Finally, a national news magazine faces the truth about marriage
Here is a spot on article in TIME (what a contrast to Newsweek!) about a crisis that causes an unbelievable amount of human suffering and disrupts society to a degree that most of us just aren't willing to face: the collapse of heterosexual marriage in our society.
Nearly forty percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. Nearly twenty percent of adult Americans (more than a quarter of adult New Yorkers) have genital herpes.
By every measurement, the divorce of parents is a devastating psychological trauma for children even in the best of circumstances, and by every measurable criterion children who grow up without fathers lag behind kids who grow up in intact homes both in development and in ultimate economic status. Yet both marriage and childbearing are increasingly seen not as responsibility to others, but as means of self-fulfillment to be casually walked away from if they become inconvenient. More and more, we seem able to distinguish between loving our children and acting responsibly toward them. I never cease to me amazed by the number of couples who avoid marriage because they say that they aren't ready for the commitment, completely oblivious to the commitment sleeping in a crib in the next room!
We Americans don't understand the commitment marriage- to say nothing of parenthood- inherently entails. The emotional and financial devastation to the adults involved is incredible. Its impact on their children is devastating.
This is not a "religious" issue; It is not even primarily an ethical issue. It is a matter of the survival of our society, and it's glad to see a major news publication undertake the unpopular task of holding its seriousness up to the unwilling gaze of hedonistic, selfish, childish American adults.
HT: Rev. Walt Snyder
Nearly forty percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. Nearly twenty percent of adult Americans (more than a quarter of adult New Yorkers) have genital herpes.
By every measurement, the divorce of parents is a devastating psychological trauma for children even in the best of circumstances, and by every measurable criterion children who grow up without fathers lag behind kids who grow up in intact homes both in development and in ultimate economic status. Yet both marriage and childbearing are increasingly seen not as responsibility to others, but as means of self-fulfillment to be casually walked away from if they become inconvenient. More and more, we seem able to distinguish between loving our children and acting responsibly toward them. I never cease to me amazed by the number of couples who avoid marriage because they say that they aren't ready for the commitment, completely oblivious to the commitment sleeping in a crib in the next room!
We Americans don't understand the commitment marriage- to say nothing of parenthood- inherently entails. The emotional and financial devastation to the adults involved is incredible. Its impact on their children is devastating.
This is not a "religious" issue; It is not even primarily an ethical issue. It is a matter of the survival of our society, and it's glad to see a major news publication undertake the unpopular task of holding its seriousness up to the unwilling gaze of hedonistic, selfish, childish American adults.
HT: Rev. Walt Snyder
Comments
Thanks!
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the equivalent of the '60's expression, "right on."