Judging by all the mushy media hype … there’s still plenty of romance in the air this Valentines Day.
I can recall when, back in the day, all those flowers, cards and candy more often than not were a prelude to a stroll down the aisle.
 
At the risk of dating myself, remember that little Frank Sinatra ditty?

 
But here in 2013? Forget it. That outmoded progression has joined “Ol’ Blue Eyes” and the horse and carriage in the dustbin of history.
 

In fact, in the past five decades the percentage of married adults in America has dropped precipitously:
 

 
Current trends only indicate further decline. In an article titled “America’s Exodus from Marriage,” Commentary Magazine pointed out last month:

The divorce rate today is about twice that of 1960, though it’s declined since hitting its highest point in our history in the early 1980s. For the average couple marrying for the first time in recent years, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation now falls between 40 and 50 percent. Today more than a quarter of all children live in single-parent families, compared to only 9 percent in 1960. And the number of unmarried couples has increased seventeen-fold in the last 50 years.

Still lots of romance going on. Just not too much in the way of commitment.
 
[That old adage from the 50’s and 60’s – Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free? – has gone unisex these days.]
 

How did we get here?
Essentially, the contemporary breakdown of marriages and families, with the attendant millions of broken lives, is the fallout from fighting against God’s rule of our lives.
 
Recently I came across an intriguing new documentary called “The Baby War: Defenders and Defectors.” Poignantly dedicated to “all the people who were never born,” the film documents the erosion of traditional marriage and family over the past century. Here’s the trailer ~
 

 
The film is 1 hr. 42 min., although I’ve watched it twice – pausing and replaying frequently – and it didn’t seem that long at all. Probably because it really held my interest.
 
I was especially struck by a prophetic editorial from the Washington Post. This was in response to an announcement by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ that birth control was acceptable for restrained reasons and within marital bounds.

It’s from March 22, 1931 ~

The committee’s report if carried into effect, would sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legal contraceptives would be “careful and restrained” is preposterous.

 
Considering the fact that we now have high schools handing out the morning-after pill to 14 year-old girls in NYC, you can almost believe that the editor had a time travel machine!
 

Journeying back through the 20th century with the documentary, it’s plain to see that it was the separation of life from love that led to the eventual decline of marriage as an institution. Sadly, even many Christians have bought into the delusion that it’s OK to have sexual intimacy without commitment. Yet, as the Commentary Magazine article said, it has profoundly negative implications;

… for the emotional and mental well-being of children; for America’s social fabric and “civil society”; for social mobility and the gap in income inequality; and for dependency on government and costs to the state (family breakdown costs the taxpayers billions every year). The collapse of marriage in America, then, has enormous human and social ramifications.

Traditional marriage – and family – are nothing less than the primary building blocks of all human societies. Can civilization actually survive very long without these institutions?
 
I encourage you to spend an hour or two watching The Baby War. I hope it may challenge you to think differently. Maybe even live differently.
 

The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. … How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?
 
~ John Adams, Diary, 1778 ~

 
Related:
Marriage Reduces Child Poverty ~ from the Heritage Foundation
Why Marrieds Tend to Be Richer ~ Couples who get and stay married can have as much as four times the wealth of their single or divorced peers.
Excellent 3-part article from Crisis Magazine: “The Long War Against the Family” ~ Part I ~ Part II ~ Part III