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Marriage in glass houses
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Marriage.
What kinds of feelings and thoughts do you experience when you hear that word?
I recently went to a friends bachelorette party to celebrate one of her last nights as a single woman.
When you say the word marriage to her she lights up with excitement and is quite simply radiant.
The word marriage to me brings about an entirely different feeling that I can safely say makes me in no way radiant.
Not by any stretch of the imagination. Having just begun my divorce proceedings I have a completely different perspective on this cultural staple in our society.
Ask a child what the word marriage means to them.
Children whose parents have divorced have higher rates of suicide, exhibit more health, behavioral and emotional problems, are involved more frequently in crime, are more inclined to abuse drugs and alcohol, and are more likely to be the victims of abuse.
These facts are haunting considering the percentage of marriages that end in divorce in our country is almost half.
Marriage is also being thrown around in the political arena, as everyone is up in arms over the possibility that gays and lesbians will be extended the right to marry.
It seems some feel this is an abomination to the institution of marriage.
It occurs to me that this country needs to be less concerned with how gays and lesbians will dirty the sanctity of marriage and more concerned with how we have done a fine job of that ourselves.
More than half of the families with children who experience divorce move
into poverty.
I write this as I’m sitting in my non-air-conditioned subsidized apartment. This statistic hits closer to home than I would
like to admit.
I should ask all of the other single Moms who attend class with me how drastically their lives have been affected by the dissolution of their families.
If you could be a tear drop in the eye of one of the children who blame themselves for their parents’ divorce and are uprooted and moved away from their friends into subsidized apartments, you would see just how un-radiant the word marriage can be.
I can’t help but feel that the microscope we have focused on marriage right now is zooming in on the wrong petri dish.
Could it be that we are looking for a way to distract ourselves from dealing with more pressing issues in our society?
Perhaps our attention should not be focused on what is happening in Bob and Steve’s bedroom and with what’s happening in our own. If we don’t want to go there then perhaps we should turn our spotlight more to the war in Iraq, the health care crisis in our country or any number of other blaringly more pertinent issues.
Perhaps those who live in glass houses should refrain from throwing stones, and promptly locate a bottle of Windex.
Shannon Morgan