Posted on 10/12/2015 8:32:47 AM PDT by Salvation
A 2012 report on men and marriage by the Pew Research Center shows statistically what many of us have noticed anecdotally: men are finding marriage less desirable than in the past and are now marrying later, if at all.
In today’s post I want to present some excerpts from a hard-hitting article that appeared at Lifesite News in 2013, commenting on the Pew study. The full article can be read here: Men Giving Up on Marriage.
As usual, I present the text from the original article in bold, black italics, while my own poor commentary is in plain red text.
Fewer young men in the US want to get married than ever. … The number of young adult men saying that having a successful marriage is one of the most important things dropped from 35 percent to 29 percent [since 1997].
The latest census data showed “barely half” of all adults in the United States are currently married, a “record low.” Since 1960, the number of married adults has decreased from 72 percent to 51 [percent] today and the number of new marriages in the U.S. declined by five percent between 2009 and 2010.
Moreover, the median age at first marriage continues to rise, with women getting married the first time at 26.5 years and men at 28.7 [years]. The declines in marriage are “most dramatic” among young adults. Just 20 percent of those aged 18 to 29 are married, compared with 59 percent in 1960.
In my mere 26 years of priesthood, I have seen the number of weddings I perform each year decrease from 35 to 5, and the average age of engaged couples increase from 24 to 31. These are startling changes, and they largely match those experienced by other priests with whom I have discussed the matter.
29 percent of young adult men desiring marriage is an amazingly low figure. The article notes that the things that once motivated men to marry in the past are largely in eclipse now. Men once enjoyed the esteem they garnered by marrying, and were motivated by the challenge of being breadwinners. Getting married was once a proper and approved way of attaining status, and legitimately enjoying sexual intimacy. It was part of the passage to manhood.
But today, many (if not most) women don’t need (or don’t think they need) men to provide for them economically. It’s goodbye to any notion of the esteem of being a provider.
Further, in an age of promiscuity, most men don’t need marriage to open the door to sexual encounters. Only a few “old-fashioned” Catholic priests and traditionalist Catholics raise any eyebrows at men’s “playing the field.” And women as a group (with certain notable exceptions) seem less insistent on expecting men to connect sexual intimacy and marriage.
Add to this the financial bondage introduced by the racket that college education has become. Many young people graduate from college with six-figure debt. And when undergraduate degrees no longer open doors, advanced degrees became necessary, bringing on even more debt.
And finally, add one more thing: pornography. It is more available than ever before. And though it is theoretically more privately accessible than previously, I would point out that there is nothing private about the Internet; Internet service providers know every site you have ever visited.
Sadly, many young men honestly admit that they prefer pornography to real women. Pornography doesn’t talk back or have preferences or moods. Real relationships are complex and require navigation and negotiation. Pornography, it would seem, is a narcissistic paradise. Click through to your current preference; it’s all about you and what you want. And at the end, the object of your fantasy disappears and does not have issues or attitudes with which you must deal.
The overall image is of a cauldron, filled with a witch’s brew or a satanic stew. That men and women marry at all today is increasingly miraculous. I always make a point of congratulating and thanking engaged couples that get to my rectory door for beating the odds and having the gumption to swim upstream.
Pew’s findings have caught the attention of one US writer who maintains that feminism, deeply entrenched in every segment of the culture, has created an environment in which young men find it more beneficial to simply opt out of [marriage] entirely
Suzanne Venker [in her] article, “The War on Men,” … points out that for the first time in U.S. history, the number of women in the workforce has surpassed the number of men, while more women than men are acquiring university degrees. …
With feminism pushing them out of their traditional role of breadwinner, protector, and provider—and divorce laws increasingly creating a dangerously precarious financial prospect for the men cut loose from marriage—men are simply no longer finding any benefit in it. …
“When I ask [men] why, the answer is always the same: women aren’t women anymore.” Feminism, which teaches women to think of men as the enemy, has made women “angry” and “defensive, though often unknowingly.”
“Men are tired,” Venker wrote. “Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.”
Most men I know perceive that they are often considered by the wider culture as deficient, even depraved. The “men are stupid” commercials and sitcoms abound. Men are often presented as buffoons, who need women and children to “set them straight” on the simplest of things.
Schools, dominated by feminist ideology, have made a pathology of the normal behavior of boys, which includes competition and roughhousing. They seek to feminize boys, going even so far as to encourage medication for them. Most of these boys merely have the spit and vinegar that was once considered normal, needing to be curbed somewhat rather than suppressed with drugs.
It is little wonder that fewer young men make it to college and are falling behind young women in almost every category. Being told (even indirectly) on a regular basis that you are fundamentally flawed has a significant effect over time.
The article says that feminism has emboldened many women to direct suspicious anger toward men and generally presume that they have bad or evil motives. But it has also caused a lot of men to draw back from the healthy confidence that once bolstered them to go out and seek a wife and to take a leadership role in the community, the Church, and the family.
A feminist culture in effect shames these desires as being “patriarchal.”
This is a situation that should not be celebrated by feminists, Venker says. “It’s the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex … The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals … in order to live the balanced life they seek.”
Yes, in the end it’s usually the biology that kicks in. Truth be told, men and women are meant to be complementary not competitive. Our very body bespeaks a difference that requires the opposite sex to complement it. The design of women’s bodies speaks to bearing children and nurturing them.
A woman who wants to have and raise children well needs time and flexibility. The 9-to-5 career world does not facilitate that. Thus her husband complements her need by taking up the linear and less-flexible career world, leaving her freer to nurture the children.
This used to be obvious to us. But ideology is often disinterested in the obvious. It may be true that we were once too restrictive, limiting certain jobs and careers to men. But for most women, the freedom to work has become the duty to work, even in the childbearing years. It’s a raw deal for everyone: women, men, and especially children.
The bottom line is, it’s never good for anyone, or for civilization as a whole, when huge numbers opt out of or find no access to our most fundamental building block: the traditional family. We must save traditional marriage if we stand any chance of saving our dying civilization.
For further reading, consider Men and Marriage by George Guilder and Eggs are Expensive, Sperm is Cheap by Greg Krehbiel.
my bottom line point
A sausage can’t mow the grass.
A court ordered that a Gibson Les Paul a friend of mine got for HS graduation and was his main axe in a pretty successful band was “community property.”
You can trust in the faithfulness of God
Men will have intimacy with a woman who, in many cases even after marriage, is very willing to kill their child and people expect trust between the sexes
This insanity is ignored and it is the problem
Heard a woman who called in to a radio show this morning and was “heart-broken” because this great guy who was smart, had a great job, kind and thoughtful, and owned his own home hasn’t called her in a couple of weeks. In short, he was the man of her dreams.
She also mentioned that she hd a small child, and had been in about 10 abusive relationships.
My first thought was all the things she liked about this guy are the vey reasons he hasn’t called.
Men may not be getting married but an awful lot of them are in "baby jail" and that I am trying to drill into my son's head early and young is a situation far worse than being jilted. He's lucky no kids were involved.
I think so too.
Uh, right. And why would they do that ("abandoned their roles") if the rules of the game hadn't been dramatically changed? Read the article.
Pointing the finger at men isn't going to fix the problem.
He did shut down one of the Monsignor’s columns that I know of.
Even though one day you know the west will have to annihilate them in a bloody Crusade, you kinda thought that those muzzie dudes had a had a pretty good handle on how to treat their women. /sarc
Testosterone levels. Interesting.
I dropped out of this 18 years ago today. I am 60 years of age, never married, never “played the field”, and have no use for porn. I just concluded that I did not meet modern women’s unattainable standard. I am gainfully employed, keep myself in good health (not a couch potato), and have a wide variety of interests. But I have found that women will see all the good things, and think it’s too good to be true. So they will make up stuff. The one I was dating at the time (we’re talking bike rides, lunch, tame stuff, nothing immoral) decided to do some amateur detective work on the internet. One of the hits was a similar name, different middle name. That was it, in her mind she “found the dark secret”. I became this white supremacist Aryan Nation domestic terrorist child molester. She was convinced, she saw it on the internet! She proceeded to make my life miserable with this slander.
And where do they get these ideas of unattainable perfection and there must be some hidden dark secret? Soap operas. Romance novels. Not being in church. I found this to be so widespread that I concluded that it was no longer worth the pursuit. I will remain single.
Thus, they are missing out on the Sacrament of Matrimony and the graces included.
I blame micowave ovens.
I know the feeling
The scars are permanent
I have found Andy Stanley’s preaching style to be very different from his dad, but still very Biblical.
Can you point to any sermon or writing where Andy Stanley is heretical on the subject of homosexuality? I’d like to read or hear it for myself.
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