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By Brad Keena
CNSNews.com Commentary from the Free Congress Foundation
The central place of marriage
in our family system is eroding." That's the assessment of Johns Hopkins University
sociology professor Andrew J. Cherlin, following the release of a census report this week
on how Americans live.
Numbers from the 2000 census count point to the redefinition of the American household in
recent decades and the shrinking dominance of married-with-children families.
The new figures show the continuation of a disturbing national trend away from the
traditional family model of married couples with children. In fact, among the
fastest-growing groups were unmarried partners. Live-in couples, as a group, saw a 72
percent increase over the last ten years.
Fifty years ago, the cohabitation of an unmarried couple was a social scandal in the
United States. Today, it is a cultural trend endorsed in the popular culture. Couples want
their cake and eat it too, and no one is ashamed. Consider a May 16 Washington Post
article mentioning a high-ranking Republican official who, "enlisted his White House
friends to help him surprise his live-in girlfriend" with a marriage proposal while
touring the Rose Garden. No one bats an eye at the phrase, "live-in." That's our
culture.
Except the problem is, studies also show a greater proportion of live-in couples break up.
And why not? Without the added commitment and responsibility that marriage brings to a
relationship, who's going to stay together when the going gets tough? Plus, according to
other surveys, at least a third of those live-in couples have children living with them.
What kind of message are live-in parents sending them about commitment and responsibility,
and what happens to these kids when the parents split?
As the Post article suggests, even conservatives are caught up in this popular trend, many
of whom regularly attend churches in which they never hear a word about the moral
questions associated with sex before marriage.
All of this makes it more difficult for cultural conservatives wishing to publicly
criticize the homosexual lifestyle. After all, what can you say if your own heterosexual
house is not in order?
Still, these new statistics are important if only because they help paint a broader
picture of what our society is becoming: a nation of individuals who insist on their
rights, take pride in breaking rules, and hate having to wait for anything - and that goes
for our interpersonal relationships.
This week the White House unveiled a comprehensive national plan to solve the energy
crisis. They're also working on a plan to save Social Security, and another to improve
military readiness. They now have a plan to pay down the public debt. But there is no
comprehensive national plan to address the culture.
The reality is that our culture is broken, but no amount of government expense or federal
attention can fix it. That's because the problem is a matter of the heart. It's a problem
that describes the woeful spiritual condition of many Americans today. God and His
precepts haven't changed, we have.
(Brad Keena is editor of the Cultural
Dissident )