Marriage and Values

Marriage has long been known as a way of life, you go to school, get a job, get married and have kids, that’s just the way it works. And for the most part society has followed this. Well, at least until recently. Now I’m not saying that the institute of marriage has gone on vacation per se, but what I am saying is that divorce, single motherhood and cohabiting couples are on the rise. In fact if you look at the last couple of years the idea of divorce has rapidly become an acceptable response to couples “falling out of love”, hmm sounds more like bad commitments to me. What’s more is the ever increasing amount of boyfriends and girlfriends moving in together (often against their parents’ wishes). My question to you is “why are these things becoming socially acceptable?” Well you can point out many different agents for this change but no matter which way you slice it, the fact is that as a society, the morals in America are slowly being choked, and much of it due to a “tolerance” of so called “different” or “trendy” lifestyles. So when an article like the one we have here, shows how it is mathematically and economically incorrect to live these flagrant lifestyles, it seems that conservatives have good reason to say “I told you so”.

          Not only does Mona Charen suggest that marriage is important but that statistically speaking, it may be the only way for most to life productive lives. Charen states

“Married men earn between 10 and 40 percent more than their single counterparts with similar educational and job histories”. Also “Married Americans were more than twice as likely as divorced or separated Americans to say they were very happy with life in general”. She goes on to say “Longitudinal research shows that it is not merely that mentally healthy people are more likely to get or stay married. Instead, marriage itself appears to boost mental health. Remaining unmarried or getting divorced seems to result, on average, in a deterioration in mental well-being."

Statistics and observations like this are I’m sure shocking to most people. But what I want to focus on is how clearly it states that these new lifestyles of divorce, single-motherhood and cohabitation are not only bad for you wallet, but there bad for your health and happiness as well. What this article shows me is that society in general are taking a much more liberal attitude in the way they live and are unfortunately reaping the consequences. Maybe if they had listened to their parents advice, or better yet, if they had gone to church they could have avoided the bad decisions that landed them here.

          Furthermore, I find articles like this to be somewhat frustrating, Frustrating because the data so obviously shows that these kinds of lifestyles are wrong, but yet our society goes ever onward disregarding the glaring problems of their own destructive behavior. What is more frustrating than that though is the simplicity of the answer: Moral values. If society had a firmer grasp on solid conservative values than all of these problems would literally “disappear”. But no, instead society has bashed institutions like Christianity, Conservatism and Religion, they’ve called it too fundamental, too backwards, and yet it is precisely their disregard for this that has landed them in poverty, mental instability and social economic ostracism. You think people would start to wise up and say “hey wait maybe these institutions do have some good lifestyle choices” but sadly we see just the opposite. Even with the obvious data glaring at them people still live their own flamboyant lifestyles and wonder “why is my life so bad?” Maybe if a few of them swallowed their pride and let themselves embrace the good things life has to offer, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Again, news like this does two things, first it makes people think (hopefully) that maybe marriage is sacred. And second it gives us (for those that follow a sacred constitution of marriage) a firm job well done.