really get along’….[Yet], a substantial body of evidence indicates that those who live together before marriage are more likely to break up after marriage.” Marriage “is a major contributor to family income levels and inequality….divorce and unmarried childbearing increase child poverty ….a single divorce costs state and federal governments about $30,000, based on such things as the higher use of food stamps and public housing as well as increased bankruptcies and juvenile delinquency. The nation’s 1.4 million divorces in 2002 are estimated to have cost the taxpayers more than $30 billion.”]
- Fewer couples have children and those couples who do have fewer children - “The presence of children in America has declined significantly since 1960, as measured by fertility rates and the percentage of households with children. Other indicators suggest that this decline has reduced the child centeredness of our nation and contributed to the weakening of the institution of marriage.”
- There’s been an extraordinary surge in the number of children raised by single parents - “The percentage of children who grow up in fragile—typically fatherless—families has grown enormously over the past four decades. This is mainly due to increases in divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and unmarried cohabitation. The trend toward fragile families leveled off in the late 1990s, but the most recent data show a slight increase [“The trend toward single-parent families is probably the most important of the recent family trends that have affected children and adolescents ….children in such families have negative life outcomes at two to three times the rate of children in married, two-parent families….some 88 percent of two-parent families consist of both biological parents, while nine percent are stepfamilies….children in stepfamilies, according to a substantial and growing body of social science evidence, fare no better in life than children in single-parent families.”]
- Teen attitudes about marriage have changed - “The desire of teenagers of both sexes for ‘a good marriage and family life’ has increased slightly over the past few decades. Boys are more than ten percentage points less desirous than girls, however, and they are also a little more pessimistic about the possibility of a long-term marriage. Both boys and girls have become more accepting of lifestyles that are alternatives to [traditional] marriage [emphasis added], especially unwed childbearing, although the latest data show a surprising drop in acceptance of premarital cohabitation.”
In the accompanying essay, The Future of Marriage in
America, David
Popenoe tries to explain how we have reached this situation and offers
suggestions:
- "The recent family trends in the Western nations have been largely generated by a distinctive set of cultural values that scholars have come to label ‘secular individualism.’ It features the gradual abandonment of religious attendance and beliefs, a strong leaning toward ‘expressive’ values that are preoccupied with personal autonomy and self-fulfillment, and a political emphasis on egalitarianism and the tolerance of diverse lifestyles. An established empirical generalization is that the greater the dominance of secular individualism in a culture, the more fragmented the families. The fundamental reason is that the traditional nuclear family is a somewhat inegalitarian group (not only between husbands and wives but also parents and children) that requires the suppression of some individuality and also has been strongly supported by, and governed by the rules of, orthodox religions. As a seeming impediment to personal autonomy and social equality, therefore, the traditional family is an especially attractive unit for attacks from a secular individualistic perspective….
- "The best prospects for cultural change…rest on the possibility that, at some time in the future, new generations of secular individualists themselves will undergo a change of heart….
- “marriage needs to be promoted by all levels of society, particularly the families, the schools, the churches, the non-profit sector, and the government….Young people need…to be made continually aware of the many benefits married life brings, both for themselves and for their children. The empirical evidence is now strong and persuasive that a good marriage enhances personal happiness, economic success, health and longevity. This evidence should become a regular part of our educational programs and our public discourse….The rebuilding of a stronger marriage culture is possible. In addition to the heavy promotion of marriage built around the self-interest of today’s young people, it will probably require a cultural shift of some magnitude, one in which stable, predictable, and long-term relationships with others come to be viewed as the best foundation for adult personalities, childrearing, and family life.”
Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ also faced questions about marriage and divorce. If they are not already familiar with his answers, Michael Murphey and David Popenoe should be extremely interested to know about Jesus’ recipe for “cultural change.”
- “Some Pharisees approached Him, and tested Him, saying, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?’ He said in reply, ‘Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator “made them male and female” and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.’ They said to him, ‘Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss (her)?’ He said to them, ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so’” (Matthew 19: 3- 8)
What is this “beginning”?
- “Then
God said: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and
over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.’ God
created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female
he created them. God blessed them,
saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion
over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that
move on the earth’…
“the LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being. Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow that were delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad….
“The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it. The LORD God gave man this order: ‘You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.’ The LORD God said: ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.’ So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man. So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: ‘This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called “woman,” for out of “her man” this one has been taken.’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” (Genesis 1: 26 – 28; 2: 7 – 9, 15 – 25)
In the earliest of his weekly catechetical sessions,
Pope John Paul II deeply explores the opening chapters of Genesis and how
Christ called humanity to return to this “beginning,” regarding marriage. In spite of all the wonders God created up to
that point, the first man was “alone” until God made the first woman – man’s
“suitable partner.” Before the Fall, before
original sin, this husband and wife were completely transparent gifts to each
other – “naked, yet they felt no shame.”
God Himself called them to sexual
intercourse and procreation! “Be
fertile and multiply.” Pope John Paul II
offers what Dr. Waldstein calls “an integral vision” of marriage:
- “Twice during the dialogue with the Pharisees who questioned him about the indissolubility of marriage, Jesus Christ appealed to the ‘beginning’” (9/5/79).
- “among the answers that Christ would give to the people of our times and to their questions, often so impatient, fundamental would still be the one he gave to the Pharisees….Christ would appeal first of all to the ‘beginning’….Christ orders man to return in some way to the threshold of his theological history!....By doing so, does he not want to say that the way on which he leads man, male and female, in the sacrament of Marriage, namely the way of the ‘redemption of the body,’ must consist in retrieving this dignity, in which the true meaning of the human body, its meaning as personal and ‘of communion,’ is fulfilled at the same time?” (4/2/80)
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