In support of children

One of the things that bothers me these days is how people take the sacred bond of marriage so very ingenuously. Given the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and 70s I can see how what used to be such a respectable bond has been warped. I don’t claim to be a conservative or a liberal; I really don’t like labels at all. I am just a fellow human being trying to put things into perspective so that I don’t go mad and share that perspective with others who, I know, are struggling with life just like every other human being.

I did some research on the marriage/divorce ratio in the United States in the last few decades and the results were really not that surprising, to me at least. Here’s something for the curious: according to the most recent statistics researched by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ratio of marriage to divorce lately is 2:1. What do you think of that? I have reasons why that may be.

I suppose that taking marriage vows for granted can all be blamed on the sexual revolution and people having sex with whoever, whenever, wherever, but statistics don’t lie. Since the mid 1960s there has been a steady incline in the rate of divorces in the United States while marriages did not change much. In the mid 1970s the amount of people getting married dropped a bit compared to those getting divorced, and around 1985 marriages and divorces both declined, though the divorce rate did not drop as low as the marriage rate. The 1960s were a blast, I’m sure, but there were a certain amount of ethical and moral values that were lost or forgotten during that explosive time of artistic, cultural, civil, political, social, sexual, and who knows what else kind of revolutionary period.

Though that was a time of change that was certainly necessary, and I don’t regret it (I was born in 1968 and am influenced by much that came out of that era), it was inevitable that all of the “free love” would have a negative effect on the children of the United States at some point. I feel like I turned out all right, and many of my friends in my generation turned out fine. However, the concept of free love influenced many people in my and later generations in a not so positive way, as the statistics of marriage and divorce show. The amount of children living with one parent in 1960 was 9.4%, and, although I have not done the research, it is fair to suggest that a fair portion of them had lost a parent in one of the recent wars (Korea, WWII). The amount of children living with one parent in 2004 is 29.4%. Although the United States has had some conflicts here and there in the last 20 years, there haven’t been many casualties, relatively speaking. From a basic common sense perspective, this is likely not a good thing for the children of this country. As a reader, as a single parent, a child of a single parent, as a divorced person, you can take this as you want. Everyone can do whatever they want–eventually they’ll get what they deserve.

I have no children, I have never been married, and I admit that I find it difficult to control my masculine urges, but if I ever do marry I will sign no pre-nup and I pray that it will be “till death do us part.”