Motivating Our Youth to Marry

With four daughters and one son about to exit their teen years - I have a big word always on my mind - MARRIAGE. I know that my kids have a built-in desire to marry; that doesn't concern me. What I find disturbing are the societal trends that are compelling more and more of our youth not to marry, or delay marriage until later in life - or worse yet, choose relationship alternatives to traditional church-sanctioned marriage.

If you don't believe me look around and see the massive demographic shift is happening before our eyes that is, by almost all accounts, unprecedented and unsustainable. Young people are postponing marriage and parenthood in such large numbers that our whole society is feeling the effects. Watch these videos to see how chronic the problem is.

As reported by the Deseret news, it appears that culture plays a major role in weakening contemporary commitment to marriage. Could it be that contemporary society may be failing to form the quantity and quality of families that will allow society to regenerate and sustain itself, let alone grow?

Worldwide, families have broken down at a historically unprecedented pace.  There are certainly records of how now-extinct societies have experienced similar declines before their demise, but what we now face is unique in that it has a global spread.  This has ominous portent.

So what is causing our kids to delay, postphone, or buck the trend to marry soon, and marry for the right reasons? I look at what influenced me.

# 1 - Example of Parents

Example is the best education. My mom and dad didn't talk a lot to me about marriage. And they do not have a perfect marriage. But I watched them go through ups and downs and saw firsthand the benefits of marrying someone you love, and sticking with that person through thick and thin, and growing together over numerous years. When my parents could have got divorced, they didn't. They showed me that life's journey is best lived the way of conventional marriage. Also growing up I also wasn't around divorced or single older people very often, but when I was, I saw a lot of heartache, loneliness, pain, and deviation from life's natural balances brought about by a monogamous companionship based on trust, family, offspring, faith and hard work.

#2 - Balanced Media Consumption

My youth was filled with influences from both the left and the right of the spectrum. Whenever I was exposed to non-traditional media messages about marriage, there was always a countering influence from the traditional side. This balance is very important in establishing a realistic picture of what marriage is all about. Being exposed to a daily dose of modern TV sitcom's can severely skew your perspective on marriage.

#3 - Testimony and Challenge to not delay Marriage and Children

Many young men are naturally lazy about making relationship commitments, and often are not challenged to marry until that start getting beyond 28 - which in my book is too late. My wife took care of that for me, and challenged me to make a marriage decision while we were courting. She took a risk of scaring me away, but stuck with it.
Also, once married, a wise old family friend told me not to not delay the birth of children. We started a family immediately, and had all 5 kids in one uninterrupted string. While this has stretched me and my wife financially and emotionally, it has been the glue that has held the rest of our relationship together; if you humble yourself and open up your heart to love, tough times and children weld relationships rather than separate them.

#4 - Strong Fathers Influencing Sons

Men have a major influence of life's commitments in the lives of their children. While women nurture, love and support, men have a measurable influence on discipline and how their children make and keep commitments. Dads need to step up and influence children to focus on marriage commitments. Just as high school children need to be coaxed into planning for secondary education, financial plans, and career goals, so too should they be challenged to plan for marriage. Fathers need to take the lead in helping their kids set reachable goals for dating, courtship, marriage and family planning. Then as life's pressures and modern trends have a negative influence on these plans, the dad can say: "Hey, what happened to your plans? Why the deviation from the expectation?"