Social Trends Attacking the Family

Today makes my 2-and-a-half-year anniversary with my boyfriend. He and I have been enduring long distance for about fourteen months of those two years (non-consecutively). For the last couple of months, we have been seriously discussing marriage. Now you’re probably thinking “Marriage! You’re so young, and you haven’t been together long enough. How do you know ‘IF YOU KNOW?!’ You won’t have your freedom or be able to finish college!” Yes, these are all concerns, but they should be topics of discussion not deal breakers. He and I have discussed extensively, and we have mutually agreed to finish our bachelor’s degree before getting married and going to graduate school. The other day however, while walking around campus, I noticed how many young students were married. I thought to myself in a judgmental and selfish way “How dumb, why would you want to get married so young? Don’t they realize how difficult its going to be to balance home life with other responsibilities?”. Of course, this is coming from someone who hates long distance but loves their partner and is very jealous not to have them here. I tried to shake off this ugly feeling but continued to hold onto that annoying grudge. Then I went to my Family Relations class…

Going into this class I didn’t expect to learn about social views, I figured it would stick to human development and that’s about it, boy was I surprised.

The one thing that surprised me the most was the average age (socially) men and women were getting married, 26 women and 28 men. The average age for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Women 24 and Men 26. This totally shocked me. I couldn’t believe it, I knew people were waiting longer to get married I just couldn’t believe how long they were really waiting not only that but the age of Mormons getting married was also increasing. Now the theories we had on this was young adults are waiting to receive degrees or are wanting to be financially stable before entering marriage.

For me, those two things are true.

We then discussed Cohabitation (increasing between 60-80%), Birth Rates/Fertility (Decreasing), Premarital Sex (Increasing), Living Alone (Increasing), Divorce (Increasing), Employed Mothers (Increasing), Household Size (2.5), Unwed Births (Increasing), Extended Families (Decreased).

After a while of going over all the data we noticed that most, if not all of these are connected in some way or another. Now when looking at the board and seeing all the arrows pointing to each statistic the only thing I could think of was The Plan of Salvation. Repeatedly ‘The Plan of Salvation’ crossed my mind. It took me back to my first semester at BYUI. >>>

I was sitting in my Book of Mormon class and we were talking about marriage *side thought: I think about family and marriage a lot. * My professor explained that the family is not defined by children although they are an important factor. The family is made up of Man and Woman, and one tactic he uses to attack the family is by creating stumbling blocks such as temptations of addiction or leading children astray to create arguments and thus creating a split in the family unit. When I heard this, I thought “How annoying!” how cleverly annoying to create difficult situations that literally test the whole make or break of marriage. Going back to my Family relations class>>>

The family is under attack and it is being ignored. How terrifying to see how socially normal it is becoming to come from or be part of any of these situational statistics. I myself am from multiple. I am a ‘product’ of divorce and remarriage. My mother has worked for much of my life while my father stays home. I am very aware of my “disadvantages”. After class I was a little flustered, I thought to myself “How dare these statistics claim I am disadvantaged, and unable to have and create long lasting relationships.” I quickly called my partner and complained. He listened to my pouting rant and when I was done he simply said “Yes, Ashley it is true we are at a disadvantage (he was raised by a single mother) but isn’t it good that you are becoming aware of these things, so we can be wary and work hard to build our family in a Christ centered home with love and respect and communication?”.

He was right. The knowledge of these things will help our future.