Excellent Post on the Priority of Family

Our family pastor, Greg Hooper, sent me this blog from Kerby Anderson. It is excellent! Everyone should read it and I wanted you folks to see it. I have checked out the website and blog by Kerby Anderson and it has good stuff. Greg sends these every now and then when there is some really good stuff - like this one.


September 22, 2009

Marriage and Kids
by Kerby Anderson


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A strong marriage is good for kids. Conservative researchers have been saying this for decades. Perhaps the single best book to document this would be, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better off Financially by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher. As the title indicates, married people benefit in so many significant ways. And of course their children benefit as well.

Not only are conservative writers saying this, but liberal ones are now joining the chorus of researchers who say that children do best in an intact, two-parent family. Writing in Time magazine, Caitlin Flanagan details “Why Marriage Matters.” She cites research that shows that: “Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home.”

Sociologist Maria Kefalas says: “As a feminist, I didn’t want to believe it.” She has co-authored a seminal book on low-income mothers. Women tell her all the time that they can be both father and mother to their children. She says that is not true. Growing up without a father has a deep psychological effect on the child. “The mom may not need that man,” Kefalas says, “but her children still do.”

This also turns out to be true for families at every income, though the greatest impact is on poor families. Sara McLanahan, a Princeton sociologist, has done ground-breaking research on the effects of divorce on children. She concluded that: “Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent, are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents’ race or educational background.”

None of this should be too surprising. Some of the initial research on the impact of divorce goes back to the 1970s when Judith Wallerstein was tracking the impact of divorce on families and the children. But it is significant that academics and even newsmagazines like Time are publishing the same conclusion. I commend them for doing so. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.