Sunday, January 27, 2008

Marriage and Society

From a discussion I had over lunch today:

In English schools, lots of society stuff is taught in PSHE lessons. Sex education, drugs, eating disorders, all that sort of thing. But marriage isn't on the syllabus at all.

Where do non-Christians learn about marriage, apart from soap operas?

Is it any wonder the marriage rate is declining?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Presumably they learn from all the married couples they see?

Anonymous said...

oooh i bett yore marid to a reely dishy girl with all yore intresting ritting.

Speaker for the Dead said...

Judging by some of the recent comments on your posts, Custardy, your readership has expanded to include people of all religions, races...and IQ levels. Which is both a good and bad thing, I guess.

Anonymous said...

This article is worth a read:
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/040213brink.html

Excerpt:
Marriage is more than an emotional and sexual attachment. Much more.

Giambattista Vico, after completing an exhaustive study of ancient history, concluded in 1725 that marriage between a man and a woman is an essential characteristic of civilization. Without strong social norms that encourage a man to direct his sexual attentions to a single woman and thereafter care for his offspring, Vico concluded that chaos ensued. Marriage, he wrote, was the “seedbed” of society.

British anthropologist J. D. Unwin reached the same conclusion some 200 years later. In his 1934 book, Sex and Culture, Unwin chronicled the historical decline of 86 different cultures. His exhaustive survey revealed that “strict marital monogamy” was central to social energy and growth. Indeed, no society flourished for more than three generations without it. Unwin stated it this way, "In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence."

Anonymous said...

I sometimes wonder how non-Christians manage to function in society. Is it possible to put "love" on the national curriculum?