If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know I enjoy highlighting the abundance of research that pops up in support of families. The reason is simple: Well-designed studies affirm again and again that God’s blueprint for healthy families can be trusted, regardless of which way the winds of culture may blow.
Take, for example, a recent article by Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, Executive Director and Senior Fellow at Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute. She points to new data that reveals the widening economic divide in America is driven by education and marriage – or, more specifically, the lack of it.
Simply put, educated women are choosing to wait until marriage to have children, while less-educated women are more likely to choose to have a child outside of marriage, which Dr. Crouse describes as “pretty much a one-way ticket to poverty.” Guys share plenty of guilt in this problem as well. Many produce babies out of wedlock with multiple women and play no role in their offspring’s lives.
Dr. Crouse concludes her article with this profound observation:
Unwed parenting is disastrous for women and children, and even worse for American society – a society that is fraying at the seams from the exorbitant costs, not just in terms of ruinous government expenditures but, more importantly, the creation of a vast army of children whose living conditions stunt both their potential for personal achievement and for making a contribution to their community and the rest of society.
It’s a timely article, but the findings of this research aren’t surprising to those of us who have spent years defending the importance of marriage to society. In fact, here at Focus, that message was the impetus behind our DVD-curriculum The Family Project™. The truth it conveys is clear and desperately needed in today’s broken culture: Only by returning to the time-tested, God-designed model of the family, can many of society’s wounds begin to heal.
To dig deeper into The Family Project™, I invite you to visit our website.
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