Marriage: A Fountain of Youth
With cohabitation, pre-marital sex, single-parent families, divorce and even adultery rampant in our society, it’s obvious that some Americans view marital commitment with suspicion and contempt. By and large, popular culture teaches that wedded fidelity is secondary to pleasure, self-fulfillment and autonomy. Sexual freedom is seen as a necessary and almost sacred component of life in our post-modern age. Marriage is still a good thing, many feel, but there are a variety of more “progressive†alternatives available that are just as legitimate if not better.
Yet this downplaying of the importance of marriage is ironic given what contemporary social researchers are continually finding – traditional marriage between one man and one woman offers immense benefits to both spouses that cannot be or duplicated in any other relationship. The politics of sexual liberation aside, objective researchers for years have maintained that married households are the safest, healthiest and most satisfying place for men, women and children.
A recently announced study appearing in the August issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health is reinforcing this notion. Conducted by Drs. Robert Kaplan of UCLA and Richard Kronick of UCSD, the report used data from the 1989 national health interview survey and the 1997 national death index to determine the mortality rate of married versus non-married adults in the United States. According to an announcement heralding the study, “The death rate for people who were unmarried was significantly higher than it was for those who were married and living with their spouses,†even after “controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.â€
The study’s conclusion spoke volumes about the beneficial nature of marriage. Among unmarried individuals, the probability of death was 58 percent more likely, compared to 27 percent for separated or divorced couples and 39 percent for widowed individuals.
Interestingly, the report also underlined the increased health benefits marriage offers. One of the potential reasons put forth by Kaplan and Kronick for the difference in mortality rates between married and unmarried subjects was a reduced likelihood of married individuals engaging in risky and unhealthy behavior. “Our findings show,†wrote the authors, “that the never married penalty is greatest for younger adults and that the relation is strongest for infectious disease – presumably deaths related to HIV infection.â€
In a culture that trumpets the liberating nature of every conceivable relationship and “arrangement†other than marriage, it will come as a surprise to many that grandma’s advice about getting hitched and staying faithful was right all along. God uniquely created males and females to be in a mutually monogamous marriage relationship. Mark 10:6-9 clearly articulates the Creator’s view of this special social institution: “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.†(NIV).
Relationships that crudely simulate marriage – such as cohabitation and homosexual civil unions – simply don’t provide the same framework for well-being and health. Men and women complement one another in marriage in a way that no other arrangement can mimic, and social science researchers have backed up this truth for decades. As Bill Maier and Glen Stanton of Focus on the Family wrote in Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting, “The strong benefit of marriage is that males and females are designed with profound differences, and these differences are coordinated in marriage so that each contributes what the other lacks.â€
Strong, traditional marriages also benefit children in numerous ways. Research has consistently shown that children in households with married, opposite-sex parents are less likely to live in poverty or suffer abuse and are more likely to enjoy better physical and emotional health and to be academically and vocationally successful later in life. In contrast, cohabitation and other so-called “living arrangements†foster an increased likelihood of instability, abuse, poverty and a variety of other disadvantages.
In a society that has lost all sense of moral compass, the time has come to return to God’s plan for love and intimacy between men and women. The verdict is clear: Cohabitation, same-sex “marriage†and civil unions simply will not cut. Why? Because human beings are designed for a certain relationship within a certain set of parameters. All other arrangements will inevitably lead to harmful and even life-threatening results.
Copyright 2006 by David N. Bass
David N. Bass is a twenty-year-old home school graduate who recently completed his first fantasy-fiction novel. His columns have been featured on AmericanDaily.com, IntellectualConservative.com, and RenewAmerica.us. While attending college through distance education, he interns at a pro-family public policy organization. David’s blog, “The Pundit,†can be read at http://www.matthewbass.com/thepundit | More from David N. Bass
Stumble It!
August 19th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
While the article is interesting, it is important to make a clear definition of marriage. The article clearly is talking about the version of “marriage” which excludes government. If it were possible to obtain the traditional form of marriage, wihout the threat of unilateral divorce, then there might be some accuracy in this column.