As Traditional Marriage Falters, so Do the Children

Katie Roiphe, professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, writes approvingly about the death of traditional marriage:

• What would it mean to end the centuries-long American fixation on traditional family structures? Would we be able to look at families living outside of convention without as much judgment, as much toxic condescension?

• If we woke up one morning and discovered that in America marriage was suddenly regarded as a choice, a way, a possibility, but not a definite and essential phase of life, think how many people would suddenly be living above board, think of the stress removed, the pressures lifted, the stigmas dissolving. Think how many people living unhappily would see their way to living less unhappily.

• Whatever one thinks about the institution, the truth is that marriage is increasingly not the way Americans are living. If one goes strictly by the facts—that the majority of babies born to women under 30 are born to single mothers, or that about 51 percent of American adults are married—one has to admit that marriage can’t be taken for granted, assumed as a rite of passage, a towering symbol of our way of life. 

Roiphe might be right about these stats, but are they something to celebrate? Should the children born to unwed mothers be pleased that they represent a radical departure from what had long been considered the norm? Not according to the stats! In The Case for Marriage, Linda Waite & Maggie Gallagher assembled these findings:

• DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: “A large body of research shows that marriage is much less dangerous for women than cohabitors…1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households: married people are much less likely than cohabiting couples to say that arguments between them and their partners had become physical in the past year (4% of married people compared to 13% of the cohabiting).” (155) “Cohabiting women are 8 times as likely as to be unfaithful than married women.” (157)

• CHILD ABUSE: “A preschooler living with one biological parent and one step-parent was forty times more likely to be sexually abused than one living with two natural parents.” (159).

Interestingly, many talk approvingly of the “wisdom” of cohabitation as a means to test future compatibility. The New Oxford Review also reports that,

• “One in ten survives five or more years…The divorce rate among those who cohabit prior to marriage is nearly double (39% vs. 21%) that of couples who marry without prior cohabitation.”

• “Men in cohabiting relationships are four times more likely to be unfaithful…Depression is three times more likely…The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is five-fold greater…and 90% more likely to have a low GPA…Abuse of children is 20 times higher in cohabiting biological-parent families; and 33 times higher when the mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend.”

• “Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children. It is a deadly toxin to marriage, family, and culture.”

We have been led to believe that cohabitation provides a greater measure of protection for the spouse and for abused children. It is argued that the mother can more easily remove herself from an abusive situation if there isn’t a legally binding marriage. However, the statistics demonstrate the very opposite thing:

• Spanish statistics, which have been highlighted in recent years by Europe’s Family Policy Institute (FPI), and recently reported by the Spanish Newspaper ABC, indicate that while only 11% of Spanish couples cohabit without marriage, such unions account for 58% of the most violent crimes between couples. For every one protection order issued for a married couple, ten are issued for cohabiting couples. (LifeSiteNews.com)

Clearly, marriage is not an institution to be manipulated according to our tastes and desires. According to Jesus, it is a sacred union ordained by God:

• "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

 

Censorship, Threat and Intimidation

• A prominent British Christian conservative ‘blogger [going by the pseudonym “Archbishop Cranmer”] is under attack from a government agency, at the behest of a homosexualist activist group, for supporting the defence of traditional marriage…Cranmer came under investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) when he posted an ad for the petition being run by the Coalition for Marriage that recently tipped over half a million signatures, including those of several members of the House of Lords. He has been given until May 21 to answer the accusations against him from an alleged 24 anonymous complainants.

It might be imagined that the petition had advocated sending gays to hell or at least stoning them. However, gays aren’t even mentioned. Instead, the petition is just a reassertion of what Western civilization has always taken for granted:

• I support the legal definition of marriage which is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I oppose any attempt to redefine it.

However, such a seemingly innocuous statement has now become the basis for criminal charges. How has this happened? Has science proven that heterosexual marriage undermines social well-being or leads to child abuse or promotes suicide? Not at all! In fact, in The Case for Marriage, Linda Waite & Maggie Gallagher are emphatic that:

• A preschooler living with one biological parent and one step-parent was forty times more likely to be sexually abused than one living with two natural parents. (159).

Well then, has it been demonstrated that by disallowing other forms of marriage, society suffers? In Evangelical Ethics, John J. Davis writes of the work of British Anthropologist, J.D. Unwin:

• After a comprehensive study of both Western and non-Western cultures throughout human history, Unwin concluded that the record of mankind “does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it had been absolutely [heterosexually] monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs.” Unwin observed that a society’s adoption and maintenance of heterosexual monogamy as a social standard “has preceded all manifestations of social energy, whether that energy be reflected in conquest, in art and sciences, in extension of the social vision, or in the substitution of monotheism for polytheism.” (116)

Well then, why the uproar against the definition of marriage as heterosexual? And why should someone be threatened into silence for even expressing such a view? What impels such intimidation and bullying? I think that we can explain it historically, sociologically, and even biologically, but perhaps the most illuminating explanation might be the theological one:

• But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-- having a form of godliness but denying its power…always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. (2 Tim 3:1-7)

Nevertheless, we have every reason in this world and the next for confidence, as Paul continues:

• But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone…In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of… (2 Tim. 3:9-14)

Our Lord assures us of bright skies. The weather-man also does this, but he is sometimes wrong. However, our Lord controls the weather!

Therefore, Paul concludes with this counsel:

• In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction. (2 Tim. 4:1-2)