Marriage and the Family

Marriage as the nature of man needs it, marriage as God ordains it, harmonize admirably with each other, as we have seen, but a good deal less admirably with marriage as men and women actually live it. Reading the last two chapters, the average married couple might smile cynically or even savagely: one can hear them in derisive recitation of the Christian statement of what marriage is—a man and woman made one by God, a sexual life meant both to express the oneness and to bring children into being, he the head, she the heart. Derisively recited, even soberly studied, it sounds unrealistic, hot-house stuff, not for our weather-beaten world. Not many marriages look much like that; many look like a parody of it.