John and Mary met at a mutual friend’s party. He worked at an advertising agency; she was a receptionist for an attorney’s firm. They started dating and seeing each other quite a bit as they enjoyed each other’s company.
Six months flew by and they realized how much they loved each other. John and Mary started talking about what options were available for them to stay together as happy as they were now. They decided moving in together was the best. There were other options they could follow but considering travel time to work and time in getting together, this would be their best option.
In our society, why would this scenario be considered okay? The institution of marriage is important in the eyes of God, yet many choose not to get married. Studies and research have shown over decades that without the binding legal contract of marriage between a man and a woman, our nation will buckle under confusion and instability.
Studies on the effects of marriage on the family for the last twenty years, still attest that couples who are married and stay married contribute positive forces to society in happier and healthier children, less crime and abuse in the community and better mental health overall in society. In all three areas listed, the lifestyles of those who stay married improve greatly.
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Confusion and insecurity decrease:
After years of research and study all the evidence points to the fact that marriage is the very glue which binds our culture together. It’s the very base of our security and well-being. From the writings of David Blankenborn, Fatherless America: Confronting our Most Urgent Social
Problem, he reports: “The most important causal factor of declining child well-being is the remarkable collapse of marriage, leading to growing family instability and decreasing parental investment in children.”
Married couples who stay together create a most remarkable phenomenon. We are linked together by our parents from one generation to another. This creates stability. Imagine if the majority of our great-grandparents did not stay together in marriage as it has developed today. Generations of mass confused and insecure posterity would result and there would be no stability.
From a talk in April of 1991, Gordon B. Hinckley, who was president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says, “How wonderful a thing is marriage under of our Eternal Father, a plan provided in his divine wisdom for the happiness and security of His children and the continuity of the race.” The success of our society depends upon couples marrying and staying married as couples. It is the sense of who we are as a people.
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Crime and abuse decrease:
An interesting thing happened in 1996. Congress overhauled the welfare laws making it necessary for couples to marry if more welfare is to be dispersed to families. Five years later in a report from Blaine Harden in the New York Times, August 12, 2001, Two-Parent Rise after Change in Welfare Laws, he writes: “There is a widespread agreement among welfare experts that something remarkable has been going on in poor urban communities, particularly in the last five years. The confluence of positive trends includes falling rates of crime and drug abuse, the greatest decline in child poverty, particularly black child poverty since the 1960’s, and sharp increases in employment among mothers who head families, especially those who have never been married.”
This, to me, is concrete evidence that having two parents committed to each other help many social ills: poverty, drug abuse, and crime, to decrease in occurrences around the country. From an article written by Bruce C. Hafen, who was the Dean of BYU’s Law School and is an LDS author, published in the June 1994, Ensign, he writes …”the fabric of society is literally coming apart at the seams—those permanent seams of human interconnectedness we call kinship and marriage. In a society that seems ever more angry and unhappy, many children, parents, and spouses are turning their hearts not toward one another but toward their own self-focused needs.”
Having a committed help-mate is so powerful in married life; the effects far out reach any government social program or organization. It is the core of our own well-being.
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Good behavior and better mental health increase:
There are a growing number of children who are suffering from many different kinds of mental and behavioral problems: depression, anxiety, attention deficit, conduct disorders and suicide. How can we reverse this trend? From a study released in 2003 through Dartmouth Medical School by 33 psychiatrists, neurologists and social scientists called Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities, it states: “The human brain is biologically hardwired for enduring attachments to other people and for moral and spiritual meaning”. The report also stressed the importance of “authoritative communities that set moral frameworks for children, the most important being the family.”
This is irrefutable evidence that married couples need to stay together to raise their children in an “enduring attachment.” Parents are the best enduring attachment for their own children; otherwise anxiety, depression, and other behavioral problems run amok. By committed parents keeping a kind and loving relationship with each other and their children, the cause of instability and disintegration of mental health would be improved tremendously.
To read more of Valerie’s articles, click here.
We need the institution of marriage. Our society and culture depend upon us staying married to properly raise emotionally stable children. Our safety and well-being rely on the stability of married couples committing their life to each other and working together to stay together.
As a country, we need to realize how important getting married and then staying married is to the human race. We need to realize that we are to encourage single mothers to work towards a happy, healthy husband and husbands to work towards a happy, healthy relationship with their wives. It is the only way our society will survive and survive with happy, healthy members of society.
Valerie Steimle has been writing as a family advocate for over 25 years. As a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she promotes Christian living in her writings and is the mother of nine children and grandmother to twelve. Mrs. Steimle authored six books and is a contributing writer to several online websites. To her, time is the most precious commodity we have and knows we should spend it wisely.
To read more of Valerie's work, visit her at her website, The Blessings of Family Life.
This is very interesting. I think many in my generation saw the problems in marriage and divorce of parents generation and now are entering slowly. However, as you point out that may be the wrong way to go about it for our general happiness.
Thanks for posting Rachel… Yes–I can see those from divorced homes being a little skiddish in getting married but as we are told my our church leaders that if we have God as the third partner in marriage and both partners have a conviction to make the marriage last, then success is sure to come in a lasting, happy marriage.