A Single Column in a Courtyard of Broken Arches

I've been wondering why today's society is seeing a decline in marriage numbers when compared to the past. According to Ohio State University Economist and Research Scientist, Jay L. Zagorsky, "Now only about two million marriages happen a year, a drop of almost half a million from their peak." Despite the extreme poverty and financial hardship of the time, more people were getting married during the Great Depression than there are now. For me, that's a sobering realization. Think about it. Even though the ability to support a family is more manageable today than it was during the Great Depression, we're seeing fewer marriages today than we've seen in the last 150 years, including the years of WWI and WWII when most men were away fighting. (Jay L. Zagorsky). I used to think the economic infrastructure of society was solely responsible for the decline of marriages, but I was wrong. As is shown in Zagorsky's article, the cause of marital decline is not solely poor economy or financial lack. After all, regardless of how bad you think the economy of the nation is now, I'm sure we'd all agree that the Great Depression was far worse! Yet there were more marriages during the Great Depression. So why? If it's not a lack of financial stability that's keeping people from getting married, what is? The truth is, there are several things causing the decline in marriage numbers. I will discuss four of them today.

1. People believe that getting married limits them from pursuing their dreams.

It's become a popular idea within today's society that, if you get married, your dreams get shoved to the back-burner since your spouse becomes your first priority. While it's true that your spouse should be prioritized, everything else about that idea is false. When marriage is done correctly, your partner should actually propel you toward your dreams; not pull you away from them. Marriage should be the ultimate tool toward the furtherance of your life-goals, an alliance with another person to encourage you in your heart's desires, but society has somehow fostered the lie that getting married is more of a bondage than a launching-pad toward achievement. Society reasons that, if a woman gets married, she is giving up all her dreams and choosing a life of house-cleaning, diapers, and laundry. But I'm here to tell you that that lie couldn't have been further from God's heart when He designed marriage. Both men and women can pursue their dreams AND get married without excluding one or the other. It is absolutely critical for people to realize that marriage is a blessing, not a limitation.

2. People are moving in with each other as romantic partners instead of getting married.

In their fear of commitment, society has completely twisted the design of relationship between man and woman. Rather than make the lifelong covenant to "have and to hold" each other "for better or worse," people have begun to enter romantic and sexual relationships without saying a single marriage vow, enabling themselves to withdraw from the relationship at any point without guilt. This not only cuts down on current marriage numbers, but also stunts future marriage numbers. Why? Because after neglecting to enter covenant with each other, when a woman is left by a man (or vice versa) and emotionally devastated, she will turn around and raise her children with the worldview that romance leads to heartbreak and loss. And they will listen. Those kids, products of broken romance, will grow up to believe that romance is broken. Why would they do something that they've seen destroy their parents lives?


3. Marriage is not portrayed as something beautiful.

If a column stood alone in a courtyard of broken arches, would that column ever want to become an arch? If a column looked around and saw shattered arches all around it, would it ever want to join itself with another column to become an arch? If a column was constantly told of the difficulties carried by arches, and never told of the benefits arches have, would that column ever want to become an arch? In much the same way, if society continues to portray marriage as tedious instead of beautiful, discussing only the difficulties and hardships of marriage and rarely speaking of its glory and joy, we will continue to see marriage numbers fall. If society continues to present marriage as a hindrance, filled with more bondage than blessing, single people will continue to avoid it altogether. While marriage is definitely not all orgasms and roses, we should not portray the hardships of marriage so much that the joys disappear. In society's attempt to "prepare" young people for the challenges of marriage, they've actually over-corrected, inadvertently imprinting singles with a largely negative perception of marriage--a perception that says marriage is more bad than good, more necessity than joy, and more difficulty than beauty. 


4. Men have forgotten how to pursue a woman.

When searching for a spouse, men sometimes complain that there are “no women available,” but that’s simply not true. There are about 3.8 billion women on the planet right now. If you calculated the sum of all the women in the world from the beginning of time until 50 years ago, you would have less women than are walking the Earth today. So what if the issue is not the shortage of quality women, but rather the unwillingness and fear of mankind to pursue a woman? Women are made to be pursued and fought for, and men are made to chase and conquer; a perfectly designed scenario. Yet when today’s society blurs the lines of what it means to be a man, we lose a fundamental part of man’s nature and design: the ability to pursue. (Kris Vallotton).

“A woman playing hard-to-get should inspire the masculine need to win, to compete for the prize, to climb the castle wall. But in a feminized world, a woman has to put a ladder against the castle wall, followed by a safety rope, and then wait at the bottom of the step to show him the way up.”

-Kris Vallotton



Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/third-rail/episodes/episode-7-is-marriage-dead/why-are-fewer-people-getting-married/

https://soundcloud.com/moralrevolution/principles-of-fatherhood-ft-kris-vallotton