The Beauty of Fidelity

This past week I picked up a copy of National Review. Inside was an article from Duncan Currie titled “Five Decades of Crisis.” Currie discusses the nonmarital childbirth crisis from the 1940’s until 2007. Though I hate to accept that our current problems (healthcare reform, GITMO detainee treatments, global warming) are crises, I believe that Currie’s portrayal of the rise in non-martial births is a real crisis.

Last summer, I interned at the Family Research Council. In my time at the FRC, I was educated in family and social policy but for some reason I did not fully comprehend this rise in out of wedlock birthrates (possibly because the statistics that Currie uses from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) were released earlier this year). I knew that the family, the fundamental building block for society, was under attack but not to the extent that Currie describes. For some perspective, let’s examine some statistics from “Five Decades of Crisis.” Currie explains that “In 1940, fewer than 4 percent of all U.S. births were to unmarried women. [. . .] The share of births of outside marriage climbed from 10.7 percent in 1970, to 18.4 percent in 1980, to 28 percent in 1990, to 33.2 percent in 2000, and to 39.7 percent in 2007.” 39.7 percent in 2007 from a mere 4 percent in 1940. WOW!! This still seems unfathomable.

Yet, is it really hard to fathom in our culture where fidelity and marriage are taken for granted? Recently, I was flying from Atlanta to Naples, FL to visit my sister, her family, and some college friends when I overheard a conversation between two men. One of them (probably in his early 30’s) noticed a guy wearing one of those “GAME OVER” shirts. You know the one with the bride and groom on their wedding day. The guy in his early 30’s seemed to agree with this shirt’s message in that men will lose their freedom if they get married. This led me to wonder why people are afraid of being married. Do they think that they feel trapped like the kid wearing the “GAME OVER” shirt at the airport?

My guess is that many people lack a full understanding of how beautiful marriage can be especially when both spouses are faithful toward each other. They may come from broken families or never received genuine love from their parents. They may not comprehend that the ultimate self-giving aspect of love between man and women should be unconditional, pure, patient, humble, faithful, self-less and most of all a spiritual union where man and woman become one flesh in the sacrament of matrimony. Marriage is not a restricting commitment but rather one of the most extremely gratifying ones that a human being can be a part of. Our culture needs to be re-educated in this spiritual view of marriage. I believe that if more people truly understood the beauty of fidelity within marriage, more individuals would desire this one-flesh union. Nonmarital birth rates would decline, family structures would be strengthened, and our culture would be renewed.