In the case of our modern litigious culture, all of this is reduced to matters handled by the courts. Yet, the courts are stunningly inefficient and ineffective in compelling adults to behave in ways that will lead to the protection, nurture, discipline, and care of children.
In one incredibly descriptive paragraph, Morse explains why a married couple operates very differently. "No one from the state forces them to pool their incomes, if they both work. If they have the traditional gender-based division of household labor, no one forces the husband to hand over his paycheck to his wife to run the household. No one makes the wife allow him to take the kids out for the afternoon. No one has to come and supervise their negotiations over how to discipline the children. When he's too tough, she might chew him out privately, or kick him under the table. When she lets them off the hook too easily, he might have some private signal for her to leave so that he can do what needs to be done."
Where this informal and very natural pattern of home life is not preserved, the state must enter the picture. As always, the state enters clumsily and at great cost. Spending just a couple of hours observing a divorce court or custody hearing will be sufficient to prove the point -- government simply cannot replace what the breakup of marriage destroys.
In another important section of her essay, Morse reveals that the majority of divorces are initiated by women -- a fact not generally known throughout the culture. The current shape of laws and the ideological bias of feminism points women toward divorce. Morse argues that the sole custody laws, with a preference toward women, "is correlated with an increased probability of women initiating the divorce." This is because the woman "can have the enjoyment of her children, and possibly some financial support from the father, while reducing the difficulty of negotiating with their father over the children's care." As she argues bluntly, women would be far less likely to initiate divorce if they lacked confidence that they would be given the custody of the couple's children. She also argues that women often grow more frustrated with the burden of maintaining the relationship and may see a divorce as the easy way out of this emotionally-demanding challenge.
"Women need to stop seeing marriage as dispensable and men as disposable," she asserts. Likewise, men must be led to see marriage as a life-long commitment of their highest priority.
Rebuilding a culture of marriage is no small task -- especially as the cultural elites promote any number of "alternatives" to civilization's most central institution. Nevertheless, it is a challenge we must accept, starting with our own homes, our own marriages, and our own churches. Christians understand that marriage is about far more than sociological analysis and economic considerations. Marriage is the unique arena of God's glory in which the Creator's love for His creatures is shown in the right ordering of the man and the woman and in the establishment of the marriage bond as the locus of sexual expression and the gift of children.
Jennifer Roback Morse offers important insights in this essay, including her relabeling of no-fault divorce as unilateral divorce. We are also indebted to her for her convincing argument that lifestyle liberalism is incompatible with a free and ordered society. Clearly, we have much work to do.
Jennifer Roback Morse's essay, "Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society," is published in The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals, edited by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain (Spence Publishing Company, Dallas, 2006).
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
See also the most recent entries on Dr. Mohler's Blog.
