While browsing a classmate's blog the other day, I came across this somewhat dated piece. It is longish (as web posts go!) but well worth a read, or a re-read if you encountered it two years ago when it first appeared. The topic of marriage and family is one on which I meditate frequently; if I do not discuss it more often, it is only because I too often do not know what to say.

There are at least two distinct reasons for this. First, I have been blessed with a uniquely perfect spouse and enjoy the kind of marriage most people think impossible (or perhaps, as once suggested by my mother-in-law, the kind of marriage impossible for most people). And much as this may, in actual fact, put me in a unique position to provide excellent advice for those less fortunate than myself, there is also a sense that, having endured fewer obvious trials than others, I cannot truly understand their plight. While those who know me may not believe it, I do not like to give offense.

Second, again in the "insufficient empathy" department but more focused specifically on women's issues, there is some sense that when it comes to matters in feminine orbit, men may be cheerleaders but never meaningful contributors to the conversation. Gender and race issues have ever been a potential minefield for members of the (historically) oppressive majority. Even when we are in truth sympathetic, there is some lingering sense that our penitence can never be sufficiently genuine, our participation in solving these issues never entirely trustworthy. To comment, as a man, on what it is to be a woman is... taboo. I can not understand. I have never been. I (it is clear) do not know.

At any rate, read the article. The author is concerned that women have taken their liberty from patriarchy to a strange place, rejecting traditional roles out of hand and pressuring one another into a new sort of social bondage, affirming not a gender's right to choose, but a gender's responsibility to choose differently than their forebears. It is not an entirely novel argument, but the article frames it well. Though she does not say it in so many words, I suspect her thesis might be something like this:

Marriage and children cannot guarantee your happiness, and neither can their absence, but if you put the choice off for too long, the choice will be taken from you altogether.

The growing trend to delay marriage is, I believe, wedded (sorry d^_^b) to the creeping expansion of childhood; you are not an adult until you are 18, no, 21, no your brain is still developing at 25. No, you should not get married until you are 30. You should see the world, get an education, start a career. Responsibility is a burden best shuffled into middle-age. No, we don't want to talk about how rewarding it is to raise a happy child, to have a supportive spouse, to succeed on your own terms against the demands of the world. What if you fail? Wayward children, ex-spouses, fiscal ruin... the risks are too great. Best put life off until you're dead.

(Aside: one of these days I will get around to an entry about how fake and constructed "childhood" has become; the vast majority of children past 12 or 13 are far less innocent and far more capable than their parents typically imagine.)

I see on a regular basis adults--men and women both--who do not seem to have moved past high school, in terms of emotional maturity, intellectual accomplishment, or personal responsibility. These adults would disagree, quite powerfully, that marriage and children are a natural or meaningful part of life. It is true that traveling the globe is made more complicated by having children. Having a rapid succession of whirlwind romances with interesting strangers in exotic locales is decidedly hampered by monogamy. Education is all the more expensive when there are extra mouths to feed. I admit freely that, by getting married at the incredible age of 21, I missed out on nine years of self-gratification.

Instead, I have three beautiful children, whose wonder at the world quite rekindles my own. I have a talented and beautiful wife with whom I can converse easily on any subject, whom I can trust with every secret, whose confidence in me shores up my resolve to accomplish more than I have. I am happy.

I am also a man. And I realize that, in some sense, because I am pursuing a career, because my wife stays at home with the children while I go to school and to work, I am not well-positioned to effectively preach the message contained in the article I'm recommending. I just wanted to add my voice, to suggest to men and women alike that nice jobs and other worldly accomplishments are nothing compared to the joys of family. Here's a hint: if I didn't have to work to support my family, I wouldn't work! I would stay at home and play with my children. Don't put off marriage; work your plans into it! Don't put off children, either--though they may delay some things and complicate others, the only plans they will destroy are any plans you might have to remain emotionally immature in perpetuity.

Life will be difficult, at times, whether you marry or not, whether you have children or not. So take your rewards where you can--and remember that the greatest rewards are those you worked to achieve.