When I was a child, I remember worrying about my parents getting a divorce...not because they had a bad marriage. In fact, they had a pretty good marriage. Their marriage wasn’t perfect and they had their share of disagreements, but they loved and respected each other and were committed to each other. I think I worried because I saw watched my cousins whose parents were divorcing and I thought about how difficult it must be to not live with both your mom and dad. Of course there were the perks...at least through the eyes of a child...getting two birthday parties and two sets of Christmas presents to open. But I just couldn’t get past the thought of not seeing and talking to both my mom and dad everyday. So I worried, but for no good reason because my parents had decided many years before that they were getting married and staying married. They even travelled from North Carolina to Utah (because that was the closest temple to them at the time) to be sealed for time and all eternity in the House of the Lord. They got married with the the idea that it would last forever, not until things got hard.
Fast forward twenty-five years and now I have a little girl who worries like I used to. My husband and I have a great marriage. We love each other and agree on most things, but not everything. If we disagree..even over something trivial, my daughter starts questioning us over and over, “Are y’all getting a divorce?” I have never really understood her anxiety over this because my husband and I don’t fight. We never raise our voices at each other. We never have. It just isn’t who we are or how we do things. And then I remembered that I used to worry about the same thing, not because of my parents, but because of other parents around me. I realized she was probably worrying because of the things she saw outside of our home. So we sat her down and explained that we love each other very much, and even if we disagree, we still love each other and are committed to our marriage. We explained that we will continue to have things that we don’t always agree on, but we decided before we got married that divorce was not an option for us. We got married to stay married and to learn and grow together and build a family that would last, not only for this life, but forever.
We have become a society that throws away everything without trying to repair or make things work, including our marriages. Now I’m not saying that no one should ever get a divorce. I know there are reasons why a divorce is sometimes the way it has to be and that both spouses have to be committed to making the marriage work. However, I do believe that as a society we give up on marriage too easily and take the easy way out.
In a talk on Divorce in 2007, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a prominent leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, said, “The concept that society has a strong interest in preserving marriages for the common good as well as the good of the couple and their children has been replaced for many by the idea that marriage is only a private relationship between consenting adults, terminable at the will of either...Modern prophets have warned that looking upon marriage ‘as a mere contract that may be entered into at pleasure … and severed at the first difficulty … is an evil meriting severe condemnation,’ especially where children are made to suffer.”
The world teaches us that it’s okay if things don’t work out with your marriage. It’s not a big deal. Just get a divorce and try again. Not much thought is given to how children’s lives are affected by these decisions. Paul Amato, who is well-known for his research in social science, studied the effects of family change on children. His study shows “that children growing up with two continuously married parents are less likely to experience a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and social problems, not only during childhood, but also in adulthood...He shows that compared with other children, those who grow up in stable, two-parent families have a higher standard of living, receive more effective parenting, experience more cooperative co-parenting, are emotionally closer to both parents, and are subjected to fewer stressful events and circumstances.” Children with married parents have a huge advantage over those with divorced parents.
Elder Oaks further stated, “...for most marriage problems, the remedy is not divorce but repentance. Often the cause is not incompatibility but selfishness. The first step is not separation but reformation. Divorce is not an all-purpose solution, and it often creates long-term heartache.”
Many people who were asked five years after divorce are not any happier, and some even wish they had not divorced. As Elder Oaks said, “...a good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection.” The Lord wants us to have a happy and successful marriage. He will bless us and help us to achieve this if we are committed to Him and ask for His guidance.
Obviously, divorce is a big deal. It has a huge impact on the lives of all family members, as well as communities and nations. We must change the way we think about marriage. We must decide that marriage is not something to toss like yesterday’s newspaper, but something we treasure and fight to protect and preserve. And we must teach our children this too. We must teach them to decide now that divorce is not an option.
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