My wife Debbie and I both had parents and grandparents who were married for over fifty years. This coming Saturday, August 24th, our four children and ten grandchildren will be able to add one more couple to that family legacy. On that day, my wife and I will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.
There does seem to be a pattern toward stable marriages, for as Leo Tolstoy quotes in the opening of his novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” As noted in this week’s County Hall Corner, there is a lot of unhappiness in America today, and it could very well be tied into our demise of the family.
Quite frankly, most young people today are not buying into marriage. My wife and I were in our early twenties when we were married in 1974, which was not so unusual at that time. In that decade, 75 percent of men and 85 percent of women were married by the age of 25. However, the bloom came off for many as these marriages ended up having the highest divorce rates observed in American history.
Today, just 23 percent of men and 20 percent of women aged 25 are married. These are the lowest rates ever for marriage in our country. Why we should care is because there is a correlation between marriage and impoverishment. Single-parent households are particularly at risk of living in poverty. It has also been getting harder, as a recent study from the Bank of America Institute reports that the average cost of childcare has increased by 32% in the past five years.
But past the statistics, is it really a problem? It seems that even in this area, the conservatives and liberals have different opinions. Liberals have often argued that society’s problems are too deep to be fixed with a wedding band. An example is an article in January in New York Magazine by Rebecca Traister, “Why is the Pundit Class Suddenly So Marriage Obsessed?” She used the film “Barbie” to push back against scholars and politicians who have “routinely imposed marriage — as if it were a smooth, indistinct entity — as a cure for the inequity, dissatisfaction, and loneliness that plague this nation.”
On the other hand, Conservatives highly value marriage and have been concerned about the decline in marriage for some time now. The Christian psychologist James Dobson formed the organization Focus on the Family in 1977. The organization grew considerably to the point that today, it has offices in fourteen countries and an international presence in 98 countries. They provide help for families and also championed some very strong evidence that family does matter for the structure of society. For example, the Oxford social anthropologist J. D. Unwin studied 80 different civilizations over 5,000 years and found a pattern. There is great creative energy that holds a society together found in marriage culture as it motivates to build, save, protect, plan, and prosper on their behalf.
From a personal perspective, I married the wrong girl — at least, from a psychological basis. Over the years, Debbie and I have taken a number of compatibility tests, which affirmed what we already knew — we could not be more different. The author of the book Men Are from Mars and Women Are from Venus could have used Larry and Debbie Stout as his best examples.
And, to be honest, we clashed on many different issues throughout our decades of marriage. But there was an anchor that bonded us, and that was our faith in the Lord. As we grew in our faith, we grew in our understanding and appreciation of one another.
I wish to give a big LION: Leader in Our Neighborhood congratulations to all the married couples in our reading audience. Yes, you may have issues with your spouse, but your marriage is more than you. According to the Bible, this is the way society is meant to be structured. And with the Lord’s help, getting through those bumps in the road is possible. The Bible says, “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up, but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up. And if someone overpowers one person, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” (Ecclesiastes 3:9-10,12)
