If you think it’s difficult to be pro-life in a pro-choice world, or to be a disciple of Jesus in a sea of skeptics, try advocating for young marriage. Almost no one empathizes, even among the faithful. The nearly universal hostile reaction to my April 23, 2009, op-ed on early marriage in The Washington Post suggests that to esteem marriage in the public sphere today is to speak a foreign language: you invoke annoyance, confusion, or both.
But after years of studying the sexual behavior and family decision-making of young Americans, I’ve come to the conclusion that Christians have made much ado about sex but are becoming slow and lax about marriage””that more significant, enduring witness to Christ’s sacrificial love for his bride. Americans are taking flight from marriage. We are marrying later, if at all, and having fewer children.
Demographers call it the second demographic transition. In societies like ours that exhibit lengthy economic prosperity, men and women alike begin to lose motivation to marry and have children, and thus avoid one or both. Pragmatically, however, the institution of marriage remains a foundational good for individuals and communities. It is by far the optimal context for child-rearing. Married people accumulate more wealth than people who are single or cohabiting. Marriage consolidates expenses””like food, child care, electricity, and gas””and over the life course drastically reduces the odds of becoming indigent or dependent on the state.
Read it carefully and read it all, it is the cover story from the latest Christianity Today.
[i]Many well-meaning parents use their resources as a threat, implying that if their children marry before the age at which their parents socially approve, they are on their own. No more car insurance. No help with tuition. No more rent. This doesn’t sound very compassionate toward marriage—or toward family members. This is, however, a two-way street: many young adults consider it immature or humiliating to rely on others for financial or even social support. They would rather deal with sexual guilt—if they sense any at all—than consider marrying before they think they are ready. This cultural predilection toward punishing rather than blessing marriage must go, and congregations and churchgoers can help by dropping their own punitive positions toward family members, as well as by identifying deserving young couples who could use a little extra help once in a while. Christians are great about supporting their missionaries, but in this matter, we can be missionaries to the marriages in our midst.[/i]
[i]The abstinence industry perpetuates a blissful myth; too much is made of the explosively rewarding marital sex life awaiting abstainers. The fact is that God makes no promises of great sex to those who wait. Some experience difficult marriages. Spouses wander. Others cannot conceive children. In reality, spouses learn marriage, just like they learn communication, child-rearing, or making love. Unfortunately, education about marriage is now sadly perceived as self-obvious, juvenile, or feminine, the domain of disparaged home economics courses. Nothing could be further from the truth. In sum, Christians need to get real about marriage: it’s a covenant helpmate thing that suffers from too much idealism and too little realism. [b]Weddings may be beautiful, but marriages become beautiful.[/b] Personal storytelling and testimonies can work wonders here, since so much about life is learned behavior. Young adults want to know that it’s possible for two fellow believers to stay happy together for a lifetime, and they need to hear how the generations preceding them did it.[/i]
An excellent piece in its entirety and, as the above quotes indicate, a clarion call to congregations to go beyond the more obvious forms of pastoral support. I also liked his pithy observation: “People change. Chemistry wanes. Covenants don’t.”
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
a great article (single page view is here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=84286)
I am impressed that Univ. of TX has a sociology prof. with such orthodox Christian views.
Jeremy: The first paragraph you quoted has struck me in a different way of reflection and out of context with the entire article. I personally think that children who come to adulthood at different economic cycles learn, or not, how to become more financially responsible. As parents may be closer to retirement when their children are trying to become independently established, there may be an expectation from the young to feel entitled to an instant affluence level equal to what they experienced as teenagers. This does not promote maturity and self-reliance (even as a married unit). If children grow up with younger parents, maybe their immediate expectations would not be so high, and that would serve them better. It is especially hard to be sending children out of highschool or college in this economy. On the other hand, it might make them grow up faster. Unfortunately, fertility, without long term commitment included, can cause long term economic and social suppression. Parents who may have lost a significant percentage of their retirement portfolio and little time to recreate their wealth, do not need to have their children still dependent.
I think this was a good article. I have been in conversations about these issues with at least a dozen young women in the last couple of weeks. One had me awake half the night feeling badly for her situation. I was wondering how I could best council a Biblical perspective, but still assure her that God still loves her and just expects in return that she loves Him by following His commandments. That has been the big trip-up with so many issues discussed on T1:9. How do you minister to people in the real world, but not give them a free pass on any behavior?
Cole,
I concede your point. As one who has tried to live modestly, even as he benefited considerably from the generosity of parents (who thought the financial uncertainty of scholarship – which continues to this day – something worth supporting), I may not be in the best position to judge.
It does seem to me that occasional material as well as pastoral support is something that congregations might do well to think about, if we don’t want to lose the marriage war, but, as you and Regnerus both point out, it ought to be a part of a more comprehensive program including mentoring and mutual ministry.
There is indeed much worth pondering in this stimulating and rather controversial article. There are many ways that most of us who claim to be orthodox Christians are so captive to the culture we live that we don’t even realize there is any alternative to the views that sem instinctive to us. And a lot of what we Americans take for granted about romance and marriage falls in that category, being more socially determined than biblical.
But sociologists have their own biases and blindspots too, whether they are Christians (like Peter Berger) or not. And I think Regnerus concedes too much, in assuming that there’s something so unnatural about people postponing marriage until they are in their late 20s or 30s as to make it somehow unrealistic to expect them to be chaste. Nonsense.
But I liked his line about how what we have isn’t just a sexual crisis, but a [b]marital[/b] crisis in this country. Isn’t that the truth?
Our churches could be doing lots more to help prepare people for marriage, and strenghening existing marriages. I’m particularly fond of the church-based approach pioneered by Mike and Harriet McManus, founders of [b]Marriage Savers[/b]. One of their best ideas, and a simple and inexpensive one to implement, is to encourage engaged and newlywed couples to meet occasionally with an older “mentor couple.” It’s a win-win situation for everyone. And it’s quite compatible with what Regnerus suggests in this CT article.
David Handy+
From time to time I buy an almanac and the 2009 one indicated that the age of first marriage although now at its peak isnt far off from 100 years ago and that the 1950s were the low point. I attributed that to people waiting in say the late 19th century for financial security – but that the relative prosperity of the 1950s allowed for younger marriage.
One problem with younger marriage which I do not think was addressed (or if it was in different terms) is that people change a lot between 19-25. Although I think that women are much more relationship mature at 22 than the average 22 year old man – I do not think that they are as fully developed as individuals – men grow up – women actually can change who they are – there is a difference.
Watching my female classemates in law school (the relatively small percentage who were married – none of my college classmates were) I came to the conclusion that if I was married and my wife said “honey I want to go to law school” – that I was about to get the ax.
Oh, dear. Since marriages are failing, and failing to attract, the answer is to encourage and support young Christians in marrying YOUNGER? Wrong.
I’ve stated this previously here but I think it needs to be repeated. When I was growing up (as an RC), we were taught that there were three states in life– Single, Married, and Religious. Of course, “religious” in the RCC meant “celibate,” but so did singlehood. We were taught the values and qualities of each state, and that people were called to each one. This teaching has been lost.
No, we do NOT need to encourage youth to marry younger. We need to present the married and single lives as laudable. IMO, the reason we see so much angst with marriage is simply because not everyone is cut out for the married life. However, it is forced on people, presented as the best and “normal” state, is pretty much expected of everyone. For many people, forcing them into marriage is pounding a square peg into a round hole.
Those who remain single (and happily so) are valuable, in that they can give more generously of their time and treasure to others. Instead, we treat them as incomplete and simply in transition until they will become “normal,” married people. And THIS is what the Church needs to correct and to work on — supporting those who are single and treating them as valuable people.
There is probably more Scriptural support for remaining single than there is for our idea of marriage, truth be told. But the Church tends to ignore that, for some reason, and joins with society in supporting almost mandatory marriage. This is what needs to be corrected, NOT talking young people into marrying earlier. Sheesh!
An interesting article. I certainly agree that our country is in a marriage crisis, and that “It is by far the optimal context for child-rearing.”
But I think one of the reasons why marriage is regarded unfavorably amongst Xers and younger people is not merely because of lifestyle changes or economic desires or flippancy regarding sex, but also because we’ve seen so many many many marriages that are deeply deeply unhappy and wretched.
Indeed the battle cry amongst my single friends [and I’m single] has been for years “better to be happily single than miserably married.” People are far far more cautious about marriage and the choice of a life-mate — and the culture of *failed marriages* breeds a fear of same. One of my friends in wrestling with the marriage of a woman whom he’d been dating for three years finally said no and went a-travelling. He felt great and relieved about his decision and I don’t think he regrets it one bit. But the weight of the decision was immense for him and in the end, as a Christian young celibate male he recognized that he would be better off single, than married wrongly.
While acknowleding much that is good about the married state, all of us have been very aware of how the wrong choice can ruin a good big chunk of one’s life. Whenever my parents or other happily married couples get all misty-eyed about “times were tough but we made it through and our love is stronger and we have no regrets” there flash before my eyes people like XZ, who married a man who doesn’t work, who got rafted out of the army for some unnamed repeated infractions [dishonorably discharged], and both of whom are now living in poverty. And oh yeh, she’s pregnant . . . again. So she has a baby, and another on the way, and works at low-wage jobs while he . . . I don’t know what he does.
Or the woman who married a nice Christian man who was incredibly bright and well educated [they met at an evangelical conservative church] who turned out to be addicted to Internet porn, also didn’t work [she did], didn’t cook, clean, wash clothes, fix the car, or mow the lawn, or run errands, and ran up massive credit card bills. She begged for marriage counseling. He refused.
She — after a number of years of misery — went to counseling, felt much better, divorced him [he was shocked and asked for marriage counseling then], happily took half the bills [which she had not run up] and skated free at last, asking nothing of him. The divorce was clean and hassle free for her — she took the lumps and moved on in great relief.
I could spout on and on about such failures . . . but the truth is that failed marriages litter all of our lives. One can hardly turn around without running into another one from an old friend or current acquaintance. We’re in a culture of failure with regards to marriage and there are plenty of people who [i]want none of it[/i].
I’m with Teatime — “We need to present the married and single lives as laudable.”
Spot on, Sarah1! I, too, am happily single and most of my friends are divorced folks who say NEVER AGAIN to marriage. We’ve all seen too much and know too much.
And it really hasn’t changed over time. I don’t believe there was a Golden Age of marriage in which both partners were very happy and content in the vast majority of marriages. Divorce was such a stigma that it simply wasn’t entertained. And women kept quiet about domestic strife.
I remember talking with my mother after suffering violence at the hands of my significant other and she said that’s simply the way it was, that generations of women before me knew and accepted that men get physically abusive at times but they usually “mellow out” later. Sigh…