All over the industrialized world, marriage is in decline. Cohabitation, which has waxed as marriage has waned, is a much less stable and more varied relational form than marriage. Because of its relative instability and variability, cohabitation presents public-policy and fact-finding challenges that formal marriage does not. Formal marriage is also associated with a range of health, wealth and happiness benefits to adult partners and their children. Because formal marriage and childbearing within such unions offer public advantages that informal unions do not, public policies designed to encourage individuals to delay childbearing until marriage are desirable. So are policies that encourage couples who have marital understandings to formalize their unions through ceremonial marriage. In order to effectively design such policies, however, we need to understand why formal marriage is in decline. This paper critically examines current economic and cultural explanations for these phenomena and analyzes the public policy implications of these explanations.
Check it out (Hat tip: Legal theory blog)
This is an important article, and although it’s long (30 pages), it is well worth taking the time to read and ponder. In particular, this careful, well-documented study show the real threat to marriage in our society: not same-sex marriage proposals, but cohabitation.
For those unable to take the time to wade through 30 pages of scholarly data and jargon, here are a few enticing tidbits I gleaned:
1. Half of all cohabiting adults separate within 18 months.
2. Children are 2 to 4 times more likely to see their parents separate if they merely cohabit. In Sweden, where cohabitation has many state supports and 30% of couples cohabit, unmarried couples are over 4 times more likely to separate before their first child turns five.
3. 40% of the time, one cohabiting partner is quite happy with the relationship while the other is NOT.
4. The black community is being decimated and influenced disproportionately by the trend toward cohabitation. Today a full two-thirds (68%) of African-American children are born out of wedlock (versus a skyrocketing 28% now of Anglo childrren).
There’s much, much more here that would reward those who take the trouble to read this illuminating study. And I’d urge those interested at all in the cause of strengthening marriage in this country to take a look at the research done by Michael and Harriet McManus, founders of the wonderful “Marriage Savers” movement. Their simple idea of fostering a church-based “Community Marriage Policy” (or CMP) that pastors of many denominations would agree to uphold has worked wonders to lower the divorce rate and cut down the cohabitation rate in many places (over 200 such CMP’s now exist across the U.S.). I helped write such a CMP for the clergy of my hometown of Sioux Falls, SD and it was widely adopted by over 70 local clergy there in 2005.
BTW, the answer to the author’s questions of whether the decline in marriage is “inevitable or irreversible” is that she says it is partially reversible, and we should do everything possible to accomplish that reversal. I wholeheartedly agree.
David Handy+
Former Executive Director of Sioux Empire Marriage Savers,
a non-profit, ecumenical, non-governmental organization
The decline of marriage comes as no surprise. The Church has ceded to Caesar the sacrament of Holy Matrimony in a fashion undreamed of for other sacraments such as the Eucharist. So long as bimbo-chasing politicians preside over one of the holiest and earliest ordinances, it’s to be expected that it is dying.
In [i]The Future of Marriage[/i] (2007), David Blankenhorn argues that same-sex marriage is part and parcel with cohabitation of a trend that will lead to the effectual death of marriage in a society. He argues that each society has a tipping point and that Europe has already tipped over the edge and the USA is teetering on the brink.
Hmm. What a coincidence. I case across this quote earlier today:
Edward Gibbon, in 1788 set forth in his famous book, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireâ€, five basic reasons why that great civilization withered and died: 1) The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis for human society. 2) Higher and higher taxes: the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace. 3) The mad craze for pleasure, with sports and plays becoming more exciting, more brutal, and more immoral. 4) The building of great armaments when the real enemy was within the decay of individual responsibility. 5) The decay of religion, whose leaders lost their touch with life, and their power to guide the people. -Unknown
—End quote—
If we broaden the interpretation of no. 2, it looks like we have all five going for us . . .. Yikes!
You guys are right. Heterosexual marriage is ‘declining’ because of them gays out there. It has nothing to do with free will, sinful heterosexuals, and a choice to divorce rather than work through tough times.
If I remember vaguely, Jesus said: take the adultery out of your eye before you take the gay out of your neighbors. Something like that.
Justin, one person blamed it on homosexual marriage. Don’t jump on your high horse quite yet.