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Jennie Chancey | May 6, 2012
From Boundless.org: A year and a half into our marriage, we were walking on the fair grounds, commenting on the young couples in love: teen girls carrying bears won by their boyfriends at the clown toss, couples nestled in the seats of a Ferris wheel, others dancing to the live band, a few making out [...]
Jennie Chancey | May 2, 2012
This is an good piece from Mercatornet’s Family Edge: Some of the most interesting debates on family policies are taking place in the European countries of the former Soviet bloc. In 2008, Lithuania passed legislation to define “family” as the married union of a man and a woman together with their children, adopted or biological. [...]
Jennie Chancey | April 28, 2012
This is a thoroughly thought-provoking article from Jennifer Roback-Morse. I realize this is a touchy subject even among Christians (Does the state have any legitimate role in marriage, or is marriage essentially a private covenant between individuals and God?). However, I think the author makes a compelling case for the necessity of marriage and the [...]
Jennie Chancey | April 9, 2012
From American Vision News: The Aquila Report reports, “Christians divorce at roughly the same rate as the world.” It’s one of the most quoted stats by Christian leaders today. And it’s perhaps one of the most inaccurate. . . . Many people who seriously practice a traditional religious faith — be it Christian or other — [...]
Jennie Chancey | March 24, 2012
Some thought-provoking articles have come through the newsfeed in the past week: Why working class young adults are missing out on marriage ~ For some years, now, researchers at the Institute for American Values have been pointing out that, while the great majority of people still highly value marriage, the meaning of marriage has undergone [...]
Jennie Chancey | March 24, 2012
Over the past few weeks, this column has on more than one occasion expressed agreement with Rick Santorum’s view that advances in birth control have had deleterious social consequences, most notably in contributing to the breakdown of the family. To our surprise, a not-insignificant number of our readers have pushed back against this idea, which [...]
Jennie Chancey | March 2, 2012
This is a wonderfully upbeat and encouraging piece. Here’s to 85 years of marriage! Meet Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher of North Carolina. They have been married 85 years (86 in May) and hold the Guinness World Record for the longest marriage of a living couple and get this…. Zelmyra is 101 years old and Herbert [...]
Stacy McDonald | February 9, 2012
Read Part 1 here: Stained Sheets: Licking Ash Trays While God has declared that the two should become “one flesh,” many husbands and wives have separate bank accounts and split the bills; many have individual careers and social lives, which sometimes include close friendships with those of the opposite sex. Sadly, there are Christian couples [...]
Stacy McDonald | February 8, 2012
“Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” (Hebrews 13:4) Not too long ago, while driving down the Interstate in a large city, my husband and I noticed a billboard that caught our eye. There, pictured in a sun-lit field of wild flowers, sat a happy young [...]
Jennie Chancey | February 6, 2012
Several sobering pieces in the past couple of weeks: The distorting of the human sex ratio ~ Even a rational optimist is pessimistic about some things. Here’s one: the gradual distortion of the human sex ratio by sex-selective abortion. A new essay by the demographer Nicholas Eberstadt concludes that “the practice has become so ruthlessly [...]
Jennie Chancey | January 20, 2012
From Suzanne Venker: A new report by Pew Research Center shows that barely half — 51 percent — of adults in the United States are married. In place of marriage are nontraditional living arrangements — including cohabitation, single-person households, and single parenthood — that may likely continue. The share of adults who are currently married [...]
Mrs. Eva H. | December 12, 2011
I first noticed it on the entertainment pages of CNN. I keep up with showbiz, because I work with teens, and whether we want to admit it or not, current culture has a huge influence on them. Since we can’t lock them up, it’s better to teach them to interpret and put things in a [...]
Jennie Chancey | December 12, 2011
A great illustration of why “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” makes for happier marriages: An item about generosity in marriage is getting some play on the New York Times Well blog today. Tara Parker- Pope reports on the 2011 State of Our Unions report just out from the National [...]
Jennie Chancey | November 29, 2011
I was busy with a newborn baby when all the discussion over The Atlantic magazine’s November cover story started circulating, so I’m coming in on this a month late. However, I think it’s such an important topic that it deserves a post. Kate Bolick basically opines that “traditional” marriage is on its way out and [...]
Jennie Chancey | October 13, 2011
From the Washington Post’s On Faith blog: Sociologists often speak of how generations are shaped by what they are denied. The millennial generation has seen and felt the heartbreak surrounding divorce. Many of us were denied a stable home environment, so we struggle with commitment — not out of rebellion, but simply because we did [...]
