M.C. Atkins: "We need to be done with dating, and return to courtship, parental consent, and some degree of arranged marriage" – with reflections on the same

“This is natural marriage. Not just a hook-up between a man and a woman, but a solemn union of families to the benefit of all. And where this paradigm does not prevail, family disintegrates."

If anyone had told me, thirty years ago or even twenty, that I would be writing a blog post in support of arranged marriage, I would have thought they were on something that was almost certainly on a list of Federally-controlled substances! But here we are.

Age may or may not bring wisdom, but it definitely brings experience, and an awful lot of my experience in the last half-century-plus-six years has indicated to me that the “ideal” which society has been promoting, during that time, as to how relationships are supposed to work, has been an abject failure.

About half of all marriages end in divorce (see insert, below) – a number which is hardly better for those who are at least nominally Christians than for avowed secularists – and perhaps even more concerning, an ever-growing number of relationships never eventuate in marriage in the first place; the birthrate is dropping below replacement level (having halved since 1950, from 24.268 per 1000 to 12.012); and abortion is through the roof. Not coincidentally with the fragmentation of family – which is what this represents – our society as a whole is losing altitude, pouring out a trail of smoke, and pieces are flying off left and right.

---

The percentage of marriages ending in divorce has actually shrunk from about 50% in the 1980s to about 45% now, but that is offset (and likely generated) by the fact that fewer couples are actually getting married. One study notes,

“The marriage rate, divorce rate, and the associated population structure by marital status significantly changed after 1989. The model of frequent and early marriage has turned into a model in which people postpone marriage and marry less often... Changes in marriage and divorce rates were reflected in the structure of the population by marital status, where there was an increase in the proportion of single and divorced people and, conversely, a decrease in the share of persons living in marriage…”

---

That this collapse in both marriage and society (and society can hardly be expected to survive the breakdown of its key building block, namely strong marriages) is not merely an accident of history, but rather something promoted and fomented by people who do not have the interests of traditional – one might even say sane – culture (Western and otherwise) at heart seems likely to the point of near-certainty, but since I have gone into this in more detail elsewhere, I will say no more here. I will say this:

This is not sustainable. It is also ethically vicious, contrary not only to what our Founders might have called “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” but also the best interests of individuals, families, societies, and nations. No one benefits, in the long run, from an unhealthy witches’ brew of chaos and disorder, self-centered hedonism, and the dissolution of strong bonds among and between people, families, and communities. No one, that is, except ideologues, and those addicted to power.

That is what makes this essay, by M.C. Atkins in his blog “Look Away,” so refreshing. Exhibiting a blissful disregard for political correctness and the standards of our “liberal,” progressive mass “culture” (actually anti-culture), Atkins cites the mythical but entirely believable example of two pre-industrial families – and two young people, son and daughter of those families, who have a mutual attraction – and how the matter was resolved in a way that benefits all parties concerned: not the mere satisfaction of sexual urges, before which all else must bow, as in our present situation. I strongly commend it to your attention!

I have seen this time and time again, over the last, oh, say, two or three decades at least of my five-plus, as I have begun to be attentive to such matters. And I saw it a long time before that, without fully realizing the implications, in my own family.

I have two older brothers. Both are, now, happily married; but how they came to that state is an illustration of the present instance: one, the younger of the two, was the classic example of pop-culture doctrines of relationships. He is now on his third marriage, and it appears to be the “real deal”; but it was a long time coming. I will not go into details, to preserve privacy and decorum, but the only way in which family was involved was that his first wife was running from hers.

The other represented an older – and perhaps saner and more sensible – model. Our mother, and the mother of his now-wife, were best friends in college. The families grew up together: I called her parents “Aunt ____” and “Uncle ____.” My brother was originally resistance to suggestions that he might ask his now-wife out, responding with some indignance that “I can’t date my sister!” But eventually they realized that the bonds between them were not those of siblings, after all, and those bonds (as well as those of our two families) were solidified in the sacrament of Christian marriage.

Was it an “arranged” marriage? No, not in a formal sense, but it was certainly an encouraged one; and it is one whose potential grew to fruition in the fertile soil of close, intimate – indeed in that case lifelong – friendship, not only between the principals, but between our two families. Both sets of parents perceived the desirability, and the appropriateness, of the match long before either of them did! And while they were careful not to overplay their hands, they weren’t above a gentle nudge now and then, either.

That relationship, I hasten to add, has been going strong and solid, eventuating in a strong marriage and home-life, and in two children, two grandchildren so far, and the imminent prospect of a third. Now, is a situation like this going to be available to everyone? No, of course not. Is it going to work out that well, even if it is, in every instance? Again, probably not. But are the odds better, if something like this is the norm, as it used to be, rather than the exception it has become? I do believe so!

And of course, a situation like this is not likely going to be possible in the case of those who, for whatever reason, get married later in life (a condition to which I am especially sensitive, due to circumstances in my life which have resulted in ongoing singleness even to a relatively advanced age).

But for those coming up through adolescence and young adulthood – especially that almost mystical period of 18-25 years, which is for a variety of reasons the primo years to get married – something like what Atkins describes in his essay, or what happened with my oldest brother and sister-in-law, represents an ideal which is likely to be highly beneficial for the individuals concerned, their families, and the larger community and society as a whole. As Atkins puts it, accurately in my view,

“This is natural marriage. Not just a hook-up between a man and a woman, but a solemn union of families to the benefit of all.  And where this paradigm does not prevail, family disintegrates. And when family disintegrates, society disintegrates. As we see here in America today. And dating is at the root of the problem.

“Dating is a modern institution without historic precedent that, like its parent feminism, has been a disaster for our culture and should be rejected root and branch. It inevitably leads to promiscuity that debases women, leaving them jaded and scarred, for despite what feminists would have us believe, a woman is indeed an emotional being whose natural inclination is to form a powerful bond with the man with whom she lays. Promiscuity stretches and erodes this ability.

Secondly, the inevitable promiscuity of dating has resulted in extraordinarily high rates of illegitimacy (to say nothing of abortion) with its attendant social dysfunctions and costs.

“Thirdly, dating is play-marriage. All the fun but none of the responsibility. The problem is that the habit of going together and breaking up doesn’t end at marriage. ‘Breaking up’ has become, in effect, divorce practice.

“We should return to the timeless and natural paradigm of courtship, parental consent, and arranged marriages and to the Christian precept that marriage is sanctified before God and not to be broken by man.”

Amen. Amen, and amen! Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.