Marriagelessness and the Loss of National Greatness - Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, PhD

Bradford Wilcox has written: By the time the 1970s came to a close, many Americans—rich and poor alike—had jettisoned the institutional model of married life that prioritized the welfare of children, and which sought to discourage divorce in all but the direst of circumstances. [...] Instead, they embraced the soul-mate model of married life, which prioritized the emotional welfare of adults and gave moral permission to divorce for virtually any reason.2 The path to a restored national greatness, it would seem, is found in giving up this disorder in its root manifestation and restoring the institutional power of marriage so that it can resume its role of healing the selfishnes. [...] The husband and wife were engaged in a joint enterprise, struggling to subsist in the New England climate.”26 Men and women adapted themselves to roles suitable for their shared survival: The self was subordinated to the mission of the family. [...] “Of the world’s countries,” he wrote, “America is surely the one where the bond of marriage is most respected and where they have conceived the highest and most just idea of conjugal happiness.”27 Rugged individualism of the Founding era inhered in this type of familism. [...] 98 APrIL 2024 | 14 heritage.org Since nothing has such power to lay waste families and destroy the wealth of nations as the corruption of morals, it is easily seen that divorces are in the highest degree hostile to the prosperity of families and States, springing as they do from the depraved morals of the people, and, as experience shows us, opening out a way to every kind of evil-doing in public.