S
Sarabande
Guest
While I see what you mean by this, there are some things to take in consideration. First, as whatevergirl mentioned, you really can’t judge the quality of a marriage by the number of children or lack of children the couple has, unless you really know the couple intimately enough to see why they haven’t got any children. It’s very hurtful for couples who are trying for children and then have people judge them because they don’t have any or have less than what the other people think they should have.
Second, if you have ever tried or have known people who have gone through the adoption process, it is not easy and can be very painful. It can take years to be able to adopt one child. Some may never have a chance to do that. Also, some are not called to adopt even though they want their own natural children. Some people just don’t have the same connection to an adopted child as they would to their own and I believe God would let them know after prayer that adoption wasn’t their calling and to accept what He has in store for them.
Third, as people get married and start having children later in life, women’s fertility decrease. When they could have gotten pregnant very easily between 13-25, as they get older, getting pregnant is much more difficult. They don’t have as many eggs to fertilize, and almost half of early pregnancies actually do end in miscarriage, many times without the woman knowing she is pregnant yet. I don’t think the answer is to make sure women get married younger, because I don’t believe I’d want to force any young woman or man to marry when they aren’t ready for it. Also, some people do not find a “mate” until many years down the line.
Ideally, one would hope that couples could put their own goals aside to make the marriage work for their children. That doesn’t always happen, though, which is unfortunate and sometimes tragic. What I have seen a lot of in my own generation are parents who stayed together until the children grew up and were on their own and then suddenly, they announce that they are getting divorced. The parents seemed to think that doing it this way was best so that they had an unbroken family unit while the children grew. And then since they were young adults, they could handle the divorce better. While that may be the case, I think it could cause their children to question their own confidence in staying in a successful marriage. Although, some of my friends have told me that their parents should have divorced years earlier, because being together made their own lives completely miserable and made them think marriage was a horrible institution.
All that, there is still a very serious problem with commitment and it is something that should be addressed more often in our religious institutions at mass or services, etc. I really don’t hear enough of it at mass. We’re really not going to get it in the secular world.
Picking wisely will lessen the work…but often times, when I say work…it’s work on ourselves, not in the marriage.
I came to marriage thinking my husband was somehow going to erase the pains of my childhood (losing my parents) and he couldn’t. No one can erase what happened. Since I thought of my husband in the wrong way, our marriage suffered at times. Now, years later…I’ve recovered from that, pray fervently, and my husband and I view our marriage as one…and I have a healthy view of what a husband should be–I cling to God for how I see things now. But, that is more of what I mean…if we look to marriage to resolve unresolved things from our pasts, which MANY people do…we will not have a content marriage. That’s more of what I meant. Women especially do this…look for a white knight to rescue them from their current lives or their pasts…
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We’ve only been married 5 years, but being with him and he with me have taught us so much about ourselves as people and about real love and commitment.