Radical Womanhood

The Grim State of Marriage

A headline like this one is tempting fodder for many comedians. But it's no joke. According to the Institute for American Values, the institution of marriage has been in a steady decline for the last four decades. No surprise there. What may be surprising for some to consider is that the private act of marriage has such a great impact publicly. In an article titled, "For Better or Worse: Report Says Marriage's Best Days Have Gone By," the Washington Post reported:

The U.S. Marriage Index, the brainchild of David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, seeks to quantify the health of marriage in the United States in the same way economists use leading indicators to parse the state of the country's economy.

"We're just proposing a way of numerically capturing these trends so that people can see them," he says.

The index combined five statistics -- the percentage of adults between the ages of 20 and 54 who are married, the percentage of adults who reported being a "very happy" with their marriages, the percentage of first marriages intact, the percentage of births to married parents and the percentage of children living with their own married parents -- to reach a composite score illustrating the state of America's nuptial unions. In 1970, that score totaled 76.2; by 2008 it had dropped to 60.3.

Almost 90 percent of children were born to married parents in 1970; last year it was 60 percent. Of adults between ages 20 and 54, 78.6 percent were married in 1970, compared with 57.2 percent in 2008. The portion of first marriages that remained intact dropped from 77.4 percent in 1970 to 61.2 percent last year.

According to Blankenhorn, statistics show that children who grow up in homes with married parents where their parents are "less likely to live in poverty, to have emotional or behavioral problems, to engage in premature sexual activity, to use drugs or commit suicide."

"Every single pathology or problem or difficulty a child can experience -- every single one -- growing up outside of a married-couple home elevates the risk," he says.

Blankenhorn's hope is that the index, a collaborative effort by 15 academics, researchers and policy experts intended for release every other year, will become a bellwether signaling the direction marriage is headed in the United States. And that it will galvanize concern and support for the institution.

"It's impossible, really, to make progress unless you have some shared understanding," he says. "There's no disagreement among us about high rates of unemployment -- nobody runs around saying it's fine to have 20 percent of us unemployed. But we really are not at that level of agreement about marriage."

I like Blankenhorn's economic analogy. But as I wrote this post, many single parents came to mind. I think it is worth pointing out that statistics are helpful to analyze large trends. But God's grace freely interrupts those patterns! So if you are a single parent and tempted to fear or worry, I advise that you turn those temptations into prayer and worship. God is the great Redeemer and his work of grace covers our many sins, failings, and weaknesses. While I believe we need to soberly consider the larger trends here, it's also good to keep in mind that if you are a child of God, you are no mere statistic.

More Hype Than Data for Online Dating Sites

The day after my "Crush Catalyst" piece came out on Boundless, the Wall Street Journal confirmed what I said about big business rushing in to profit off of our desire to meet one another. Profitable, yes. Credible claims that their services lead to marriage? Not so much.

Online-dating sites have changed romance for millions of Americans. But claims that such dating leads to hordes of newly wedded couples may be fairy tales.

EHarmony claims in television or online ads in the U.K., U.S. and Australia that 2% of Americans who got married last year met through its site. But the stat is based on an online survey. Similarly, a Match.com media kit claimed that 12 marriages a day trace their roots to the site, but the company now says it's inaccurate. And Markus Frind, chief executive and founder of Plenty of Fish, doesn't advertise about marriages, but says his site brings about 100,000 marriages a year, a figure based in part on "some study I found online."

I found it intriguing that this piece claims that only 2% of Americans get married in any given year (no attribution was cited for that fact). Nevertheless, you can read all of "Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied in Knots" online for the complete picture. And click on the graph above to see an interactive chart about trends in online dating. 

Learning to Say 'I Love You'

The National Chauvinistic Husbands Association began with only four members. Now this Japanese group has more than 4,300 members. Despite its odd name, this group exists for one reason: to teach Japanese men how to be good husbands. Long used to working all day, drinking all night with other "salarymen," and barely speaking to their own wives, these men are not learning to be chauvinists (as Americans understand the word) but to be much better husbands.

Magazine publisher Shuichi Amano, 55, is the founder of this group. He says the Japanese word translated as "chauvinist" is kanpaku, which originally meant to be a top assistant to the emperor. Amano was nearly divorced by his wife eight years ago, until he learned to listen and talk to the wife he had virtually ignored for two decades. Now he is teaching other men the same values, according to an article in The Washington Post titled "Learn to be Nice to Your Wife, or Pay the Price."

Marriage in Japan is going through an increasingly rough patch. As in the United States and most wealthy industrialized countries, the age of first marriage is being pushed back in Japan. Between 1962 and 2006, the average age at which a woman married for the first time slid from 24 to 28.

But for well-educated (and presumably well-informed) young women in Japan, marriage is fast becoming a sociological rarity. In 1980, about three-quarters of Japan's college-educated women were married by age 29. Now, seven out of 10 are single at that age. In the past 20 years, the percentage of women in this elite demographic category who do not want to marry at all has almost doubled -- to about 29 percent.

This wariness is a rational response to the isolation and drudgery of being a wife in Japan, according to Hiromi Ikeuchi, a family counselor with the Tokyo Family Laboratory. "I don't think it is the fault of men," she said. "It is the corporate culture that expects men to work late."

Japan's divorce rate had been rising steadily for decades. Then, in 2003, the law was passed granting a divorcing wife the right to as much as half of her husband's pension. But the pension provision did not go into effect until this April.

"Hundreds of thousands of women were waiting," said Ikeuchi, who added that since April about 95 percent of divorce applications have come from women who apparently were done waiting. "Unfortunately, I think the divorce rate is going to go up."

She said the situation is particularly worrisome for married men nearing retirement -- men who are soon to return full time to the bosom of families they have financially supported but emotionally ignored.

"This husband who comes back is an alien," Ikeuchi said. "For a wife to accept this alien is going to be very, very difficult."

While many experts agree that there is a marriage crisis brewing in Japanese, the response of men has been tepid.

As interesting as this article is, I thought the 5-minute mini-documentary (embedded below) that accompanied the online piece was more revealing of the marital tensions. As I watched it, I thought how easy it is for anyone, in any culture, to treat marriage as a financial or emotional transaction built upon the timeless question, "What's in it for me?"

As one woman I recently interviewed for my book said, "I don't know how anyone stays married who doesn't know Christ." Apart from understanding our sinful motivations and cravings of the heart, apart from receiving and extending the grace of God, and apart from living for the glory of Christ, it would be easy to view marriage through the classic advice columnist question: "Am I better off with or without him?"

Fortunately, Scripture gives us a different paradigm for marriage, one that repeatedly challenges men to love their wives--and not merely to preserve a pension.

Eharmony's Predecessors

One of the hardest things about writing a book is not getting distracted by interesting--but off-topic--details. As I've been researching events in the 19th century, I've been amused by the ads some placed to find mates during that period.

Here's one from a Waterloo, Iowa, newspaper in 1860:

A young lady residing in one of the small towns of Central New York, is desirous of opening a correspondence with some young man in the West, with a view to a matrimonial engagement . . . . She is about 24 years of age, possesses a good moral character, is not what would be called handsome, has a good disposition, enjoys good health, is tolerably well-educated, and thoroughly versed in the mysteries of house-keeping.

What a far cry from the ads today, where everyone is attractive, successful, and enjoys romantic walks on the beach! You gotta appreciate this gal's pluck and candor: "is not what would be called handsome." Notice the emphasis on a good moral character, too--another foreign topic in today's world.

The men were equally as funny. Here's a romantic from Arkansas from around the same period:

Any gal what got a bed, calico dress, coffee-pot and skillet, knows how to cut our britches, can make a hunting shirt, and knows how to take care of children, can have my services till death parts both of us.

I would be disqualified on about half of those points. No calico dress. No knowledge of britches or hunting shirts. But I do have that coffee-pot and skillet!

Geography presented some challenges, but the chances of finding a husband were generally good in the first half of the 19th century. Between 1790 and 1860, men outnumbered women across the nation. But that changed after the Civil War, which took the lives of more than 600,000 men, tilting the ratio in the opposite direction. Not coincidentally, feminism's first wave took off around the same time.

And with that point, I am reminded to return back to the work at hand. Hope you enjoyed today's historical trivia!

[Quoted from A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom, published by Perennial in 2002.]

Marriage Becoming an Elite Institution?

On Sunday, The Washington Post ran an article about the latest demographics on marriage, stating that the institution is becoming the choice of the educated and affluent. Here is how the article starts:

Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.

"The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item, one that only the well educated and well paid are interested in," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an expert on marriage and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Marriage has declined across all income groups, but it has declined far less among couples who make the most money and have the best education. These couples are also less likely to divorce. Many demographers peg the rise of a class-based marriage gap to the erosion since 1970 of the broad-based economic prosperity that followed World War II.

"We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry and a great many others live together and have kids," said Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst for Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising firm.

Recently, I've been reading a number of books on the history of marriage. Their research and claims would support Peter Francese's comment for many periods of history. If one only holds to a pragmatic view of marriage, I can understand why the popularity and structure of this institution waxes and wanes over time. However, when one looks at marriage through the lens of Scripture, there's an entirely different dynamic at play--the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit among people who are called to model God's purposes and character within the covenant of marriage. Even historians and sociologists concede this, judging from my studies. As Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History, says: "The system of marrying for political or economic advancement was practically universal across the globe for many millennia. But the heritage of Rome and Greece interacted with the evolution of the Christian church to create a unique version of political marriage in medieval Europe. As early as the sixteenth century the distinctive power struggles among parents, children, ruling authorities, and the church combined with changes in the economy to create more possibilities for marital companionship in Europe than in most other regions of the world."

I'm not surprised to read her summary here, but I would edit her statement to say "the heritage of Rome and Greece interacted with the REFORMATION of the Christian church." This is the major influence in the sixteenth century that she is observing. The effects of the Reformation on marriage were also noted by another secular historian, Marilyn Yalom, author of A History of the Wife, who stated: "Few people influenced the institution of marriage more than the Augustinian monk Martin Luther." Why? Sola Scriptura. When Scripture becomes the plumb line for our institutions and activities, we benefit from all of the goodness God intended for us inside the pleasant boundaries found in His Word.

"Work on Being Fully Known"

Yesterday's hot news was the New York Times report that, for the first time in history, more American women are living without a husband than with one. (My thanks to everyone who sent me that story, too.) Here's a summary from that report:

In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.

Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

Several factors are driving the statistical shift. At one end of the age spectrum, women are marrying later or living with unmarried partners more often and for longer periods. At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a divorce, are more likely than men to delay remarriage, sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom.

The Times only quoted women who were satisfied with this trend--not anyone who actually wanted to be or remain married. So speaking for the segment of single women who are pro-marriage, I think this is a good time to feature another interview with a married woman as we continue our new year's series on the good goal of marriage. Charlotte Ennis is a friend of mine, and my only regret here is that we don't have the space to feature her entire testimony of how God brought her husband, Pat, to her. But suffice it to say that there's never any reason to think "it's too late for me" or that "all the good men are already taken" or other discouraging things we sometimes tell ourselves. So here are Charlotte's reflections on marriage:

1. In what area were you the least prepared to be a wife? What would you have done differently as a single woman to prepare for this?

Looking back, I would say my greatest lack was being really humble and teachable. Though I had many friends I was very selective on how open and vulnerable I was to them. I wish I had talked less, listened more, and asked many more questions than I did. When I got married I spent a lot of time trying to appear spiritually healthy to my husband. I was fearful that he would find out that I was not as wonderful as I thought he thought I was. Because I had not practiced genuine humility by being receptive to the thoughts and observations of friends it was very difficult for me to really hear and understand (and invite) the observations of my husband.

2. What does a being helpmate look like in your marriage?

The longer I've been married the more I appreciate the gospel. I've seen first hand how deceptive sin is and how important it is to be able to identify it clearly and to apply gospel truth and grace in the situation. It is precisely because sin makes us blind that we need others to help us see. My husband and I are able to help each other to see things neither of us would notice on our own. I'm also growing in my appreciation of each of our different roles. Knowing what God has called him to (leadership in our family and in the church) helps me to orient myself to that and to plan for ways to support and release him to do just that.

3. What was the biggest surprise to you after marriage?

I think it was how I knew that God had done an amazing and permanent thing. Though I was the same person there was something that was forever different. I was not just my husband's wife but we really were one flesh -- really joined together in the spirit, despite our differences.

4. What is the biggest difference in daily life from being single to being married?

Marriage has changed my basis for decisions. Rather than just think about myself, I now must think first about what is best for my husband, and then my children. When I was single I was the primary person in my line of thinking. Now I'm often last. Rather than finding that to be a negative thing, I am learning even more that God is faithful and that his ways (submission to my husband's leadership) bring much more grace and peace than my pitiful human wisdom. It is true that grace and fellowship with God is found in being a servant and not a ruler.

5. How do you think single woman should pursue/prepare for marriage?

Work on being fully known. Find Godly friends who will tell you the biblical truth over and over again. Seek out married women and serve them, maybe by babysitting, helping with laundry, running errands. Ask as many questions as you can. Write down the answers and ponder them in your devotional times. Make sure you have consistent, fruitful, biblical devotional times. And learn to rise early.

6. What is one thing about men you learned after marriage?

How very human they are. I think before I was married I carried many stereotypical ideas about men. I thought they were so strong and stalwart that they did not feel things as deeply as women. I've learned that men can have very deep emotions but that they may express things differently. I've also seen how the encouragement and support of a woman can make a HUGE difference in a man's life. Conversely, I've seen how easy it can be for a woman to tear down and discourage a man.

7. What does submission, as commanded in Ephesians 5:22, look like in your marriage?

I hope it looks like me not being wise in my own eyes and consequently living as if I am most important. I am growing as the years go by and I'm sure I've not arrived. I endeavor to see that submission is really about my relationship with God at its heart. Do I trust God? Do I believe his word and his promises? If my husband makes a decision or goes in a direction contrary to my desires, I try to ask the following questions: Why exactly am I having trouble with this decision? Is it biblically wrong or just not my preference? Did he seek counsel from me and trusted, godly friends? What is it that I want that I'm not getting? What is the fruit that I'm seeing in my own life as a result of this decision? What does that say about my own relationship with God? After I have those types of answers I am in a much better place to gently and kindly express any concerns I might have or to just submit and follow with resolute joy.

8. What spiritual discipline changed most for you after marriage?

Having consistent morning devotions. As a single my devotional time was often sporadic and was often in the evenings. Though evening time was rich for me as a single, it is not often profitable as a married woman and mother. My husband and married friends have helped me to see the value in rising early to seek the Lord. (My husband gives this same counsel to single men, by the way).

9. Which area of homemaking was the biggest challenge to you?

Keeping a neat and orderly house. I'm good at running around at the last minute to create the impression of order, but peaceful, consistent order is still a challenge for me. I'm learning from others now, including my husband. For a long time I resisted asking for help because I feared that people would be surprised that I don't "have it all together." That just reveals my sinful desires to appear better than I really am and to seek the approval of others rather than God who sees all.

10. What is your marriage testimony?

That's a story in itself. I purposed to pray constantly. I especially tried pray whenever I was tempted to fret over my singleness. As I pressed through temptation with prayer and obedience to God's word, I experienced a new freedom and joy in being single. I believe that God used that consistent (sometimes minute by minute) prayer time to purify the desires of my heart and to make His desires, my desires. After two years, in an amazing and (to me) miraculous way, God led me to be married to the most wonderful man in the world! I was 39 years old. We have been married almost 12 years and we have three children. I often think as the years go by that I'm only beginning to appreciate God's wisdom and care in having me wait for this man at this time.

Photo: Pat and Charlotte Ennis with their children, Joe, Will, and Valerie.

Marriage Issues in Other Communities

Sunday's Washington Post carried two interesting articles about the pursuit of marriage in other (not specifically Christian) communities. The first one was a cover piece titled "Singled Out: In Seeking a Mate, Men and Women Find Delicate Imbalance." It was another in a periodic series titled "Being a Black Man." The encouraging aspect of this article is the family stability of the woman profiled in the piece, and how she is looking for the same type of marriage in this generation. Despite the statistics, she remains hopeful that she will succeed.

The second piece was in the World News section, titled "West Bank Weddings Losing Some of Their Bling." It focused on the growing number of single Muslim women in the Palestinian West Bank, and how the lavish wedding customs and expensive bridal dowry of 300 grams of gold, bedroom furniture, and a new wardrobe had become an impediment to marriage. What I find interesting in this piece is how the community looked at the reasons for delayed marriage and banded together to change some of the customs that had become a burden in an economic recession. But I obviously am not endorsing the custom of taking second wives, among other Muslim practices.

I offer these pieces simply as a way to be informed about marriage trends in other parts of the world.

Weddings and God's Faithfulness

I am back from New Zealand now and grateful to God for the blessing of traveling there and back in safety.

I returned in time to prep for one of my best friend's weddings this weekend. Next weekend is another wedding for good friends. I have the pleasure of serving in small roles for both of them, and I am eager to do so because I rejoice with all of them. These four friends met each other in our church. As singles, they served in a variety of ways, including leading caregroups and discipleship groups, participating in short-term outreach teams, serving in children's ministry, and numerous other ways. They were fruitful in their single years, which lays a good foundation for continued fruitfulness in their married years. Whether married or single, their concern has been that God be glorified and His church built up.

I know there is much discussion in Christian circles about the large number of Christian single adults in their thirties, forties, and beyond. It is easy to look at the numbers and despair of God ever working in those odds--but He does! He is faithful in so many ways, and these weddings are just small evidences of His gracious answers to the prayers of His people.

In a recent meeting, the singles pastors of my church told us that our singles ministry was one of the fastest growing segments of the church (by that, they mean the number of new church members, not just attendees at singles events). That would be consistent with the culture around us--the D.C. area has a high percentage of single professionals and our outreach is reflecting that. But even as we single adults are exhorted to sow our time, talent, and treasure back into the church and not sow to self-centeredness, instant gratification, and careerism, we are seeing that there is no conflict between gifted as singles for the benefit of Christ and His church and the future blessing of marriage. Some would say that to view the single season as a gift would be to say that marriage is automatically excluded or minimized. But our church's calendar would deny that claim. I was recently in the office of one of my pastors and he had a calendar showing this year's wedding schedule. There were few spare weekends. Praise the Lord!

So as I watch my good friends walk down the aisle in these coming days, I will rejoice knowing that God heard our prayers for their future mates and He answered them so clearly and wonderfully. May our singles ministry continue to grow in both numbers and fruitfulness--and may the weddings increase, as well! Both are for the glory of God.

Our Marriage Odds Aren't So Dismal After All

Ah....how refreshing to find some positive news about marriage in the media this week.

First, Newsweek takes a look back at the report it published twenty years ago about the rising number of single women and their odds of getting married. You may have heard the infamous line from this report that compared the odds of a woman marrying after 40 to the odds of being killed in a terrorist strike--an inaccurate statement that was originally written as an internal tongue-in-cheek comment.

In "The Marriage Crunch," the magazine reported on new demographic research predicting that white, college-educated women who failed to marry in their 20s faced abysmal odds of ever tying the knot. According to the research, a woman who remained single at 30 had only a 20 percent chance of ever marrying. By 35, the probability dropped to 5 percent. In the story's most infamous line, NEWSWEEK reported that a 40-year-old single woman was "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to ever marry. That comparison wasn't in the study, and even in those pre-9/11 days, it struck many people as an offensive analogy. Nonetheless, it quickly became entrenched in pop culture and is still routinely cited in TV shows and news stories.

...Twenty years later, the situation looks far brighter. Those odds-she'll-marry statistics turned out to be too pessimistic: today it appears that about 90 percent of baby-boomer men and women either have married or will marry, a ratio that's well in line with historical averages. And the days when half of all women would marry by 20, as they did in 1960, only look more anachronistic. At least 14 percent of women born between 1955 and 1964 married after the age of 30. Today the median age for a first marriage—25 for women, 27 for men—is higher than ever before.

Not everyone wants to marry, of course. And we're long past those Jane Austen days when being "marriage-minded" was primarily a female trait; today many men openly hope for a wife just as much as women long for a husband. The good news is that older singles who desire a spouse appear to face far kinder odds nowadays. When the Census last crunched the numbers in 1996, a single woman at 40 had a 40.8 percent chance of eventually marrying. Today those odds are probably even higher—and may be only slightly worse than the probability of correctly choosing "heads" or "tails" in a coin toss.

You can read the rest of the article and the retrospective piece on the 1986 article in "Rethinking the Marriage Crunch."

The second piece of good news was a report I saw in today's Washington Times about trends in fatherhood and marriage as published in a study by the National Center for Health Statistics. "Given the choice, however, tying the knot appeals to American men. Two-thirds said it was better to be married than single," the Washington Times reported.

In offering these articles, I'm not endorsing deliberately-delayed marriage nor out-of-wedlock fatherhood. The theme that emerged from the Newsweek piece is that most wished they could have been married earlier. But for those of us who are still single, these reports show that not all is doom and gloom in the marriage stats after all. But these are just numbers. For those of us who love God, we have a more glorious reason to face our futures with hope, peace and trust.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:38-32)

Extended Singleness in the UK

Last month, I received an email from a man in London, which became a blog entry titled, The Whole Marriage System Doesn't Work.

It turns out that this man was reacting to a very real trend in the U.K., as initially reported by the London School of Economics. Though, instead of pointing fingers at single women, this study examined the trends of postponed commitment of any sort by single men. I was first made aware of this research on Dr. Albert Mohler's blog.

Here's a summary of that trend from a June 26th article in Britain's The Sunday Times:

Britain is turning into a bachelor nation. A study reveals that the country has a greater proportion of unattached men than at any time since the 1940s. Half of today's 25-year-old men have never married or lived with a girlfriend, an increase from a third in the 1970s. The number of 30-year-old males similarly unattached has doubled over the same period.

The study by the London School of Economics (LSE) shows that while both men and women are delaying marriage and serious relationships, the effect is much more pronounced among men.

The last time so many men aged 25-30 reported never having lived with a female partner was in the second world war.

While the fall in marriage is well documented, it has widely been thought this is because couples are moving in together instead. But the LSE study, designed to test this notion, found growing numbers of men are simply not forming serious relationships until later in life.