Marriage - seems to be pretty important...

I came across the July 13 edition of Time Magazine at my Chiropractors office and the cover title was : "Unfaithfully Yours". An interesting source for what turned out to be a pretty conservative view on marriage.

The lead article "Is there hope for the American Marriage" was written by Caitlin Flanagan (an interesting women herself) and it has much to say about reasons to preserve marriage - translate that: commit and build rather than try it, cut and run. The article references some high profile infidelities and then gets on to some of the critical reasons to preserve marriage: the care and nurture of each other and our children.

From the article: "And so two more American families discover a truth as old as marriage: a lasting covenant between a man and a woman can be a vehicle for the nurture and protection of each other, the one reliable shelter in an uncaring world — or it can be a matchless tool for the infliction of suffering on the people you supposedly love above all others, most of all on your children."

Flanagan touches on the dramatic differences in the outcomes of kids from single parents vs two parent homes, births to unmarried women (now at 40% of the total births), the critical role of the father, the purpose of marriage and our cultural ambivalence to the institution of marriage to which she responds: "This is ultimately self-defeating. It is time instead to come to terms with both our unrealistic expectations for a happy marriage and our equally unrealistic beliefs about the consequences of walking away from the families we build."

The Bible says: leave and cleave; the two shall become one...

It is interesting to note that, while reading an online article praising the institution of traditional marriage you are bombarded with links to such things as a gay marriage video, the top 10 mistresses, the top 10 scandals of 2008 and more. Good reason to be sure that we as parents and our education system are teaching our children to be discerning and thoughtful and well grounded as they navigate this electronic world.