To what degree is the high rate of marriage breakups a twisted luxury of a kind of a well off, and overly pampered people? The easy way out in a culture where people have little resilience and lots of opportunity for giving in to weakness? In any culture there are marriages that fail. We see this even in ancient cultures and traditional cultures, the woman at the well in John 4 comes to mind here, as do other examples. So, you will never have perfection. But in a lot of cultures divorce rates are quite low.
One of the
reasons for that is that it's hard for women to survive well on their own. So, in
traditional cultures without high social safety nets and permissive cultures,
divorce is relatively low. Which is why over the last 80 or so years, the
overwhelming majority of welfare, and progressive policy has favoured women. To
help them live without their husbands if they choose to, what feminists call “empowerment”.
This has led to women divorcing at rates unheard of in history. The overwhelming
majority of modern divorces are initiated by women. Because, though there are still
challenges, in many ways life in the West has been made very simple. Women who
left home could get a cheap rental, get all sorts of assistance from a variety
of government and private sources, and in some cases they could even thrive
because they could get a good deal with the house or assets, etc. Society often
even encouraged this choice.
But now, government
assistance cannot keep up with the rising costs of living in Australia. Even
women with good careers are starting to struggle, if they are single, according
to some reports. The massive inflation caused by the pandemic money handed out
has broken the system in serious ways.
Will this
have an effect on the divorce and separations rates going forward?
Will this
incentivize people to choose to stay in a marriage that they once would have
left, but now recognize that they are better off remaining in?
Was our high
divorce rate, just a sign of an overly pampered society, where divorce was made
economically easy, or even attractive and therefore common?
Will the
rising cost of living stop a lot of divorces, or in other words save marriages?
The kind of
divorces that really happened over minor reasons[i]
(and there are lot of these, not all divorces are for serious reasons) in the
past, might be too costly going forward?
Is reality
going to bite hard enough, to get people to stop acting like they have
been? One can hope so. Our society needs to stop treating marriage as the
lowest of all agreements, when it should be the highest of all covenants
between human beings. That is, marriage between a man, and a woman, which
should go without saying, because that is what marriage is, but in todays world
it needs to be said. This kind of marriage is the highest of covenants that any
two people, man and woman, can enter into, and it should be held in that kind
of esteem again.
I know some
people will read this and think, "Yea, but Matt, what about this marriage
that is too bad to stay in, or this one had to fall apart, or this woman was
abandoned...etc, etc. I get all of that. Even in more traditional societies men
abandoned women, and women could get divorce for certain reasons. You'll never
have perfection in this life, as I said. But our modern society has taken this
to plague proportions.
Many of the
things we can get away with in society when things are easy, will be brought to
a screeching halt by hard times. We are starting to see the beginning of this. When
things get tough, not being totally satisfied with a personal relationship
ranks far below starvation, cold and hunger. It should not have to get to this
to prove to our society the importance of marriage. But we have had it so
financially good for so long, we have forgotten basic truths. Will this kind of
change be the upside of the coming hard times?
References
[i]
Like marital dissatisfaction, or whatever that means.
ABC, 2023, Reality bites for thousands of Australians
living in housing stress, https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/reality-bites-for-thousands-of-australians-living-in-housing-stress/ar-AA1bjSpX?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=4269a705c26646c0b382ac42f3064af6&ei=11
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