One of the most critical values my husband and I try to
teach our three teenagers is the importance and joy of marriage.
After my desire for my children to be at peace and have a
personal relationship with their Creator, my second greatest desire is that
they would one day be happily married and raise children of their own.
Why? Because I know the joy of this great blessing, and
because I’ve seen the pain and heartache of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and
single-parenting. Yet our modern culture refuses to spread the truth because it
is politically incorrect.
But the truth is clear: God’s design is for children to be
born of and raised by two married parents. Sadly, we know that many people
cannot help the fact that they’re raising their children alone. But many others
actually make the choice to raise children by themselves -- and the children
are the ones who suffer.
Many people fear being so blunt. But gutsy author and
researcher Kay Hymowitz knows the importance of speaking the truth. She boldly
detailed at a speech before a
large audience at The Heritage Foundation how research proves that children
and mothers who are part of families that include fathers and husbands are far
better off than those moms who try to make it on their own.
But what about the “Murphy Browns” out there? Aren’t there
waves of high-powered career women happily having children out of wedlock, too?
You’ll find some, all right. But not nearly as many as the
sad, struggling single mothers and children living in poverty. In her new book,
“Marriage
and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age,”
Hymowitz explains:
“Starting in 1980, Americans began
to experience a widening Marriage Gap that has reached dangerous proportions.
As of 2000 only about 10 percent of mothers with sixteen or more years of
education -- that is, with a college degree or higher -- were living without
husbands. Compare that with 36 percent of mothers who have between nine and
fourteen years of education. All the statistics about marriage so often
rehashed in m