Past Crises, Future Hope

From the Preface to the Second Edition of John Witte Jr.'s From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition.

Statistics tell the bald American story, which has parallels in other Western cultures. Since 1975, roughly one-quarter of all pregnancies were aborted. One-third of all children were born to single mothers. One-half of all marriages ended in divorce. Two-thirds of all African American children were raised without a father present. Children from broken homes proved two to three times more likely to have behavioral and learning problems than children from two-parent homes. Single mothers faced four times the rates of bankruptcy and eviction. More than two-thirds of juveniles and young adults convicted of major felonies came from single- or no-parent homes. So much is well known. Though these numbers have improved over the past decade, they bring little cheer. 

What is less well known, and what brings more cheer, is that the Western tradition has faced family crises on this scale before. And apocalyptic jeremiads about the end of civil society have been uttered many times before. What brings cheer is that the Western tradition of marriage has always found the resources to heal and reinvent itself, to strike new balances between orthodoxy and innovation, order and liberty, with regard to our enduring and evolving sexual, marital, and familial norms and habits.