You missed it? Marriage in America is dead!
With the news of COVID-19 choking our email in-boxes and our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok pages, you probably missed the recent news about the death of marriage in American culture. It looks like this glorious institution of marriage is going the way of 8-track tapes and typewriters.
On April 29, 2020, a flurry of headlines declared “U.S. Marriage Rate Hits Historic Low.” Sadly, this is no surprise for those of us who love marriage and who examine American culture and its downward spiral related to marriage, family, and sexuality.
The bad news came out of a federal agency that we have been hearing much about, unrelated to marriage, however. The news came from a report published by the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report revealed that in 2017-2018 the marriage rate “dropped 6%, from 6.9 per 1,000 population to 6.5.” This rate is lower than at any point in over a century. In other words, marriage is dead. If not dead, then it has been intubated on life support and the peak oxygen flow volume on the respirator dial is on its highest level ever.
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Culture watchers, prognosticators, and futurists were predicting the death of marriage since the late 1960s. Remember the sexual revolution? Those of us who bring attention to this dismal data about the death of marriage – and thus life-long committed heterosexual partnerships and the benefit of sexual relations only in the context of monogamy – are criticized as being judgmental and ridiculed as “cultural Neanderthals” and sociological Luddites.
Not being a prophet nor the son of one, I co-wrote a Christian Post column at the end of January 2020 along with business-owner and pro-life advocate Carla D’Addesi (she is the mother of three home-schooled daughters and the wife of an esteemed surgeon) about the selfishness and narcissism of the current generation of millennials. By the comments section, you would have thought we were calling for the extinction of bacon and lattes. Mean, nasty, sarcastic would be even-tempered words to describe the vitriol in response to our column.
The column was written, not as a judgment, but as a warning and as an evaluation. We should have added that the generation before millennials was the one that gloried no-fault divorce, contraception, the pill, sex without children and consequences, and the like. But the mistakes of previous generations do not have to be repeated in subsequent generations. For example, “friends with benefits” hasn’t worked for Gen-Xers and it won’t work for any generation.
Eight years ago, an article written by Derek Thompson and published in The Atlantic (no friend to dusty, musty, moldy old-school monogamy) commented on the alarming drop in marriage rates. Thompson stated:
At first blush, the institution of marriage is crumbling. In 1960, 72% of all adults over 18 were married. By 2010, the number fell to 51%. You can fault the increase in divorces that peaked in the 1970s. Or you could just blame the twentysomethings. The share of married adults 18-29 plunged from 59% in 1960 to 20% in 2010. Twenty percent!
As a pastor of urban New York City churches (think Washington Heights and the South Bronx) since 2008, I’ve counseled scores of cohabitating couples. During my counseling sessions, I frequently ask the young woman what she gets out of a non-committed relationship. The question is frequently met with a blank stare or a look at the floor of the pastor’s office.
Young men enjoy all the benefits without any of the commitment. Sounds harsh, right? But ask any family lawyer what legal rights benefit the young woman and her children, if any, in a court of law. You might as well be looking for alligator fur or chicken teeth. In the current non-committed, shacked-up, cohabitating, “marriage-is-only-a-piece-of-paper” mindset, children are most at risk and little kids always suffer the worst of consequences. Don’t believe it? I invite you to come to my pastoral sessions and hear the heartbreak of cohabitation, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially.
The solution to the pollution? To those of us who are married, let’s work it out. If we are not working on our marriage, we are working on our divorce (divorce rate is the same in the church as it is in the popular culture). Obviously, if there is domestic violence of any sort, that must be dealt with immediately. And if we are living with someone who we are not married to but “committed to,” by all means, get married. Provide a safety net for yourselves and for children.
To pastors and clergy, teach about the benefits of marriage (it is in The Good Book). After many conversations with seminary students and young adult pastors, it is clear that many of these guys are cowards when it comes to teaching young people that marriage is a gift, just as singleness is a gift.
Your choice. Put another dose of morphine in the vein of marriage and allow it to go into the dustbin of history or dust off your CPR manual and get to work reviving the honorable institution of marriage. You will be saving a culture if you commit to the latter.
