by David Mace
Doesn’t everybody know why couples get married? Surely that is a ridiculous question. Why write an article about it? But wait! I have concluded that most people today seem not to know what marriage is for — and that’s why many families are in so much trouble.
The first major study of human marriage was published in 1891 in three big volumes. The author was Edward Westermarck, who came from Finland to be a professor at the University of London. He studied marriage customs in all the major human cultures and in many small tribes and accumulated a great deal of information.
Westermarck reported that, in all settled human communities, marriage was universal. Though it was found in many different forms, no community was without it in one form or another.
Then he asked the question, “If marriage is a universal custom, what is its purpose?” There could be many answers, but one major purpose stood out above all the others. Westermarck expressed this in these words: “Marriage is rooted in the family and not the family in marriage.”
This means that the purpose of marriage is to create a setting which will guarantee that the values and standards of the culture surely will be transmitted from one generation to the next. This is the vital task of the family, and unless there is marriage, it won’t get done.
In other words, marriage is for parenthood. If human babies grew on trees or descended from heaven, there would be no need for marriage. If two people decided to live together and to form a lifelong association, that would be no business of the state or of the law. But if these two people bring into the world a child, who will become a new member of the community and live on into the next generation, then there must be a guarantee that that child will be given all the love, support, and training it needs.
As we know, parenthood at the animal level is different. Simple creatures never see their parents. For most animals, a short period of care from the mother is all that is needed. In other cases, the father has a part to play. But the growth of the human child to adulthood is unique. In our culture, it takes about twenty years for a newborn baby to develop into a mature self-sustaining adult with all the rights and obligations of citizenship.
Whose duty is it to make sure that each child will develop into a mature, responsible citizen? The state helps by providing schools, hospitals, and other essential services. But the task of raising the child belongs squarely to the man and the woman who brought this life into existence. Until today’s otherwise enlightened age, this has been quite clear throughout the whole period of human history. Now it seems to have been almost completely forgotten.
It has always been the plain, inescapable duty of any man or woman who helped produce a child to assume responsibility for supporting and guiding that child through the years from infancy to adulthood. To evade that duty has always been considered a serious misdemeanor. The united power of the Church and state has, until now, supported that principle.
The primary duty of marriage has always been to raise children who would be good future citizens. No personal sacrifice was too great for the achievement of that goal. To put your personal desires before your parental duty was a deplorable manifestation of irresponsible selfishness.
This noble aim was — and still is — best accomplished by serious efforts from the very beginning. The newborn child enters the world through a violent upheaval, finding itself in a totally unfamiliar situation. But the child soon begins to form impressions. If the atmosphere is alien or threatening, the child’s response is anxiety and fear. If the atmosphere is welcoming and loving, the response will be a sense of happiness and security. These basic impressions of the first weeks and months affect the attitudes of a lifetime.
As the child grows up, his sense of self and his attitudes and behavior will inevitably be a reflection of the way his parents behave toward him.
If he knows he is valued and cherished by them, he will be sure he is okay and will respond and grow accordingly.
Of course, many factors come into play, but nothing is more important to the growing child than to be able, with complete confidence, to make three basic affirmations: “My mother loves me. My father loves me. My mother and my father love each other.”
That is the meaning and purpose of marriage. Every other fact about marriage is secondary to these essentials. If we allow ourselves to lose sight of this, we do so at our own peril. The primary purpose of marriage is to maintain the basic values of our culture and to see that they are securely built into its future development.
(This article appears courtesy of Miles Jesu magazine. To learn more about the Catholic lay institute Miles Jesu, call 1-800-654-7945 or visit their website at www.MilesJesu.com.)
