A Chinese proverb says, “In the broken nest there are no whole eggs.” What a provocative summary of the negative impact of divorce. The U.S. Census Bureau gives the following statistics regarding the increase of divorce in our culture:
· In 1900, one divorce for every 10 marriages.
· In 1920, one divorce for every seven marriages.
· In 1940, one divorce for every six marriages.
· In 1960, one divorce for every four marriages.
· In 1972, one divorce for every three marriages.
· In 1976, one divorce for every two marriages.
And the divorce rate today is still approximately one in every two marriages. God the Father is the model for earthly fathers. This is the design, yet it has all but disappeared from American society in the last two decades. We are seeing many results of this in our kids, one of the results being early sexual involvement.
Mary is a seventeen-year-old with two younger brothers and a married sister. Her parents have been divorced for almost a year. Mary and her brothers have been living with their mother, who works outside the home all day. Mary’s boyfriend is the dream of every girl. Erick is a senior and a very popular football player. He has been Mary’s only source of comfort for months now and he asks her to have sex. She consents out of her own loneliness for her father and her fear of being rejected again.
2 comments:
Josh,
You state that current divorce statistics are around 50% but Michael Medved also quotes the US Census Bureau and he says 20% http://www.michaelmedved.com/pg/jsp/general/marriagestats.jsp. Who is right? This is a very significant difference and it's frustrating to me. I'm a Christian High School Bible teacher and I don't want to be giving out wrong information.
Thank you for your questions and request for clarification on current divorce statistics.
Josh gets his statistics from a number of different sources. A very reputable source is from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics.
Here is the link to the page on National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/nvss/mardiv_tables.htm.
As I did some research on-line, there are many different statistics and probably many more ways of interpreting them. If you look at the 2007 marriage rate of 7.3/1000 and the divorce rate for the same time span: 3.6/1000, it turns out to be very close to 50%.
Hope this helps you out.
Sincerely,
Sue
Josh McDowell Ministry
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