Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Married Couples reject the blessing of children

According to a study released July 1st by the Pew research center, Public Concern over the Delinking of Marriage and Parenthood. Adults of all ages consider unwed parenting to be a big problem for society. "At the same time, however, just four-in-ten (41%) say that children are very important to a successful marriage, compared with 65% of the public who felt this way as recently as 1990".

According to a Washington Post article, "This might be explained by a greater emphasis on soul mate relationships in marriage and an increasing recognition of the stress involved in raising children, said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. There is also a more widespread belief that having children is a choice, she said. "Marriage and kids were kind of hyphenated before," she said, "and now the hyphens have been removed."

This is the direct result of forty years of ignoring Humanae Vitae, which begins with the following acknowlegement, " The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships. " Hardships are thought to undermine marriage, and many couples try to avoid any type of sacrifice, for the good of the marriage, their own comfort,freedom of lifestyle, and financial success. It's all about personal satisfaction, and marriage, though it remains the ideal of many, in practice, is becoming less important.
"In the United States today, marriage exerts less influence over how adults organize their lives and how children are born and raised than at any time in the nation's history. Only about half of all adults (ages 18 and older) in the U.S. are married; only about seven-in-ten children live with two parents; and nearly four-in-ten births are to unwed mothers, according to U.S. Census figures. As recently as the early 1970s, more than six-in-ten adults in this country were married; some 85% of children were living with two parents; and just one-birth-in-ten was to an unwed mother."

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