An interesting turn of events

So, like any good 20-something, I've been listening to a lot of NPR lately. I read an article the other day and listened to an interview yesterday that coincided and equally disturbed me. One was about the lack of active fathering and the other about a choice not to marry.

It's not that they were too one-wing-or-the-other. It's not really about politics at all. It's about our shattering and deteriorating social system and institution we call "family". Now, being a 24-year-old wife and stay-at-home mom of almost 2 kids, my veiwpoint may be considered conservative. None the less, I hold family in very high esteem. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128265730&sc=fb&cc=fp

Take a look at my life. I mean, I am one of those statistics. I am a "got pregnant out of wedlock and got married later" kind of person. If I may say, it is indeed spreading like an epidemic. I can hardly count the number of people I know that are in that same boat. But what's odd to me is this simple thought:

Gay people are pleading for marriage rights and straight people are trying to get rid of the institution.

Hmm. Rather odd, wouldn't you say? Is this a case of the grass being greener? Or do we, as humans, have such a primal need to fight? That anything we can't have we think we need or whatever we are encouraged to have, we prove we can do without?

This is my point: Look at our society. Ok, now stop. Wouldn't want anyone to go too deep and end up depressed. But in a brief glance into our social systems, nuclear families are no longer father/mother/children. They are mother/boyfriend/his kids/her kids. Father/girlfriend/her kids/his kids. And the list goes on.

God gave us a pretty good family set up for a reason. We have taken too much emphasis off family and have put it on ourselves individually. To quote an older woman from the radio interview "Young people go into marriage expecting too much of the other person. And when it doesn't work out, they move on to the next one and end up with the same results." (paraphrased because I can't remember verbatim).

I don't believe you should get married because you have kids. But I do believe that if you choose to have children with someone, you choose to let go of yourself. If you get married, you choose to become one with another person. You choose to lose yourself and find it in someone else, as they do with you. It's not easy and it does take work. It's the "work" part people don't want to think about. Let me tell you something, my friends, life is not all butterflies and kittens and the minute we accept it is the minute we release ourselves from unrealistic expectations for other people.

Maybe straight people should take some time to learn from the gay community on this one.