《Sermon Illustrations (D~F)》(a compilation) table of contents
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- Reported in Time , 2/6/89.
- U.S. News World Report , February 21, 1994, p. 67.
- L.M. Boyd, Spokesman Review , March 15, 1993.
- Psychology Today , in Homemade , July, 1985.
- Dr. E. Mavis Hetherington in Homemade , October, 1989.
- Divorce rates, from U.S. Census Bureau reports
- Chicago Tribune , quoted in His , Nov, 1980.
- USA Today , quoted in Intercessors for America , June, 1986.
- John W. White, What Does It Mean to be Born Again
- Break Point with Charles Colson, Vol. 1, No. 6, August 1991.
Statistics and Stuff"Almost half of children of divorces enter adulthood as worried, underachieving, self-deprecating, and sometimes angry young men and women." reports Judith Wallerstein, director of the Center for the Family in Transition and author of Second Chance (Ticknor & Fields, 1988). Her conclusion is drawn from interviews conducted over a 15 year period with 60 families, mostly white middle class. Other Wallerstein findings: Three out of five youngsters felt rejected by at least one parent. Half grew up in settings in which the parents were warring with each other even after the divorce. Reported in Time, 2/6/89. 
In order to uncover the processes that destroy unions, marital researchers study couples over the course of years, and even decades, and retrace the star-crossed steps of those who have split up back to their wedding day. What they are discovering is unsettling. None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple's durability actually does: not how in love a newlywed couple say they are; how much affection they exchange; how much they fight or what they fight about. In fact, couples who will endure and those who won't look remarkably similar in the early days. Yet when psychologists Cliff Notarius of Catholic University and Howard Markman of the University of Denver studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships. Among couples who would ultimately stay together, 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were putdowns. Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. That gap magnified over the following decade, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as happy couples. "Hostile putdowns act as cancerous cells that, if unchecked, erode the relationship over time," says Notarius, who with Markman co-authored the new book We Can Work It Out. "In the end, relentless unremitting negativity takes control and the couple can't get through a week without major blowups." U.S. News & World Report, February 21, 1994, p. 67.
Why do toy makers watch the divorce rate? When it rises, so do toy sales. According to the analyzers, four parents and eight grandparents tend to compete for children's affections, so buy toys. L.M. Boyd, Spokesman Review, March 15, 1993.
A five year study of children of divorced parents in California questions that children are better off when their parents divorce than when they stay in an unhappy marriage. Many of the children would have been "content to hobble along in an unhappy marriage and they did not experience the divorce as a solution to their unhappiness." Most of them harbored fantasies of a "magical reconciliation." The divorced family is less adaptive economically, socially, and psychologically to the raising of children than the two-parent family. Psychology Today, in Homemade, July, 1985.
A study of divorced couples with preschool children shows that after a year of divorce, 60% of men and 73% of women feel they made a mistake and should have tried harder to make marriage work. People have no idea how much anguish and stress is caused by divorce. Dr. E. Mavis Hetherington in Homemade, October, 1989.
60% of all divorces involve children. Approximately 1,000,000 children each year are affected by divorce." Marriage and Family, April, 1980.
75% of divorced people remarry--and 60% of them already have children. If current trends continue, stepfamilies could outnumber traditional families by the year 2000. Dr. Nazli Baydar, in Homemade, October, 1989.
Divorce rates, from U.S. Census Bureau reports: 1920, 1 divorce per 7 marriages 1940, 1 divorce per 6 marriages 1960 1 divorce per 4 marriages 1972 1 divorce per 3 marriages 1977 1 divorce per 2 marriages
Children from broken homes cause a strikingly disproportionate share of discipline problems in schools and fare far worse academically than their peers from two-parent homes, according to an extensive new study. For every two-parent child disciplined, the study says, teachers took to task three one-parent children. Comparing children from broken homes to those with both parents, the ratio for dropouts was 9 to 5; for expulsions, 8 to 1. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the rising divorce rate means 48% of school children during the next decade will come from one-parent homes. Chicago Tribune, quoted in His, Nov, 1980.
The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that 6 of 10 women in their 30's will have their first marriage end in divorce. The problem is charged to changing male-female roles, the massive entrance of women into the work force and social revolutions in the late 60's. USA Today, quoted in Intercessors for America, June, 1986.
Doctor George Crane, M.D., Ph. D., the clinical columnist in newspapers throughout North America, has calculated that when a married couple are active together in the same church they have about a 50 times greater chance of avoiding divorce; and that only one in 500 marriages breaks up where there is a family altar. . . Nine out of ten of both sexes attach maximum priority in life to a happy marriage. John W. White, What Does It Mean to be Born Again?
Practice doesn't make perfect. According to studies by the Barna Foundation and the Census Bureau, people who cohabitate before marriage--that's half of all adults under the age of 30--are more likely than others to get divorced, and 60 percent of second marriages eventually split up. With that kind of failure rate, perhaps it's time to stop practicing and get into the game for good. Marriage is for life. Break Point with Charles Colson, Vol. 1, No. 6, August 1991. Directory: Topics Topics -> ES18 topics intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) Working Group I Topics -> Non-Governmental Organizations And Their Relation to Transboundary Water Resources Topics -> United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Mandatory hiv testing August 1996 Topics -> Policy Options for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion Download 1.31 Mb. Share with your friends:
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