Marriage & Family: September 2003 Archives

Maggie Gallagher wonders whether the family is still declining:

How many children are living in intact families, with their own married biological or adopted parents?

At a fascinating Health and Human Services-funded conference last week in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the National Poverty Center, we finally got the answer. And the news is good. The analysis of the National Survey of America's Families (a survey of 40,000 nationally representative families) was done by Urban Institute scholars Gregory Acs and Sandi Nelson:

Between 1997 and 2002, the proportion of children under 6 living in intact married families actually increased. So did the proportion of all children in low-income households (the bottom quarter) by close to 4 percent.

It's encouraging evidence that the apostles of despair are wrong: The decline of marriage is not inevitable. Social recovery is possible. In fact, it is under way.

(Now, if only we could get Maggie to do something about that awful photo of herself.)

Back in the Spring, a number of our readers asked me to post excerpts from a talk I gave to a regional CUF conference in Tucson, AZ. In this talk, I had contrasted the Rosary and contraception as far as their effects on marriage is concerned. I had mentioned at the time that this talk was being edited into an article for CUF's magazine The Lay Witness, and I would let everyone know once it was out. For those who are interested, CUF has now made this piece available on their website under the title The Battle of the Bond. Here's an excerpt:

Take the Joyful Mysteries, for example. In the Annunciation, we recognize Mary’s complete and total self-gift in consenting to be the tabernacle of the Incarnate Word. Her simple fiat—“let it be to me according to your word”—would change the course of human history. Because she humbly consented to the beginning of the divine life within her womb, man was to find redemption and salvation. Yet, in contraception, we find man frustrating the beginning of life in such a way that he becomes a self-contradiction by being opposed to (“contra”) his own conception. He becomes the arbiter of life and sets himself up as a god.