Marriage Models

Lacking in our society are marriages that stand out as models for others to follow. In the first place, it is hard to find people who have been married for a significant amount of time. When you do find a seasoned marriage, many times the relationship is not one that you would like to emulate. How can the younger generation hope to build strong marriages when good examples are hard to come by?

Elder David A. Bednar (Ensign June 2006) stated, “As men and women, as husbands and wives, and as Church leaders, one of our paramount responsibilities is to help young men and women learn about and prepare for righteous marriage through our personal example.” He goes on to list areas we can be examples in:

• worthiness
• loyalty
• sacrifice
• honoring covenants
• making comfort and convenience of your companion your highest priority
• mutual respect
• affection
• trust
• love

I was blessed to have the model of my Grandpa and Grandma Hatch's “covenant” marriage. They were married in the Temple for time and all eternity and spent 67 years loving and forgiving each other. I watched them put the needs and comfort of their spouse above their own. I saw how fiercely loyal they were to each other.  Many times Grandma counseled me to cleave unto my husband and above all to be loyal to him. “If you are upset with him, go kneel down and tell Heavenly Father five things you love about your husband and then counsel with the Lord about the problem you are having and no one else!” Their example has blessed countless lives and inspired others to seek the joy that comes from a covenant marriage.

Our society is full of contractual marriages where each spouse will only give as much as they feel they are getting from the other person.  We desperately needs more covenant marriages where each spouse is willing to give 100%. (Hafen, B. 1996)  What I've found in my own life is when I am focused on loving and serving others, it brings happiness and joy to my own life. I need to apply that more to my own marriage and make my husband's “comfort and convenience my highest priority.” According to Elder Bednar this will bless our children as well: “As young people notice that we have made the comfort and convenience of our eternal companion our highest priority, then they will become less self-centered and more able to give, to serve, and to create an equal and enduring companionship.” I commit this week to doing that!

REBECCA, dissenting

In October 2014, the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled to allow same-sex marriage, quoting Cicero, “The first bond of society is marriage; next, children; and then the family.” They argued that, “Under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...these liberties extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs.” Effectively changing the meaning of marriage to protect the rights of the individual before the needs of the children. Justice Thomas, dissenting, states, “This understanding of marriage, which focuses almost entirely on the happiness of persons who choose to marry, is shared by many people today, but it is not the traditional one. For millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate.” (p. 99)

With this new individualistic view of marriage, families breaking apart daily, and many married people choosing not to have children, it is understandable why people now view marriage as a right of the individual, not a means of creating and nurturing children.

I believe God has a plan for each of us.  That plan is to come to earth and gain a physical body and have experiences that will help us learn and grow and one day make it possible for us to return to His presence. (Proclamation) “By divine design, both a man and a woman are essential for bringing children into the mortality and providing the best setting for rearing and nurturing children.” (Families in the Church. Handbook 2) In his dissent, Justice Roberts states, “It (marriage) arose in the nature of things to meet a vital need: ensuring that children are conceived by a mother and father committed to raising them in the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship.” (p.44)

In full disclosure, I am positive that many times my husband and I fall short in the raising of our children, and that some same-sex couples do a much better job, but is there enough evidence to abandon what society has defined as the family “for millennia?” Justice Thomas (p. 99) educates us as to why the majority of States have upheld the traditional definition of marriage, “...States formalize and promote marriage, unlike other fulfilling human relationships, in order to encourage potentially procreative conduct to take place within a lasting unit that has long been thought to provide the best atmosphere for raising children.”

So I ask again, “What about the children?” Justice Alito, dissenting, states, “At present, no one—including social scientists, philosophers, and historians—can predict with any certainty what the long-term ramifications of widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage will be. And judges are certainly not equipped to make such an assessment. The Members of this Court have the authority and the responsibility to interpret and apply the Constitution. Thus, if the Constitution contained a provision guaranteeing the right to marry a person of the same sex, it would be our duty to enforce that right. But the Constitution simply does not speak to the issue of same-sex marriage.” (p. 101)

For the above mentioned belief that the family: father, mother, children, is an eternal unit, created and defined by God, and for my concern for the children, I must respectfully decent.

Supreme Court of the United States (June 26, 2015). Obergefell v. Hodges.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf

What About the Children?

“Throughout history, marriage has first and foremost been an institution for procreation and raising children. It has provided the cultural tie that seeks to connect the father to his children by binding him to the mother of his children.” (Amato, 2005)

With the rise of individualism in the United States culture, marriage no longer seems to be about the children, but about the two individuals who create the union. Instead of “What's best for the child?” the questions are “What's in it for me?” “Are my needs being met?” Traditional marriage and family have been a casualty of this mindset. But, what about the children? If marriage was originally set up for them, how are they faring with the weakening of marriage?

• First of all, there are now less children being born.  State of Our Union (2012), reports that, “in the mid 1880's more than 75% of all households contained children...One hundred years later, in 1960, this number had dropped to slightly less than half of all households. In 2011, just five decades later, only 32 percent of households included children.”
  
  John F. Kennedy said that "Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.” Would a society who didn't value children have hope for the future? With more importance put on the individual's needs, less people are willing to sacrifice their freedom to raise children. State of Our Union goes on to say that “...adults are less likely to be living with children, that neighborhoods are less likely to contain children, and that children are less likely to be a consideration in daily life.”
• Making the next point, that many children who are born, will find their need to be raised by both parents put after the needs of their parents. Even though “Research clearly demonstrates children growing up with two continuously married parents are less likely than other children to experience a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and social problems, not only during childhood, but also in adulthood.” (Amato, 2005 p.15) many adults still choose to divorce.
  
   While it is true that hostile marriages are not an ideal setting for raising children, Amato states that “...in a twenty year study, (they) found that the majority of marriages that ended in divorce fell into the low-conflict group. Spouses in these marriages did not fight frequently or express hostility toward their partners...many ended their marriages to seek greater happiness with new partners.

President Harold B. Lee counseled:

If we start focusing on the needs of the child and work to create strong marriages, maybe we, as individuals, will find the happiness we are seeking.