TIME

I picked up an issue of TIME magazine at the doctor's office while I waited to be called back. I was drawn to it because of the title and picture of the front page.

You can get the full article off the TIME website by clicking on this link.
Here are some excerpts that I pasted here as a "preview" to what this article contains. I'd encourage you check it out and read it in its entirety.

"In the past 40 years, the face of the American family has changed profoundly. As sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin observes in a landmark new book called The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, what is significant about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of 'frequent marriage, frequent divorce' and the high number of 'short-term co-habiting relationships.' Taken together, these forces 'create a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country.'"

"...two-parent family remains our cultural ideal, but it exists under constant assault."

"...Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May that births to unmarried women have reached an astonishing 39.7%."

"...Barack Obama has spoken powerfully on the need for men to stay with their children: 'We need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.'"

"Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home. 'As a feminist, I didn't want to believe it,' says Maria Kefalas, a sociologist who studies marriage and family issues and co-authored a seminal book on low-income mothers called Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. "Women always tell me, 'I can be a mother and a father to a child,' but it's not true." Growing up without a father has a deep psychological effect on a child. "The mom may not need that man," Kefalas says, 'but her children still do.'"

* Note it says children need a mother and a father. We have divine roles and it is vital to uphold the purity of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"When children are born into a co-habiting, unmarried relationship, says Rector, 'they arrive in a family in which the principals haven't resolved their most basic issues,' including those of sexual fidelity and how to share responsibilities."

"America's obsession with high-profile marriage flameouts — the Gosselins and the Sanfords and the Edwardses — reflects a collective ambivalence toward the institution: our wish that we could land ourselves in a lasting union, mixed with our feeling of vindication, or even relief, when a standard bearer for the 'traditional family' fails to pull it off. This is ultimately self-defeating. It is time instead to come to terms with both our unrealistic expectations for a happy marriage and our equally unrealistic beliefs about the consequences of walking away from the families we build."

"...the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can't be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children's lives — that's the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old."

Side note: I know due to circumstances out of our control a single parent might be the only option we are given. But if that is not a result of death then may we be able to stand by our spouse, to be self-sacrificing, to be loving and not selfish or belittling in the things we say and do. Cherish each other. Do not use sarcasm or joke of serious things that we know destroy families everyday.

I feel extremely blessed, not "lucky", that I have married a man who honors and loves me. Who never jokes of divorce or separation and is committed to God. For I know his commitment will spill over to me and our children. I burst with overwhelming love when I think of what I know, and what I know is that our marriage has been sealed and blessed by God. That as we turn to him in our times of weaknesses, and doubt that he will strengthen us, to work side-by-side and to raise our children the best we can as we faithfully do what has been required of us.

"Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities."
- The Family: A Proclamation to the World

I am thankful for the instructions we are given from the Lord. For our modern day prophet, President Monson, and the men who are called to serve in positions of great responsibility and care. May we stand by them, to help and lift them as the world slaps at them to concede to their standards. For as we strengthen and help each other I truly know we will be strengthen to withstand the ugliness that is here and continual mounting.