Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

And what do conservative Christians (who tend to be hyper-pro-marriage-and-pro-parenthood-and-pro-nuclear family) do BUT to highly pressure and shame single, childless adults into marrying.

I did a post here years ago about a woman who says she felt pressured to marry by her church, so she ended up marrying the wrong guy, and she regretted it, and she divorced (link to that is below, under “Related Posts”).

Christians and pro-nuclear family conservatives deify marriage (and parenthood and the nuclear family) to such an un-biblical, absurd degree that they end up alienating, insulting, and marginalizing any adult who doesn’t marry or have kids for whatever reason, and it needs to stop.

And by the way, for single adult women who had wanted to marry but remain single after the age of 30, 40, or older, getting married is not easy, but so many conservatives incorrectly assume that if you want marriage, it is easy-peasy, it’s a total snap, that if you want marriage, it will “just happen”,

(or, conservatives – and sometimes secular liberals, too – incredibly, insultingly, and unrealistically – expect single, adult women to “settle” for marrying stupid, abusive, weird, disturbed, sexist, ugly, fat, or idiot men
– of course, they hypocritically would not expect their own single adult daughter to marry a loser or weirdo (no, they advise their own single adult daughter to hold out for a quality catch),
but they feel fine advising non-family single females they run into to marry ANY GUY with a pulse who they cross paths with – it is so hypocritical and demeaning).

If one is a single, adult woman who desires marriage, it is not easy to find a decent, compatible man to marry – not on dating sites, bars, or in churches, either (most churches lack marrying-age single men, and some of the men who attend are abusive or are pedophiles who want to marry an adult woman to act as a “beard” to hide their sexual attraction to children).

(Link): Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study by Leonardo Blair

Excerpts:

Nov 2, 2022
by Leonardo Blair

Couples who get married due to family or social pressure are up to 50% more at risk of having a union that ends in divorce, according to a recent study from the Marriage Foundation in England and Wales.

The study, “Attitudes towards marriage and commitment,” published in October, asked 2,000 adults who had ever married how much they agreed or disagreed with each of 12 reasons presented by researchers for why they got married.

To ensure that the findings were relevant to today’s families, researchers then focused on 905 couples from the sample who married for the first time after the year 2000 when online dating emerged.

“What this research shows conclusively is that the reasons why people get married has a significant material impact to whether they stay together. While this might seem obvious, this has never been quantified,” said Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s research director, in a statement about the study shared with The Christian Post. “But the message is clear. Get married for love and your future together and not because it is either expected of you or because of family pressure.”

Liberal Author Says the Family Unit is ‘A Terrible Way to Satisfy … Love and Care,’ Calls to Abolish It – The Pros and Cons of Her View

Liberal Author Says the Family Unit is ‘A Terrible Way to Satisfy … Love and Care,’ Calls to Abolish It – The Pros and Cons of Her View

Well, I am a conservative, and I am not “anti Nuclear Family,” so I cannot say I agree with the idea of abolishing The Nuclear Family.

On the other hand, as I’ve stated numerous times on this blog, married couples have been shown in studies to be too self-absorbed (they meet all the needs of their spouse and kids while not extending help or care to those outside their nuclear family, and the Bible itself notes in 1 Corinthians 7 that married people are more concerned with meeting the needs of their spouse than in doing God’s work).

Too many conservatives place too much emphasis on the Nuclear Family, especially religious persons. The Bible simply does not command people to marry – sorry, but the one call to widows to re-marry does not establish that marriage for the never-married is a requirement, or that the command is timeless for all people – and the Bible does not say that marriage or The Family Unit will save or rescue a society.

The Bible says the problem with a nation is that each individual is a sinner before God, and the only solution to that is for the individual to put saving faith in Jesus. The Bible does not prescribe marriage and establishing the Nuclear Family as a solution.

An un-due emphasis on the “family” unnecessarily marginalizes single adults, widows, the divorced, the infertile among us – the Bible says the purest religion is to help the widow and the orphan (see James 1:27), not to minister to The Nuclear Family.

There are problems with the Nuclear Family, with conservatives turning it into a deity that they worship and place an unhealthy fixation upon (among other issues), but I also do not support communism, marxism, or eliminating the Nuclear Family.

I do not support abortion – that topic is raised below. The woman discussed below who is arguing against the Nuclear Family supports abortion; I do not.

(Link): Author Sophie Lewis’ forthcoming book is titled ‘Abolish the Family’

In a forthcoming book titled “Abolish the Family,” the author “makes the case for family abolition,” according to a book description that calls author Sophie Lewis a “leading feminist critic.”

I have additional commentary and resources below this link and report:

(Link): Liberal author says the family unit is ‘a terrible way to satisfy… love & care,’ calls to abolish it

Excerpts:

Sophie Lewis previously called for women to embrace abortion as justified killing

Sept 25, 2022
By Lindsay Kornick | Fox News

Feminist theorist and author Sophie Lewis was the subject of an article on Friday in the UK’s The New Statesman website publication following her new book “Abolish the Family.”

Historian Erin Magalaque discussed Lewis’ book which described the family unit as “a terrible way to satisfy all of our desires for love, care, nourishment” and was highly critical of suggestions otherwise.

“The family isn’t actually any good at creating intimacy, Lewis argues; the family creates, in fact, a dearth of care, with shreds and scraps of intimacy fought out between overworked parents and totally dependent kids, hidden behind the locked doors of private property,” Magalaque wrote.

Magalaque complimented Lewis’ efforts to mock what she called “inevitable knee-jerk” reactions to calls to abolish the family unit.

Lifeway Research: Pastors Encourage Single Adults, Some Provide Targeted Ministries

Lifeway Research: Pastors Encourage Single Adults, Some Provide Targeted Ministries

I’m afraid this is too little too late, and it also still sounds like a lot of pastors and Christians are apathetic about meeting the needs of single (especially never married) adults who are over the age of 30.

If you’re a church, or a secular or religious conservative, you need to meet people where they are and meet their needs where they are currently, rather than lambasting people for not being married, shaming them, or lecturing them about being single and the so-called importance of the Nuclear Family.

And stop putting the onus on single adults to meet their own needs and the needs of other single adults.

If your church has staff and devotes funds to minister to married with young children, drug addicts, divorced adults, or people in the grieving process,
you need to also set aside church staff and funds to set up programs and services to cater to single adults over the age of 30,
rather than making this hypocritical exception where you put the burden on single adults to set up single adults ministries and fund raise for single adult ministries.

To put this another way, many churches expect that older single adults who want more attention and effort poured into older single adults at the church will be told to take the matter into their own hands and to create and maintain singles classes and singles activities, rather than the church making it happen.

Most of you churches these days behave like international secular corporations, like a McDonald’s, where you cater to various special interest groups  (such as married couples, divorced adults, people in addiction recovery, or millennials or gen Z), but you’re telling me, you hypocrites, you cannot be bothered to view older single adults as another interest group you would be willing to market to and serve? That makes no sense.

I’m sorry, but no. That is complete hypocrisy.

If your church (like many churches) has classes, social functions, pot luck meals, and sermons devoted regularly to ‘married- with- children couples’ and THEIR particular needs and concerns,
and you don’t demand that married members set up these classes and provide elbow grease to other married couples (and you don’t), it’s totally hypocritical and infuriating to demand that single adults do the heavy lifting for single adult ministries.

If your church is willing to pick up the slack and provide services to married couples (and all of you do this, because you WORSHIP parenthood, natalism, marriage and the Nuclear Family), you can damn well also cater to the needs and interests of older single (and childless) adults as well, and stop asking the single adults to sponsor, create, manage or maintain the programs in place for older single adults.

Another news flash for churches and preachers:

You’re not going to diminish the phenomenon of delayed marriage or the increasing number of single adults by doing any of the following
(which you’ve tried before for over a decade now, these approaches do not work, and actually drive singles away from churches AND from the faith itself, in some cases):

• shaming or criticizing single adults for being single and assuming they are still single because they are failures, losers, ugly, fat, too picky, selfish, or man-hating, career-obsessed feminists,
• by yelling at them to run out and marry right away
  (that is not how marriage actually happens);
• wrongly thinking dating sites are an instant solution to finding a mate, so advising all the Christian singles you know to “just try dating sites like e-Harmony!”,
• lecturing adult singles over the age of 30 on the so-called wonders of The Nuclear Family and marriage
  (as though the reason they’re not married yet is that they dislike, or don’t value, marriage or The Nuclear Family – eye roll),
• telling single adults bogus how- to- get- married advice that does not work
  (such as, ‘Just trust in the Lord, pray, wait, have faith, and in due time, He will send you a spouse!,’
  ‘Once you’re content in your singleness is when God will send you a spouse,’ etc)
• refusing to help marriage-minded single adults who’d like to get married opportunities at church to meet other marriage-minded singles for the express purpose of dating leading to marriage
  (i.e., saying that doing so would make church a “meat market,” that church’s only purpose is to “worship the Lord”),
  or
• patronizingly instructing older single adults that their only or main purpose so long as single is to act as free labor to the church or to society in general (eg., to act as free babysitters to the married- couples- with- children, to act as free maid service to mop the church’s kitchen floor, etc).

(Link): Lifeway Research: Pastors Encourage Single Adults, Some Provide Targeted Ministries

August 16, 2022
By Marissa Postell

As the number of single adults in the United States continues to grow, so does the need for ministry to single adults in churches.

According to a 2020 profile of single Americans by Pew Research Center, nearly 1 in 4 (23%) U.S. adults ages 30-49 are single—not married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship.

And the 2021 U.S. Census Bureau data on America’s Families and Living Arrangements reveals many of these have never been married.

Mom Blows $10K on Veneers, Botox While Refusing Kids’ Christmas Gifts

Mom Blows $10K on Veneers, Botox While Refusing Kids’ Christmas Gifts

And yet, in spite of headlines I see like the one below, via the New York Post, the Al Mohlers, Bradford Wilcoxes, and other Christian and conservative marriage and parenthood promoters keep on peddling these lies about marriage and parents, such as (but not limited to),
marriage and parenthood makes people more ethical, godly, responsible, giving, and loving, and marriage (Link): and parenthood makes people humans (we’re not human until we procreate – Jesus never procreated, so I guess he was an in-human, sub-species loser by those standards).

(Link): Mom Blows $10K on Veneers, Botox While Refusing Kids’ Christmas Gifts – New York Post

Dec 17, 2020
By Lia Eustachewich

A self-obsessed mom in the UK is making Christmas jingle hell this year by blowing $10,000 on herself — and refusing to spend a single penny on her two children.

Carla Bellucci, 38, boasted about using a stocking full of cash for new veneers, Botox, manicures, facials and brand new duds ahead of Christmas Day, while demanding that her kids, Tanisha, 15, and Jayden, 13, make their own money if they want gifts under the tree.

Man Accused of Dismembering, ‘Boiling’ Parents Who Cut Him Off Financially

Man Accused of Dismembering, ‘Boiling’ Parents Who Cut Him Off Financially

The phrase “family values” many not be necessarily un-biblical or anti-biblical, but it’s not taught in the Bible.

So many Christian persons or conservative organizations keep promoting this idea that Nuclear Families are necessary for a society to thrive. I’m not opposed to the Nuclear Family, I don’t want to abolish the Nuclear Family, but I don’t agree with the idea that the Nuclear Family is necessary for a culture, or that it (and marriage and parenthood) are necessary to make a person good or mature.

I see news headlines like the one below, and I realize that belonging to a Nuclear Family doesn’t make a person good, ethical, or wonderful.

A person can be a part of a Nuclear Family and still be a cold-blooded killer. So obviously, something else is going on here – the Jesus of the Bible said it has to do with individual sin – not marital or family status.

The Jesus of the Bible did not teach that the Nuclear Family will save a person or a culture. But Christians sure do keep behaving as though it will.

Did being a member of a Nuclear Family make this man in this news story, Joel Guy Jr, more loving, ethical, responsible or godly? Nope, it sure did not.

If you kill your mom over financial grievances and boil her head in a pot, I think it’s fair to say you’re an evil piece of garbage and that being in a “nuclear family” did nothing to instill character in you.

(Link): ‘Flush chunks down toilet not garbage disposal and blast heat to melt off fingerprints’: The chillingly detailed notebook of US son accused of dismembering his parents and boiling his mother’s head in a pot

(Link): Man Accused of Dismembering, ‘Boiling’ Parents Who Cut Him Off Financially

(Alternate news source: (Link): KNEWZ)

by WND News Services
Sept 28, 2020

‘The most horrific thing I’ve ever encountered in police work – in my life’

(KNEWZ) — A trial has begun for Joel Guy Jr. — a man accused of murdering and dismembering his parents for cutting him off financially, then trying to chemically dissolve their bodies to cover up the crime.

According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, a jury has been seated for the trial of Joel Guy Jr., who stands accused of murdering his mother Lisa Guy, 55, and his father Joel Guy Sr., 61.

Authorities claim that Guy Jr’s parents told him during the 2016 Thanksgiving holiday that they would be cutting him off financially. The son denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty.

Mega Church Preacher Bill Hybels in Trouble Again For More Sexual Harassment

Mega Church Preacher Bill Hybels in Trouble Again For More Sexual Harassment (2018)

I don’t think I ever blogged about this Hybels guy before.

He was first in the news many months ago for sexually harassing several different women in his church years before, who had worked as church staff.

His church first denied that this was true, and they attempted to say the women who stepped forward to discuss their harassment or abuse by this guy were lying.

There are so many of these pervy pastors it’s hard to keep up with them all. If all I ever did was blogged about perverted pastors, it would be a full time job, and I’d never have a break from this blog!

I’m pretty sure that Hybels is a married guy, too. Christians keep teaching that marriage is necessary to make a person a godly, responsible adult, and to keep them out of sexual sin, but as we see (yet once again!) marriage does not necessarily instill character into anyone, nor does it keep anyone from sexual sin or from sexually abusing others.

Let this story also go to show that a person does NOT have to become perfect, godly, or sinless to “earn” a spouse from God.

Yes, there are some Christians out there who teach that if you are single and want to get married, God will with-hold your spouse from you unless you become more godly, mature, or whatever quality. As  you can see from news reports such as this one, that is total bunk.

God did not withhold a spouse from Hybels (again, I’m fairly certain he has a wife), even though God had to know what a pervert the man is.

(Link): He’s a Superstar Pastor. She Worked for Him and Says He Groped Her Repeatedly.

Excerpts:

Bill Hybels built an iconic evangelical church outside Chicago. A former assistant says that in the 1980s, he sexually harassed her.

SOUTH BARRINGTON, Ill. — After the pain of watching her marriage fall apart, Pat Baranowski felt that God was suddenly showering her with blessings.

She had a new job at her Chicago-area megachurch, led by a dynamic young pastor named the Rev. Bill Hybels, who in the 1980s was becoming one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the country.

Focus on the Family Defends IRS Classification as a ‘Church,’ Says It’s Meant to Protect Donors

Focus on the Family Defends IRS Classification as a ‘Church,’ Says It’s Meant to Protect Donors

While I am not against the “nuclear family” per se, I am very much in opposition to how Christians and other conservatives have turned the nuclear family into an idol.

Conservatives revere the nuclear family (as well as natalism, motherhood, and marriage) to the detriment and exclusion of the childless, the infertile, the child-free, the widowed, the divorced, and the never married – anyone who does not fit their nauseating, preferred structure of society.

Christians don’t just “focus” on the family, they WORSHIP it – which is a sin. The Bible tells you not to put anything or anyone above your devotion to Jesus Christ, not even your flesh and blood family, but Christians ignore this.

(Link): Focus on the Family Defends IRS Classification as a ‘Church,’ Says It’s Meant to Protect Donors

By Michael Gryboski , Christian Post Reporter | Apr 20, 2018 11:39 AM

Focus on the Family is defending its decision to have the Internal Revenue Service officially reclassify the Christian nonprofit as a “church,” denouncing the efforts of some to ascribe “sinister” intentions to the change.

An article published in February by the liberal group People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch site documenting Focus on the Family’s reclassification has been getting extensive attention in recent weeks.

The Dangerous Risks of Putting Motherhood on a Pedestal by C. Millard

The Dangerous Risks of Putting Motherhood on a Pedestal by C. Millard

The Dangerous Risks of Putting Motherhood on a Pedestal by C. Millard

Excerpts:

…Note the double-edged sword of motherhood here. Attracting the praise of being a “good mother” was always accompanied by the threat that you might fall from the perch at any moment and cause devastating harm to your child.

Hence the amplification of mechanisms of control, censure, and punishment that go hand in hand with the valorization and surveillance of parenting. Deep within the medical and psychological frameworks promoting motherhood in this period, there lurks male anxiety over female power and influence.

Exploding the Myth of the Traditional Family by E. Hines

Exploding the Myth of the Traditional Family

(Link): Exploding the Myth of the Traditional Family by E. Hines

Excerpts

• ….But today, most families hardly fit that [nuclear family] mold. Fifty percent of American adults are unmarried and 41 percent of children in America are born to unmarried parents.
• That is an indication that the very concept of family is evolving, as more and more people realize that there are any number of ways to build good and functioning familial units.

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

As this report notes (link is much farther down this blog page), more pressure is placed on WOMEN to marry and have children than is placed on MEN.

I know that culture and Christians can treat single / celibate / childless men like trash, but they are TEN TIMES worse on Christian WOMEN in these regards.

Women get far more pressured to marry and have kids than men do or ever will.

Women get more shamed and insulted by Christians (and at times, secular culture) for staying single, celibate, and childless than males ever are.

Just because most women are capable of carrying a baby inside them, society and churches think it’s their DUTY to have a baby (as though women serve no other purpose in life), and if they choose to opt out (or cannot have a kid), they are still marginalized or insulted for it.

Men don’t face nearly as much insult or pressure to have kids as women do.

I am right of center – but I agree with this left wing (liberal) guy that other right wingers such as Dobson’s real goal is to be against what he perceives as liberal threats to the church or culture. That is one very real motivator some right wingers have, in why they do things like harass women to have children.

I also want to say how utterly moronic I find this approach by Dobson.

Ten Worst Sex and Romance Tips from the Christian Right

10 Worst Sex and Romance Tips from the Christian Right

I take it that this is a left wing site (I’m right wing). But some of their points are right on the money, at least on this page. Some of the points it touches on are the “equally yoked” belief among Christians, but I didn’t include the “equally yoked” parts of the list..

(Link): 10 Worst Sex and Romance Tips from the Christian Right by Katie Halper

Here are a few excerpts from the page, with a few comments be me far below all this:

• 3. Understand That Men Have This Thing Called Sex Drive
• Another gem from Focus on the Family is the Jill Slattery essay (Link): “Sex Is a Physical Need,” which should really be called “Sex Is a Physical Need for Men.”
• She explains to her female readers, “One of the biggest differences between you and your husband is the fact that he experiences sex as a legitimate physical need. Just as your body tells you when you’re hungry, thirsty, or tired, your husband’s body tells him when he needs a sexual release. Your husband’s sexual desire is impacted by what’s around him but is determined by biological factors, specifically the presence of testosterone in his body.”
• So, imagine if your vagina were hungry. That’s what it would feel like.

New Study (2014) Says Women More Stressed By Home Than Work

New Study (2014) Says Women More Stressed By Home Than Work

But so many Christians portray stay at home wife and motherhood as being bliss for women. Come to find out, women don’t always enjoy being SAHMs.

(Link): Why You’re More Stressed by Home Than Work

Excerpt:

by Belinda Luscombe
May 22, 2014

A new study out from the Council on Contemporary Families suggests that contrary to most surveys, people are actually more stressed at home than at work.

Three Penn State researchers measured people’s cortisol, which is a stress marker, while they were at work and while they were at home and found it higher at what is supposed to be a place of refuge.

“Further contradicting conventional wisdom, we found that women as well as men have lower levels of stress at work than at home” writes one of the authors, Sarah Damaske, assistant professor of labor and employment relations, sociology and women’s studies at Penn State (the italics are hers).

In fact women even say they feel better at work, she notes. “It is men, not women, who report being happier at home than at work.”

Another surprise is that the findings hold true, says Damaske, for both those with children and without, but more so for nonparents. This is why, the authors conclude, people who work outside the home have better health.

What the study doesn’t measure is whether people are still doing work when they’re at home, whether it’s household work or work brought home from the office. For many men, the end of the workday is a time to kick back. For women who stay home, they never get to leave the office.

And for women who work outside the home, they often are playing catch up with household tasks.

With the blurring of roles, and the fact that the home front lags well behind the workplace in making adjustments for working women, it’s not surprising that women are more stressed at home.

But it’s not just a gender thing. At work, people pretty much know what they’re supposed to be doing: working, earning money, doing the tasks they have to do in order to draw an income.

The bargain is very pure: employee puts in hours of physical or mental labor and employee draws out life-sustaining moola.

———————–
Related posts:

(Link): The Changing American Family (article)

(Link): The Jetson Fallacy – Much longer lifespans could explode the nuclear family (article)

(Link): Widows and Childless and Childfree Have Better Well Being Than Married Couples and Parents says new study

(Link): 5 Scientifically Proven Reasons It’s Better To Be Single

(Link): More single dads than ever head US households

(Link): Remarriage rates plunge as divorced Americans have doubts – and about Christian culture and divorce and remarriage vs singleness

(Link): (Articles) Marriage Rate At All Time Low

(Link): False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy” or (also false): God’s gifting of singleness is rare – More Accurate: God calls only a few to marriage and God gifts only the rare with the gift of Marriage

(Link) Family Is Not a Norman Rockwell Painting, Christians: Man kept dead mom in freezer for 3 years, cashed her Social Security checks: cops