21st Century Family

“For the past four decades, family scholars have been engaged in an often intense debate about the
changing place of marriage in American family life. One side—let’s call it “concerned” or pro-mar-
riage—has argued that the decline in marriage has been a troubling trend with demonstrably neg-
ative consequences for families, and children in particular. The other side—call it “sanguine” or
pro-family diversity—has argued that families haven’t necessarily been weakened by divorce and
unwed childbearing and that the negative impact on children has been exaggerated. Divorce and
unwed childbearing are the family structures through which most children experience fatherless-
ness and father absence.

This academic dispute has had serious implications for society. Many Americans have been questioning the importance of marriage, and the rift among scholars has allowed both progressives and traditionalists to claim that the experts are on their side. Over the past 20 years, have leading scholars reached a consensus on marriage? ”

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I grew up directly within this time frame and experienced two divorces and the associated effects. During graduate school I read studies that really tried hard to make the point that structure didn’t matter and divorce was not harmful to children. They always seemed to try to use a minor sample segment of the study (like cases of abuse) to try to make their point. It’s great to see that research is now finally pointing out what I have always held to be true from both a research and personal perspective. Please understand that it does matter and sometimes doing the tough thing is just hanging in there for your children.

Here is the conclusion:

“Reviewing articles in the Journal of Marriage and Family, we find that an apparent majority of
scholars have come to believe that family structure matters, and matters to an important extent, for
children. This widespread agreement has emerged, in large part, because scholars have amassed a
wealth of data on the subject, and the data support such concern.”

Encouragement: Please learn and recognize trouble points in your marriage and take action before things get too far down the wrong path. Understand that it DOES matter and research backs this up now so hang in there and do some hard work. Ask the question: What does our “structure” look like in our family? What can you do to make sure your family has a strong foundation and overall structure? What would this look like? How can you build or repair it?