Are we doing enough to teach our children about marriage?

Laura Perrins

What are your local Catholic Church and Catholic parents doing to orient young people towards marriage? Today we live in a very atomised and individualistic world. Young people frequently complain that they are unable to meet like-minded people, never mind get married and have children. This is something the Catholic writer and academic Dr Anthony Esolen has written and spoken about many times. Dr Esolen, who is writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in New Hampshire in the US, is one of the most thoughtful Catholic writers of our time.

Dr Esolen has long been a defender of traditional marriage and points out the reality that men and women are made for each other. He argues that what is now unsayable was once obvious, namely, that marriage is there to serve children, to protect them and cherish them and give them space to grow. This is why true marriage can only ever be between one man and one woman.

Children grow up seeing a parent of its own sex, and what that role is, and a parent of the opposite sex who gives an example of his or her duties. As such children experience how each sex relates to each other – how they are deeply complementary and necessary for each other and indeed necessary for the begetting of children themselves. This is the very essence of marriage. Finally, for a Catholic family, marriage must also encourage children to know God, and His plan for us.

These days young people have fewer and fewer opportunities to see good examples of Christian marriage. I am not talking Disney style happy-ever-afters, but how marriage works with all its challenges, difficulties and happiness.

Today, young people must navigate university culture that pushes a value system very different from our own. They then face an economically uncertain future. So it is easy to see why so many young people delay getting married for so long. What opportunity do they have to meet members of the opposite sex in a wholesome environment that is also fun? What strikes me about the millennials, is not their carefree youth, but how very seriously they take everything. It must be exhausting.

So, the next time you complain about a child, a niece or a nephew who “refuses to settle down” ask yourself what have you done to encourage them to do so? Many middle-class parents will devote huge amounts of time and material resources to get their child into the desired university and career, ignoring all else. They then seem shocked to discover that their children are still single well into their late thirties.

We must remember that children learn what they live. They value what you value, and they can sense what you value by what you do, not by what you say. So local churches should be organising dances and other activities for their young people. Only a few decades ago this would be viewed as a basic requirement among church-goers, not an optional extra.

Boys and girls, men and women do actually enjoy each other’s company. Despite what the media say – relations do not have to be “toxic” between the sexes. These social occasions must of course be supervised by sensible adults. Giving over your house and the keys to the alcohol cabinet is not the kind of thing I am talking about. That’s just lazy parenting.

But guiding, encouraging and facilitating fun occasions for young Catholics to get together and get to know each other should be viewed as a parental duty. Not something that is confined to the mythical ‘1950s.’