A Guide to the Restoration of Marriage

[Norseman82]

In the U.S., kids hear from an early age that

1. they should go to college out of state and get away from friends and parents
2. it’s good to move away from their hometown, and pursue the bright lights and big city
3. get a job as soon as you have a license
4. move out of mom and dad’s house at 18. Not their home,. Mom and dad’s house.

Unfortunately, you will see that said on many threads here on CAF as well.

I keep seeing these images of people who go postal. They all look miserable. They’re all loners. They all feel ALONE. They pretty much are alone to their thoughts. Who’s going to check them? Who’s going to say “hey dude, that’s just wrong-thinking”.
No one. No one is engaging them on any level. People become odd when they are isolated.

This all goes back to one of the first things that God said in Genesis after He finished creating the universe: “It is not good for the man to be alone”. He then made an opposite-gender spouse and told them to be fruitful and multiply. So we see that humanity was not built to be alone (with the exception of those that God gave the graces for a lifelong celibate vocation). I think forgetting this simple basic fact is a root of a good portion (if not most) of the social woes we are facing.

 

[Xantippe]

Unfortunately, you will see that said on many threads here on CAF as well.

The merits of that advice depend on a lot of things:

1. how good a deal the kid gets on out-of-state college
2. what the parents are like
3. how big the town is and how good the local economic opportunities are
4. whether the kid has friends at home
5. are the friends going to stay in town or nearby?
6. is there a reasonable hope of being able to support oneself as an adult in home town?
7. what the kid’s interests are
8. are the schools a reasonable place to send future children?

I’m from a small rural town about a 90 minute drive from the nearest movie theater and full-service community college (there is a community college branch office in town that offers a limited range of classes–but that didn’t really exist to the same degree when I was in high school). I went to college out of state, as did both my siblings.

Never in a million years would I have met my husband in my hometown. I could not have gotten a reputable four-year degree within a four-hour drive of my hometown. Also, I would not have been able to find reasonable employment in my hometown (although 90 minutes away, maybe). My parents are busy people and while they are fond and proud of their grandchildren, aren’t that into grandparenting. Also, the local schools are dreadful and getting worse every year. (My sister sent her son to the local schools in early elementary school but bailed because it was TERRIBLE. She is now a satisfied customer of a fancy pants suburban district.) Oh yeah, and the peer group is pretty terrible, too. I see that we have a 33% graduation rate. (Not drop out rate–graduation rate.)

So, there are often lots of reasons why young people get encouraged to leave home. Home may not have a lot to offer.

 

[Xantippe]

By the way, I was just at the children’s museum this morning with Baby Girl and I was noticing how many dads there were, managing just fine with their kids.

I think a lot of us don’t realize how new that is as a phenomenon. 20-30 years ago, it was quite normal (even expected) for married fathers to lack even the most rudimentary knowledge of how to care for children, especially small children. Both of my kids’ grandfathers are obviously out of their element when dealing with small children. One of them once got quite panicky when an older baby that hadn’t had his nap was crying in the car. I once handed the other grandpa a 2-year-old to hold while I moved luggage from a car into a motel room. A couple minutes later, I found the 2-year-old scampering around a parking lot near a road. The grandpa had absentmindedly set her down and forgotten he was supposed to be watching her. Both the grandpas were reasonably good fathers by the standards of their day, but they never learned to take care of small children, because they never had to, and it wasn’t routinely expected of men of the Baby Boom generation.

If somebody like that didn’t get full custody of small children in a divorce case, it wouldn’t be a huge mystery or an example of cosmic injustice.

 

[XenaFan]

Not so sure this is a guide, but rather a list of problems with no solutions.

 

[pensmama87]

This makes a lot of sense to me. Actual happy marriages help to restore marriage. And every marriage is different; they don’t all have to be the same to be happy. **I think that maybe an increase in dysfunctional marriages resulting in divorce gave their children a negative expectation of marriage. **But that can be turned around.

Yes.

I am actually encouraged by the number of people I know who came from homes where divorce occurred and they are still getting married. Some of them are not, and have very bitter attitudes toward marriage, but for the most part it seems like people who are actually getting married are doing so knowing that it won’t be perfect and will require a lot of work.

I do sometimes worry because we and our marriages are young yet, so who knows what will happen as more of us pass the five-year and ten-year marks and beyond, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

Some of us millenials aren’t as bad as everyone makes us out to be.