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Important New Book Explains Why Marriage Still Matters

The reasons why marriage still matters in a society where the institution seems to be declining as an ideal are, ironically, literally countless. Every way social scientists and other scholars know how to measure such things regularly demonstrates that marriage improves all important aspects of well-being for women, men, children and society as a whole.

In an effort to help document and explain this fact, two important Canadian scholars have just published a new book that is worth careful attention: I … Do? Why Marriage Still Matters. The authors, Andrea Mrozek and Peter Jon Mitchell, both with Cardus, a leading Canadian think tank, have long histories studying marriage as a social institution.

Their book, as they explain, “seeks to equip readers with the language and logic of marriage as a social institution that contributes to a flourishing, even and especially, for those who are nonreligious.” They explain that those who take faith seriously “have other theological underpinnings to lend color to the tapestry of life” but “nonreligious people who no longer get married are thus deprived of yet another source of meaning and stability in a transient world.”

They admit it “has become a cliché in certain circles” but their case is that family, established on the clarity of marriage, “is the building block of community and society.” Why? Because “family is the sine qua non of learning to live in community.” They continue, “Family is the primary place where children learn and are formed as people.”  Mrozek and Mitchell ask us to reflect on this. “We don’t often stop to ponder this point, but a stable and healthy home contributes to a healthy citizenry.” And marriage is what cements families together, better than any other social institution. Our authors explain, “Marriage continues to be relevant today, in part because it is focused on life beyond ourselves.” It is one of the only major social institutions to do so.

They ask, “How much evidence shows that married people tend to accumulate more wealth, enjoy better health and fulfillment, and their children experience better outcomes on a number of measures?” They answer, “At this point, quite a bit.” It’s true, and this finding is such a truism it has earned itself a name in academic circles. “These benefits have been termed the marriage advantage in the social sciences [emphasis in original].”

Boosting Fertility

Declining population is a very serious problem in most parts of the world today. But these authors explain “marriage and fertility remain firmly linked” and that fertility will not rise in any country if marriage rates continue to decline. They add, “Surveys show that women want to have more children than they are currently having, but under the right circumstances – marriage being a key factor.”

Andrea Mrozek, the lead author, explains the mission of their book here:

Mrozek and Mitchell close their book instructing us,

This book is ultimately an effort, using social-scientific research, to initiate a conversation about reimagining what marriage is and why it still matters. … The bottom line is we can no longer take marriage for granted. Public conversations about the benefits of marriage and the role family structure plays in well-being equip people with the knowledge to make their own informed choices and help public policymakers identify barriers to family formation.

Mrozek and Mitchell challenge us that “now more than ever, North Americans need to reimagine what a healthy marriage culture could look like in a pluralistic society.” Their important new book will go far in helping that happen. 

Related Articles and Resources

Reclaiming the Truth About Marriage

Research Update: The Compelling Health Benefits of Marriage

Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being

How Marriage Fights Against Deaths of Despair

New Research: Marriage Still Provides Major Happiness Premium

Family Scholars Explain the Current Marriage Paradox in America

New Research Shows Married Families Matter More Than Ever

Why Marriage Really Matters – 3 Focus on the Family Reports

Brad Wilcox Exhorts Young People to ‘Get Married’

Cohabitation Still Harmful – Even as Stigma Disappears

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Women

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Men.

Yes, Married Mothers Really Are Happier Than Unmarried and Childless Women

Married Fatherhood Makes Men Better

Marriage and the Public Good: A New Manifesto of Policy Proposals

Politifact Seriously Muffs Their ‘2024 Lie of the Year’: It was Clearly the Media’s Cover-Up

Politifact, the “fact-checking” arm of the Poynter Institute, proudly claims to “stand up for the facts,” maintaining “our only agenda is to publish the truth.”

Daily Citizen puts the term fact-checking in quotes because we are dubious of the reliability of this term as it applies to organizations like Politifact and others. There is very good documentation for this mistrust. They are proven to be politically motivated along party lines.

You need not guess how those lines line up.

A glaring example of this is Politifact’s “2024 Lie of the Year” chosen by Politifact’s readers. They explain,

Although last year’s readers’ pick won by only a narrow margin, this year’s choice won by a landslide. And its proof that great minds think alike.

Rather, it is merely proof that partisan minds think alike. Their landslide choice for 2024’s political lie was President-elect Donald Trump’s claim that illegal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating people’s pets.

That claim was indeed false. No credible evidence has documented it as fact. Police bodycam footage appears to show an Ohio woman who reportedly ate a cat. But further local reporting, here and here, documents she is a United States citizen.

But this was a mistruth spoken by one candidate and a few social media voices. It was refuted by hundreds of media outlets.

Yet, 54% of Politifact readers thought this was the biggest political lie of the year, as demonstrated in this graphic from the Politifact story.

Whopper of a Political Lie Missing

But the largest political lie of 2024 is curiously missing from Politifact’s reporting.

Of course, that is the historic cover-up from the countless members of the elite media and those close to President Joe Biden. It was the demonstrably false claim that the president was in tip-top shape physically and cognitively when the rest of the world regularly saw this was not the case. It was only after President Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 presidential debate with Donald Trump – which effectively ended his presidential run – that the extensive cover-up began to crumble.

There are many video montages of countless members of the media and the Democrat establishment confidently stating, on endless occasions, that Joe Biden was as good and sharp as he had ever been. Some boasted he was never better.

Here is one dramatic sampling:

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is 50 years old, shamelessly told CNN that Biden was so strong and vibrant, “I can’t even keep up with him.” Alejandros Mayorkas, United States Secretary of Homeland Security, told NBC’s Meet the Press that “the most difficult part of a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing, detail oriented and focused.” He described his boss as “incredibly sharp, incredibly probing” demonstrating “incredible command of the details.”

Janet Yellen of the Federal Reserve told CBS News, “I’m often with him on foreign trips, he’s at the top of his game.” Nancy Pelosi regularly told MSNBC and other outlets, “He has vision, he has knowledge, he has judgement and strategic thinking.” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware confidently told ABC News, “There’s nothing to these challenges, these suggestions that somehow he’s not sharp and he’s not capable.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland explained to Congress on April 16, 2024, “I have complete confidence in the president. I have watched him expertly guide meetings of staff and cabinet members. I could not have more confidence in the president.”

Of course, Joe Scarborough famously damaged his own reputation as a serious journalist by claiming on Morning Joe last March that Joe Biden “is far beyond cogent” confidently adding, “In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been, intellectually, analytically because he’s been around for 50 years.” Scarborough was not done. He went on to double down on his dramatic claims: “This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second.”

Everyone seemed to be in on the cover-up.

Even New York Senator Chuck Schumer assured the nation in an official Senate press conference, “His mental acuity is great, it’s as good as it’s been over the years. All this right-wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong.”

But of course, it wasn’t right-wing propaganda.

We all saw it for ourselves, over, and over again. But major media like The Associated Press told us seeing was not believing. The New York Times tried to convince us what we saw was “misleading.” The White House told us videos of President Biden as confused and meandering were “cheap fakes.”

Mainstream voices like these kept up the charade month after long month … until they no longer could. Until it got too obvious to cover over after that infamous debate debacle.

But just this past weekend, CBS’s chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford confessed on her network’s Sunday morning show Face the Nation, that the most undercovered and underreported story of 2024 “would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in the televised debate. Unquestioned.”

She added,

And it’s starting to emerge now that his advisers kind of managed his limitations, which has been reported in The Wall Street Journal, for four years. And yet he insisted that he could still run for president.

Crawford admits the media failed in their duty to tell the truth, and that this failure had real-world consequences in our nation’s highest election.

We should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office for another four years, which could have led to a primary for the Democrats.
It could have changed the scope of the entire election. Yet still, incredibly, we read in The Washington Post that his advisers are saying that he regrets that he dropped out of the race, that he thinks he could have beaten Trump. And I think that is either delusional or they’re gaslighting the American people.

You can see that refreshingly honest admission here:

This was a national political scam of unmatched proportions. Full stop. And it was facilitated by major media outlets.

Yes, other presidents in the relatively recent past have had serious physical and mental difficulties that limited their ability to fully perform their tasks: FDR, Woodrow Wilson, and Ronald Reagan in his later years. But none of these benefited from such a widely orchestrated cover-up by so many in the media to convince the American people everything was fine, if not “better than ever.” That is precisely what we saw in this deliberate masking for President Biden. And it was all focused on influencing the outcome of a presidential election!

This is not just the largest and most serious political lie of 2024. It is one of the most widely and consistently covered-over deceptions of modern U.S. political history.

Thankfully, many Americans wisely saw through it. And some good journalists are now admitting the fact.

Image from Shutterstock.

Christmas Citizenship

I’ve often pointed out in my Christmas sermons that the Incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ revolutionized politics.

Remember, the pagan view of politics is that “the law flows from the mouth of the King.” On any day, that one man could get up out of bed in the morning and issue a decree into which the people had no input and against which they had no recourse.

Jesus warned that among the Gentiles, their leaders “lord it over them, and their great ones make their importance felt” (Mark 10:42).

But he then went on to say that “it cannot be that way among you,” and he taught that among Christians, authority and power mean humble service.

Why?

Because the people who are under the authority of presidents, governors and judges are in fact sons and daughters of the King of Kings and Judge of the world.

We have access to God and are sharers in his very nature (2 Peter 1:4), thanks to the fact that God took on our nature in Christ. That’s the mystery and meaning of Christmas.

And that’s the foundation of our Founders’ assertion, in our Declaration of Independence, that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The law does not come from the mouth of the king. It comes from the mouths of the people. It comes from the will of the sons and daughters of the King of Kings.

Our Founders were determined, with every assertion they made in the Declaration, and with every carefully crafted provision they placed in the Constitution, to minimize the chances of tyranny.

And it’s Christmas that strikes at the heart of tyranny. God does not oppress His people; he exalts them. He raises us to his very throne, seating us in the heavenly places with Christ (Eph. 2:6-7).

We rejoice, therefore, in advocating a Christian form of government. The best way to express our gratitude for this gift is to exercise the power of our citizenship, our sovereignty as a people under God, not only through the votes we cast in elections, but in the lobbying we can do every day.

Let your voices be heard by all whom you have helped elect. After all, they will be hearing from a son, a daughter, of God.