The recently released Centre for Social Justice’s report “Breakthrough Britain: Family Breakdown,” indeed records some worrying trends, and made clear that the most radical changes had been to child-rearing and marriage.
It notes the “lowest number” of marriages “recorded since 1895,” – that’s more than one hundred years! There is also a corresponding increase in “cohabiting couples, lone parent families, and people living alone.” Are we less stable because we dont’ have solid partners, solid parents or solid families to fall back on anymore?
Overall, 56 per cent of conceptions in 2006 were outside marriage. By the time a child is five, “less than 1 in 12 married parents have split up compared to almost 1 in 2 cohabiting parents.” Obviously then unmarried relationships are more likely to break up – maybe because people haven’t really made a commitment at all or have drifted into live in relationships without too much thought because there is no need to make a commitment. Not so nice for children involved.
Dr Richard Woolfson, a leading family expert and child psychologist, said: “The nature of family life has changed significantly in the last 30 years. The traditional nuclear family of two parents and 2.4 children has become a museum piece. The couple who do not get married is now socially acceptable in a way that it never was before.”
Dr Woolfson said it was impossible to say if children raised outside the traditional family were unhappier, but he added: “You have to ask what sort of families will today’s children create. Where will they go?”
And indeed where will they go? Are we as a society happier without marriage and family? Or do we simply lack the self esteem and discipline to make a firm commitment to a family? Do we, as women, have to make more of an effort to claim back femininity and take pride in filling a mother role?
Perhaps we should take a good look at ourselves before we take the easy, relativist route of anything and everything goes (because heaven forbid we came across as judgmental because we have an opinion – so we just won’t say anything when these sort of conversations come up…).
I have unashamedly copied this from http://unreasonablefaith.com/, but I thought it might interest the readership.
——————
We hear a lot about “biblical marriage” these days. Some of us might not be clear on what that means. The website Religious Tolerance has provided a helpful article on the types of marriage found in the pages of the bible.
Here’s a summary:
1. Polygynous Marriage
Probably the most common form of marriage in the bible, it is where a man has more than one wife.
2. Levirate Marriage
When a woman was widowed without a son, it became the responsibility of the brother-in-law or a close male relative to take her in and impregnate her. If the resulting child was a son, he would be considered the heir of her late husband. See Ruth, and the story of Onan (Gen. 38:6-10).
3. A man, a woman and her property — a female slave
The famous “handmaiden” sketch, as preformed by Abraham (Gen. 16:1-6) and Jacob (Gen. 30:4-5).
4. A man, one or more wives, and some concubines
The definition of a concubine varies from culture to culture, but they tended to be live-in mistresses. Concubines were tied to their “husband,” but had a lower status than a wife. Their children were not usually heirs, so they were safe outlets for sex without risking the line of succession. To see how badly a concubine could be treated, see the famous story of the Levite and his concubine (Judges 19:1-30).
5. A male soldier and a female prisoner of war
Women could be taken as booty from a successful campaign and forced to become wives or concubines. Deuteronomy 21:11-14 describes the process.
6. A male rapist and his victim
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 describes how an unmarried woman who had been raped must marry her attacker.
7. A male and female slave
A female slave could be married to a male slave without consent, presumably to produce more slaves.
and of course …
8. Monogamous, heterosexual marriage
What you might think of as the standard form of marriage, provided you think of arranged marriages as the standard. Also remember that inter-faith or cross-ethnic marriage were forbidden for large chunks of biblical history.
The important thing to realize here is that none of these models are described as better than any other. All appear to have been accepted.
So there you go. The next time someone says that we need to stick with biblical marriage in this country, you can ask them which of the eight kinds they would prefer, and why.
I came across an interesting article today which kind of relates to this topic. In part, it talks about how the recently prosperous generation of the United States undermined its future by failing to rear a following generation, and how that failure is likely to make United States citizens materially much poorer, for a long time.
This is the link to the article:
http://firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6564
Kiwiathiest- your post illustrates an important point about the bible. It is filled with normal, everyday, sinful people – who encounter God. These things are in the bible, yes, but it is not true to say that the bible recommends them. It would be like saying that because in the bible Judas betrayed Jesus that we should all betray our friends. You must read the bible in it’s context to see what it recommends.
It is quite clear that the bible puts before us monogamous marriage as the ideal, not the others.
Dangermouse, good points, and briefer than I would have been.
A lot (but not all!) of these sorts of issues are cleared up by simply distinguishing between what the Bible simply *reports* and what God actually commands or blesses.
It’s an interesting question though, since some of the examples KA has copied-and-pasted seem to have been given as part of the law of Moses, yet they come across as troubling to a modern reader. But they make more sense in the context of Ancient Near Eastern culture. If anyone’s interested in this background, Glenn Miller (from the Christian Think-Tank website) has done a LOT of work on this. See for example his papers on polygamy, laws in the OT about rape and virginity and Women in the Heart of God: The Data From the Pre-Monarchy Literature.
When Jesus was asked a question about marriage, he was pretty clear that the ideal is #8 in kiwiatheist’s list (see Mark 10:2-9).
As an aside, I would ask KA if, in an atheist worldview, there are any objective reasons why some of these types of marriage might be better than any others?
I like New Testament marriage – where one man and one woman cleave together for life. I think we need to go ask the Jews about the Old Testament stuff, not the Christians.
Going off topic slightly, what do people think about this idea:
The state/government should have nothing to do with marriage. They should only provide a “civil union” (i.e. a legal union, whatever you want to call it) between two people. Then those two people are free to get married in a church or do whatever they want according to their personal beliefs. So in effect, the state has no dealings with marriage in the Christian sense, only legally binding unions of two people for financial etc. reasons. The race or sex or any other characteristics of these two people does not interest the State at all.
any other characteristics of these two people
Would say, elderly sisters be able to get a civil union for financial reasons? Or what about a father and daughter, perhaps they wanted to exclude other siblings from making medical decisions for the father?
Why only two people? What if three wanted a civil union?
@muerk:
“Would say, elderly sisters be able to get a civil union for financial reasons? Or what about a father and daughter, perhaps they wanted to exclude other siblings from making medical decisions for the father?
Why only two people? What if three wanted a civil union?”
Why not? The marriage for financial convenience is normally legislated for, the marriage between father/daughter/siblings etc, is only considered wrong from a societal perspective, there’s no biological or other reason to prevent it. I suppose we’re assuming that some sort of sexual relationship should take place within a marriage, but why should it?
Well at least you are being consistent.
I’m unsure what you mean by that. Do you mean that you agree or disagree? Do you have more to add to the conversation? What’s your point? Perhaps I’m just being thick
Not sure muerk, that’s a relatively minor point. Let’s say only 2 people. And the current de-facto relationship rules apply – e.g. have to prove been together for x years etc. etc.
Thoughts on the actual idea though?
Honestly, I don’t disagree.
“Marriage” has been broken into two definitions in our society.
1. Marriage is a civil right for two people who love each other and want to have their relationship recognised.
2. Marriage is where a man and a woman come together to make a public commitment to look after one another, to be open to conceiving children with each other and to raise them.
I subscribe to the second definition. A same sex couple can’t be “married” by my definition of marriage, since it’s a biological impossibility that their sexual intercourse could produce children. They can’t even perform the act, whereas an elderly couple, or an infertile couple can.
The benchmark of marriage is the complementary nature of man and woman joined together.
Because we have such a different definitions of marriage I would be happy for the State to get out of the marriage business all together. I’m not sure how that would work with the legal stuff, eg. divorce and who get’s how much money afterwards.