Marriage – not a priority…sigh….

As we all mostly know, illegitimacy is going way up – way, way up.  A combination of feminism and culture that has said "it’s all about me" and "stupid husbands"?  Or can we also add in a lack of morals and ignorance of the outcome?

From Joanne Jacobs:

Marriage ‘isn’t a priority’ for parents

Unwed motherhood is way up, primarily because women in their 20s and 30s don’t see marriage as essential or because single women nearing 40 prefer a sperm donor to a marriage of convenience. Nearly four of 10 babies are born out of wedlock, up from one third in 2002 and double the 1980 rate.

"It’s been a huge increase — a dramatic increase,” said Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics, which documented the shift in detail.
There’s little or no stigma in unwed motherhood. But it remains a bad deal for the mothers and a very bad deal for their children, who are much more likely to grow up in poverty and without a father’s love and care.

In New Carrollton, Natrice McKenzie, 25, a teller supervisor at a bank, said she did not set out to become a single mother but has no regrets.

“Getting married was something I had in mind, but that basically was not what happened,” said McKenzie, pregnant with her third child.

Something else didn’t happen either: birth control. I can understand one unplanned pregnancy. But three by the age of 25?

Three by the age of 25….on a teller’s wages?  You know what the result is – society, once again, will be socializing bad decisions – she plays, we pay. So, why SHOULD she worry about birth control?

Or a father for her children…I feel sorry for them as they will probably end up with a Merry-go-Round line of live-ins:  here today, gone next week.

The Christian Church can (and should be shouldering) much of the blame in this (and I say that as a battleground state for gay marriage as this is typed) – we have failed to prove why one needs to be committed when it comes to marriage and why divorce should be a non-existent topic (e.g., "it just does not exist in my vocabulary – failure is not an option") except in those rare instances of physical danger to one of the spouses.

Laura from Hot Air says it well:

If you put something out with the trash, the police can search it without a warrant. Anyone walking by can take it. Although it’s still on your property, it’s not really yours anymore; you’ve relinquished your claim to it. And that’s exactly what we’ve done with marriage. We might as well let gays have it. We’re not using it.

There are four elements of the marriage crisis:

* Marriage: The marriage rate has plunged 50% since 1970. If the same percentage of couples were marrying now as in 1970, there would be a million more marriages a year – 3.3 million marriages, not 2.2 million. Those who have never-married aged 30-44 have tripled from 6.8% in 1970 to 20.4% in 2005.

* Divorce: Half of all new marriages end in divorce. There have been 42 million divorces since 1970 hurting 40 million children. One quarter of all adults age 18-35 have grown up in divorced families.

* Cohabitation: The number of unmarried couples living together soared 12-fold from 430,000 in 1960 to 5.4 million in 2005. There are only 2.2 million marriages a year. Thus, cohabitation has become the dominant way male-female unions are formed. Couples who marry after living together are 50% more likely to divorce than those who did not.

* Unwed births: Out-of wedlock births jumped from 5.3% to 37.4% or from 224,000 to 1.5 million children from 1960-2004. Cohabiting couples are as likely to have a child under 18 as married couples (41% vs. 46%).

And for my fellow Christian conservatives: we haven’t got a moral leg to stand on. Our divorce rate is identical to the national average.  We allow our churches to be used as elaborate stage sets for bridezilla productions, often with just pro forma premarital counseling or sometimes none at all.  When our fellow church members get divorced, we do not counsel them adequately.  We fail to create a culture of marriage in our youth and twenty-somethings.  We have shown massive disrespect for marriage.  When we demand others respect it, it’s not surprising that we’re not taken seriously.