Appendix P:  Helpful Quotes and Insights 

“Marriage is more than just a love match.  Good relationships involve skills that need to be taught and learned.”⁹² 

^“Marriage is not merely a private taste or private relation; it is an important public good. As marriage weakens, the costs are borne not only by individual children and families, but also by all of us taxpayers, citizens, and neighbors.  We all incur the costs of higher crime, welfare, education and health care expenditures, and in reduced security for our own marriage investments… as a matter of public health alone, to take just one public consequence of marriage’s decline, a new campaign to reduce marriage failure is an important as the campaign to reduce smoking.”⁹³ 

“Marriage is a fundamental social institution.  It is central to the nurture and raising of children.  It is the social glue that reliably attaches fathers to children.  It contributes to the physical, emotional and economic health of men, women, and children, and thus to the nation as a whole.”⁹⁴ 

The Northwest Marriage and Family Movement concludes from its research: “Healthy, strong marriages between a man and a woman are good for adults, essential for children, and positive for society.”⁹⁵

“If family trends of recent decades are extended into the future, the result will be not only growing uncertainty within marriage, but the gradual elimination of marriage in favor of casual liaisons oriented to adult expressiveness and self-fulfillment.  The problem with that scenario is that children will be harmed, adults will probably be no happier, and the social order could collapse.”⁹⁶

According to the Marriage Movement Statement, signed by various leaders, “…the decline of marriage is not inevitable.  Social recovery is possible, as the recent encouraging turnaround in the divorce rate affirms.”⁹⁷

 Hopeful recent statistical trends:

·          Sexual abstinence and secondary abstinence among young people is on the rise.⁹⁸

·          The number of couples divorcing is slightly decreasing.⁹⁹

·          Divorce rates have virtually leveled off.¹⁰⁰

·          The rate of teenage pregnancies and births have dropped.¹⁰¹

 

References

⁹²Feurherd, Joe. November 28, 2003. “Bush’s Antipoverty Weapon.” National Catholic Reporter.

⁹³Waite and Gallagher.  The Case for Marriage. p 186.

⁹⁴Popenoe, David, and Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe.  The State of Our Unions 2002: The So     Health of Marriage in America. Piscataway, New Jersey: The National Marriage Project. p 4. 

⁹⁵Popenoe, Northwest Marriage and Family Movement. Families Northwest. p 6. 

⁹⁶Popenoe, David. “Modern Marriage: Revisiting the Cultural Script,” Promises to Keep 1996. p 248.

⁹⁷Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, Institute for American Values, and the  Religion, Culture, and Family Project of the University of Chicago Divinity School. The Marriage Movement. p 7. 

⁹⁸National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. 2000.  “Fact Sheet: The Cautious Generation? Teen Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes.” found at wwww.teenpregnancy.org. 

⁹⁹Popenoe and Whitehead.  The State of Our Unions 2002. p 20. 

¹⁰⁰Popenoe and Whitehead.  The State of Our Unions 2002. p 20. 

¹⁰¹Rita Rubin. April 18, 2001.  “Teen birth rates drop to a new low.” USA Today.