Category: Marriage/Family

It matters profoundly whether a society understands marriage as a public concern or merely a private matter. Yet few Christians spend much time thinking about whether marriage is fundamentally public or private. Young adult Christians tend to consider marriage a private matter (with some public manifestations). The wedding is a public event, but the marriage itself is considered nobody’s business. Decisions to divorce are private, though they entail public legal filings, and declarations, social shifts in relationship status, the creation of distinct households, etc. Westerners in general tend to minimize these public aspects of divorce, expecting little to no objection from others. Most do not share the perspective of Jessica—a thirty-one-year-old engaged Catholic from Austin—who imagines marriage as creating circles that ripple out “to the extended family, to the community, to the nation, and to the entire society.”

Marriage Foundation, a UK charity, recently surveyed 2,000 young adults for Marriage Week 2021 and found that over 80 percent of 18-30s want to marry.

So why won’t our politicians back marriage?

In an April address to Congress, the Biden administration proposed the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan (AFP). The aim is to invest in families by providing universal preschool education, mandating comprehensive paid family leave, and extending tax cuts to lower and middle-class families.

The plan not only intends to provide aid in the wake of COVID-19’s economic destruction, but also to make the U.S. provide paid family leave, as it is one of the few Western countries that does not.

These “nonconjugal couples” – mutually supportive relationships of friends or relatives that lack a sexual component – are powerfully challenging dominant social and legal norms around what constitutes family.

The fertility rate in Utah and in the nation is falling and, while there are some positive reasons for that, including a drop in the teen pregnancy rate and a rise in women pursuing their desired careers, it is causing concern from some who fret that fewer children eventually may destabilize the country, even the world.

Most Americans are not willing to forgive a spouse’s infidelity, according to a Gallup Poll. Only about 1 in 3 Americans say they would forgive their spouse for marital infidelity, including just 10% who say they would definitely forgive him or her. Democrats turn out to be more forgiving than Republicans, which I guess seems fair given the fact that they’re more likely to cheat in the first place.

That children are not consulted before a family is dissolved is the clearest sign of the injustice of the contractual view of marriage. The most basic principle of the liberal logic of contract is not adhered to in the case of its most vulnerable members, who are treated as nonpersons. Few children would willingly acquiesce to the divorce of their parents and their interests matter.

While it is good that legal systems have become more sensitive to the psychological effects of the law on participants in the legal process, we should be wary of claims that assert that no-fault divorce is “therapeutic” for divorcing couples or their children. Advocates for the sanctity of marriage across the globe should pay close attention to this shift.