Oh So Cute

I am really blessed this semester to be taking an online marriage course. It's very appropriate for several reasons, one being that I just got married, and two being that I love anything that has to do with strengthening the family unit! This week I want to really focus on an element of our studies that stuck out to me, and is sensitive in many ways because I know people in the scenarios that I'm about to refer to. The topic I wish to touch on is cohabitation, and particularly having children out of wedlock. Now this post is not to make anyone feel guilty, or bad, because I do not think poorly about the people I know who live this way. I simply was incredibly impacted by some statistics I read in one of our articles regarding the decline in individuals who actually get married. It used to be that on average, it was the uneducated and the poor would cohabitate and have children out of wedlock. Today, however, middle America is accepting this as the norm! In fact according to The State of Our Unions Marriage 2012, 53% of women give birth out of wedlock! According to Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise unwed childbearing has become “the new norm". This was just shocking to me, I think mostly because I feel, and have grown up believing that marriage is such a necessary part of life, and that there was a natural order and arrangement to things.

My husband and I decided not to live together before we were married, and we also chose to abstain from any sexual relations until after we were married. It's funny because when I went to the doctors office prior to getting married, the doctor found out I was engaged and asked if we had any children yet........I was shocked! I then proceeded to tell her, no that we didn't live together and were not sexually active and she gasped and said "oh my gosh that's so cute!" This to me was a funny reaction, "cute"? She told me she never saw patients my age who were abstinent.

What does this mean for society? For children? I think in general we can infer a number of things. For starters the institution of marriage is becoming less and less accepted. We know from statistics that children raised by single parents don't do as well in school, are more prone to get caught up in gangs, and are more likely not to marry as well. Likewise, couples who are not married, are more likely to break up, leaving  children in families that are separated. This is an epidemic that needs to be stopped! So many of our societies problems could and would be decreased, if there were stronger family units! We have an epidemic on our hands. A way of living that is SO accepted, it is "cute" when someone lives otherwise.