Geldof on Marriage

Michael Craven Michael Craven's weblog
Published Nov 07, 2005

Traditional marriage receives an "unconventional" endorsement. Bob Geldof from the hit 70s and 80s rock band, the Boomtown Rats, and founder of the Live Aid and more recently Live 8 mega-concert events aimed at addressing poverty in Africa was featured in a BBC documentary series, Geldof on Marriage. In it Geldof laments the breakdown of the family as a cause of societal disintegration saying, "I know it's uncool, and I truly have no desire to cause upset or offence by saying this, but the truth of every study is clear: dual-parent upbringing produces healthier, better educated children. That's it."

Recently, sixteen of the top scholars on family life re-issued a joint report on the importance of marriage supporting Geldof's statement. The report, Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition: 26 Conclusions from the Social Sciences was produced by a politically diverse and interdisciplinary group of leading family scholars. Chaired by W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia the group includes psychologist John Gottman, best selling author of books about marriage and relationships, Linda Waite, coauthor of The Case for Marriage, Norval Glenn and Steven Nock, two of the top family social scientists in the country, William Galston, a Clinton Administration domestic policy advisor, and Judith Wallerstein, author of the national bestseller The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce.

The Institute for American Values commenting on the report writes, "Since 1960, the proportion of children who do not live with their own two parents has risen sharply-from 19.4% to 42.3% in the Nineties. This change has been caused, first, by large increases in divorce, and more recently, by a big jump in single mothers and cohabiting couples who have children but don't marry. For several decades the impact of this dramatic change in family structure has been the subject of vigorous debate among scholars. No longer. These 26 findings are now widely agreed upon."

Coincidentally, the US Centers for Disease Control reported just this month that the percentage of women who are unmarried when they have children has reached a record high - 35.7%. Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, comments: "It means more children are going to grow up without mothers and fathers."

Popenoe and his group at Rutgers once again confirmed that the increased prevalence of unwed mothers is bad news for children. Swedish researchers documented that children raised by single parents are twice as likely to suffer from psychiatric problems, suicide and other injuries as those raised in intact two-parent homes.

US data suggested children reared by one birth parent are twice as likely to drop out of school or become teenage parents, regardless of a parent's education credentials. They're also one-and-a-half times more likely to be jobless after leaving school.

Again, rocker, Bob Geldof offered some surprising and insightful comments as to why we are seeing epidemic levels of family dissolution and its accompanying effects. Geldof blames a self-centered perception of reality as a major factor in marriage breakdown by saying, "We hop from product to product, channel to channel, station to station and, most damagingly, lover to lover, trading each one in for a new model as soon as passion fades." Here, Geldof accurately identifies the devastating impact of consumerist thinking and radical individualism that dominates American life and culture.

Geldof adds that, "Perhaps a lot of it is down to an overblown sense of self. We imagine ourselves to be free people, but we should not be free to destroy others, especially children. We have confused freedom with the idea of choice; we have become voracious consumers, not just of stuff, but of the soul."

This is precisely what is at issue in the present debate over same-sex marriage. Homosexual adults are placing their choices and their self-proclaimed freedom to do whatever they want above the interests of children. Some may say, "How are they doing this - when all they want is the right marry and start families of their own?"

I would offer the following answer: Marriage is indeed a social good, for children, adults, and society and all of the sociological evidence overwhelmingly affirms this. However this social good only results from a conception of marriage that is socially reinforced by a universal understanding that limits our conception of what it means to be married to a strict and common definition. For instance, we understand that dating is not the same as marriage because marriage connotes a much greater commitment. If society shares this conception then this commitment is socially reinforced, separation and divorce are discouraged and may even carry a social stigma. These then combine to incentivize couples to work out their problems, subdue selfish desires, and remain motivated to making their relationship succeed. We ultimately think this is so important because of the presence and/or immanent potential for children.

If on the other hand we do not distinguish between dating and marriage then the societal expectations are reduced to the lowest expectations - those of merely dating. The social reinforcement for mutual commitment disappears, there is no stigma and couples are now afforded the socially "acceptable" option of quitting in the face of difficult relationship issues - an option that is often too easily taken. The modification of marriage to include couples of the same sex achieves this same effect. Marriage ceases to be about the presence and/or immanent potential for children and their needs but instead about the desires of adults. This changes the fundamental understanding of marriage from being intrinsic to procreation and parenting to instead being only about the emotional relationship between adults. Thus relationship between consenting adults as the basis of marriage opens the institution to innumerable interpretations. When marriage becomes anything it becomes nothing and therefore it can no longer reinforce the very attributes unique to marriage that have proven to produce a healthy society.

Finally Geldof says, "This marriage stuff is a serious thing. It is not to be entered into and dissolved on a whim and to make light of it is a profound mistake. Yet that is precisely what the law allows us and encourages us to do." Geldof goes so far as to suggest that laws be enacted to once again make divorce a difficult option of last resort. Marriage and family are already in serious trouble in this country and the societal effects thus far have been devastating and costly. To further suggest that marriage is only about two people who love each other, as same-sex advocates argue, is to "make light of marriage," which in the end will only hasten the demise of marriage altogether.

Texans, remember to vote FOR Proposition #2 on November 8th!

S. Michael Craven is the vice president for religion & culture at the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families and leads the work and ministry of Cultural Apologetics. The Cultural Apologetics ministry works to equip the Church to assert and defend biblical morality and ethics in a manner that is rational, relevant and persuasive in order to recapture the relevance of Christianity to all of life by demonstrating its complete correspondence to reality. For more information on Cultural Apologetics, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.CulturalApologetics.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

Send feedback to: mc@nationalcoalition.org