• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Alex Chediak

Helping young adults thrive at college and beyond

Header Right

  • About
  • Books
    • Beating the College Debt Trap
      • Why Write Beating the College Debt Trap?
      • Table of Contents
      • Endorsements
      • Preface and Introduction
      • Pre-order Freebie: A Parent-Child Discussion Guide
      • Fox News Article
      • Desiring God Article
      • Promo Video
      • Press Kit/Media Info
      • Reviews & Sample Audio
      • Low Res – Front & Back Cover Art
      • High Res – Front & Back Cover Art
    • Thriving at College
      • Table of Contents
      • Endorsements
      • Read the Foreword
      • Read the Preface
      • Read an Excerpt
      • Reviews/Interviews
      • Leader’s Guide (Tyndale)
      • July 2011 CBA Best-Seller (Young Adult)
      • YouthWorker Journal “Best of Best in 2011”
      • NEW!! – Parent-Child Discussion Guide
      • Testimonials From Schools
      • Educational and Church Discounts
      • Buy on Amazon
      • Buy on WTS
      • Purchase Thriving at College in Chinese!
    • Preparing Your Teens for College
      • Why Write Preparing Your Teens for College?
      • Table of Contents
      • Endorsements
      • Foreword
      • Read an Excerpt (PDF)
      • Video
      • Educational and Church Discounts
      • Front and Back Cover Art
      • Interviews/Reviews/Notable Tweets
      • Order on Amazon
    • With One Voice
      • Endorsements
      • Reviews
      • Buy on Amazon
      • Read a Chapter
    • 5 Paths to the Love of Your Life
      • Endorsements
      • Reviews
      • Buy on Amazon
  • Resources
    • Articles
    • Audio/Video
  • Blog
  • Speaking
  • Contact

Time Cover Story on Marriage

July 13, 2009 by Alex Chediak

Caitlin Flanagan has written an absolutely outstanding cover story for Time Magazine entitled, Is There Hope for the American Marriage? I do not think I have ever seen a better treatment by a main stream media publication on the institution of marriage.
Flanagan writes in the context of the high-profile affairs of Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign, as well as the “Jon and Kate” fallout. After noting that the children of lower-income single-parent homes do worse on every metric (drug abuse, school performance and dropout rates, teen pregnancy, criminal behavior and incarceration, etc.), Flanagan writes:

But children of divorced middle-class parents do less well in school and at college compared with underprivileged kids from two-parent households. “There’s a ‘sleeper effect’ to divorce that we are just beginning to understand,” says David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. It is an effect that pioneering scholars like McLanahan and Judith Wallerstein have devoted their careers to studying, revealing truths that many of us may find uncomfortable. It’s dismissive of the human experience, says Blankenhorn, to suggest that kids don’t suffer, extraordinarily, from divorce: “Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal.”

Flanagan’s conclusion:

The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it — given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized — simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it? If so, we might as well hold the wake now: there probably aren’t many people whose idea of 24-hour-a-day good times consists of being yoked to the same romantic partner, through bouts of stomach flu and depression, financial setbacks and emotional upsets, until after many a long decade, one or the other eventually dies in harness.
Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function — to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation’s own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can’t be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children’s lives — that’s the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.

Lastly, a lesson from the Sanford and Ensign accounts that is easy to miss is in I Cor. 10:12, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Their affairs did not begin “innocently” (as Gov. Sanford regrettably suggested). Rather, private failures precede public failures. When others fall, we should consider that, apart from care, self-examination and waging war with sin at the heart level, we might likewise fall.

0
0
0
0
0

Filed Under: Culture

Primary Sidebar

DISCOUNT PRICING!

Thriving at College book cover368 pages. Please allow 7-10 days for delivery.
Sales tax will be added for California purchases, as required by law. For orders to Canada, please contact us. (See also CASE DISCOUNTS below.) No PayPal account required to place order. (Debit or Credit card will work.)

$10.99


DISCOUNT PRICING!

Beating the College Debt Trap book cover224 pages. Please allow 7-10 days for delivery.
Sales tax will be added for California purchases, as required by law. For orders to Canada, please contact us. (See also CASE DISCOUNTS below.) No PayPal account required to place order. (Debit or Credit card will work.)

$4.99


DISCOUNT PRICING!

Preparing Your Teens for College book cover 448 pages. Please allow 7-10 days for delivery. Sales tax will be added for California purchases, as required by law. For orders to Canada, please contact us. (See also CASE DISCOUNTS below.) No PayPal account required to place order. (Debit or Credit card will work.)

$9.99


CASE DISCOUNT PRICING!

Thriving at College book cover1 CASE = 28 COPIES
Please allow 7-10 days for delivery.
Sales tax will be added for California purchases, as required by law. No PayPal account required to place order. (Debit or Credit card will work.) For orders to Canada, please contact us.

$269.99


CASE DISCOUNT PRICING!

Beating the College Debt Trap book cover1 CASE = 44 COPIES
Please allow 7-10 days for delivery.
Sales tax will be added for California purchases, as required by law. No PayPal account required to place order. (Debit or Credit card will work.) For orders to Canada, please contact us.

$189.99


Order Thriving at College!

Amazon Book Bomb for Thriving at College"There is no better guide to college."
--Alex and Brett Harris

"Insightful and useful."
--Randy Alcorn

"Written by an ‘insider’—an excellent gift for high school seniors."--Jerry Bridges

 

COMPARE STORES!

Westminster Bookstore
Christian Book Distributors booksamillion.com : books, music, movies & more
Westminster Bookstore booksamillion.com : books, music, movies & more
Westminster Bookstore

Order Preparing Your Teens for College!

Amazon Book Bomb for Thriving at College

"A sharp tool." Tedd Tripp

"Outstanding book on preparing teens for adulthood." Jerry Bridges

"Highly recommended.” Josh McDowell

 

RESOURCES

 

Also by Alex

With One Voice book cover

With One Voice

Read More Endorsements
Reviews
Read a Chapter
Buy on Amazon

 

Praise for With One Voice

This relatively short book packs a powerful bang for the buck, providing much biblical and practical advice for young men and women seeking to glorify God in relationships.

Alex and Brett Harris
Best-selling authors of Do Hard Things

Alex and Marni Chediak offer sound biblical advice and a clear Christian framework for working through the maze of confusions surrounding modern marriage.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Publishers have been cranking out books with all sorts of directions to help Christians navigate the treacherous waters between the buoys of singleness and marriage, and I know of none that is more clear, concise and helpful than With One Voice.

J. Ligon Duncan, III Ph.D.
Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church

With One Voice is clearly written and God-centered. Our eighteen year-old daughter just read it and restrained herself from underlining nearly the whole thing!

Dr. Bruce A. Ware
Professor of Christian Theology
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Categories

  • Thriving at College
  • With One Voice
  • Culture
  • Personal
  • Theology
  • Practical Ministry

Copyright © 2025 · Genesis Sample on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in