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"We're Doing it for the Kids"

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“Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. "Children are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live.” - Proclamation on the Family, September 1995

Except for the man and woman involved in the relationship, the decision whether to marry, or to stay married has the most immediate and far reaching effects on the children in the family. In 1999, the National Marriage Project stated that, “The trend toward single-parent families is probably the most important of the recent family trends that have affected children and adolescents. This is because the hildren in such families have negative life outcomes at two to three times the rate of children in married, two-parent families.” Since 1960 the percentage of children living in single-parent homes has risen from 9 percent to 28 percent. The increase is the result of a higher divorce rate, out-of-wedlock births, and unmarried cohabitation.

But what does it mean to have a negative life outcome? How exactly are children who grow up without committed, married parents affected? Social science evidence shows such children are more likely to live in poverty, have poor social skills, and a low self-esteem and other psychological problems. Children growing up in fragile homes (without both biological parents) are more likely to fail in school, suffer from depression, and have fragile relationships themselves. Girls are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, while boys have an increased risk of becoming violent and being involved in criminal activity. Marriage on the other hand, means that the child can have access to the love, nurture, and care of two capable adults rather than just one, thus helping the child to develop into a compassionate, mature adult. Family researchers have shown that children are better off in a home with both a mother and a father. Each newborn baby and each child has the right to grow up in a home with both parents.

Mothers and fathers have different responsibilities towards their children. By nature, they have different skills to contribute in raising a child. For instance, children will learn different social skills and gain a better understanding of who they are because the father and the mother each interact with the child in a unique way. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough dad’s sticking around to play catch with their sons or teach their daughters to ride a bicycle, or even provide food, clothes and shelter for their families. In an address given at the Revitalizing Marriage Conference at BYU, Wade Horn of the National Fathering Organization discussed how promoting marriage helps to promote responsible fathering. He also explained why fathers are so important to a child’s upbringing.

When our marriages are at risk, our children are at risk. Overwhelming evidence from sociologists and demographers indicates that marriage is the best place to have and raise children. Other forms of adult relationships, for example, cohabitation, are inferior to marriage on several levels. In cases where two unmarried adults live together and have children, there is a higher risk of physical and sexual abuse, for example. The sense of commitment to other members of the family is also very fragile in cohabiting circumstances compared to a home with married parents. If we are concerned at all with the future of our children, as well as our own future, then we must be concerned with the current state of our marriages.

“It’s Not Just for the Kids Anymore”

“I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to understand each other and . . . To understand is to love.” - John Butler Yeats

Another common misconception about marriage is that it is restrictive and oppressive, especially for women. Women can wash a business suit, but can’t wear one; they can put books back on the shelf, but can’t read them--that sort of thing. The belief was long held, that women weren’t able to develop intellectually or emotionally in a marriage, due either to a domineering husband, or simply because there was no time in between changing diapers, cooking dinner, and washing the dishes for a woman to pursue her own goals. With all the gender role issues that women were and are being forced to confront, some husbands still manage, incredibly, to claim that marriage is a burden to their freedom and soaks up all their hard earned money.

The latest research refutes all of these notions. New data demonstrates that in almost all instances marriage is good for both men and women in a variety of ways. Married men and women are happier than single people. Although the difference in levels of happiness is greater between single and married men, there is a difference among women, also. A 17-nation study conducted by Steven Stack and J. Ross Eshleman of Wayne State University in 1998, showed not only that marriage increased happiness among men and women, but also that people in alternate forms of relationships, such as cohabitation, were not as happy and had less money than married people.

Linda Waite, a sociologist from University of Chicago, outlines in her new book, The Case for Marriage, the different aspects of our personal lives that are almost always improved when we marry. Men and women are better off financially, psychologically, physically (we actually live longer if we’re married), emotionally, and spiritually. Numerous studies on married and unmarried people have been done since the 1970’s when the idea that marriage was physically and psychologically harmful to women became popular. These new studies, points out Professor Waite, offer a drastically different view of marriage. “Marriage changes people’s behaviors in ways that make them better off,” says Waite.