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The phenomenon of divorce has long been an embarrassment to the Christian church. At best it has been regarded as a reluctant concession to human sin and frailty, a painful reminder of our failure to fulfill the exalted standards which God holds for marriage. Circumstances in our own time, however, force us to a fresh …
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Book Review: Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. By Elizabeth Marquardt, 288 pp. Elizabeth Marquardt’s book sat on my shelf for many weeks. I really wanted to read it. I had heard about her research and had been intrigued. Yet I kept avoiding actually opening the book. It does …
Article
A man and a woman stood before an altar that was properly dressed with flowers, candles and the elements necessary to celebrate the Eucharist. A priest and a lay reader waited in the sanctuary, fully vested. The small congregation of some 25 people gathered in the chancel to share this moment of worship was made …
Book Chapter
The problems of being a parent.
Book Chapter
This chapter asks what behavior is appropriate for a given age, and then deals with the handling of problems that are typical of a certain age, and those that are not.
Book Chapter
Using the first five of Erikson’s Eight Stages of Man, the authors examine the problems and possibilities present for parents and children at each stage, as the child moves from birth through adolescence.
Book Chapter
This chapter suggests ways of handling family crises constructively, and gives guidance in determining when professional help is needed, and how to seek or use the proper person or agency.
Book Chapter
This chapter gives special attention to handling family crises constructively, including: Handicapping conditions, prolonged illnesses, drug problems, single parent families, and transmitting religious values to children.
Article
The parable of the Prodigal Son is often used to illustrate the gracious and steadfast nature of God’s love. Most of us can recognize and even identify with the characters — the younger son who strikes out on his own and makes costly mistakes, the responsible elder son who always does what is expected of …
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Despite a mounting body of research showing that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births pose serious threats to the well-being of children, mainline Protestantism has had remarkably little to say in recent years about the nature, health and prospects of the family. We now know that, in all socioeconomic groups, children raised outside of …
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) The Clinebells bring reassurance and professional guidance to parents trying to help their children grow–especially as they deal with personal and family crisis.
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Clearly, the American family is experiencing unprecedented change. The nuclear family system has been described by some commentators as dead or dying. But while change cannot be stopped, one important way of reinforcing the family is to establish, throughout the nation, day-care centers to which parents can entrust their young children. Indeed, the Harvard child …
Article
Divorce is much on my mind these days. In the past couple of years, two of my close friends have been unilaterally divorced by their high-powered professional husbands of some 20 years. One, left fairly secure materially was traded in for a woman 20 years her junior. The other, through the exigencies of no-fault divorce …
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Book Review: From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate. Second edition By Don S. Browning, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Pamela D. Couture, K. Brynolf Lyon and Robert M. Franklin. (Westminster John Knox, 496 pp.) Though media and church debates suggest that the most pressing sex-related issues today are homosexuality, sexual violence …
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From pulpit and newsmagazine alike comes the message that the family is in crisis. Concerned clergy and laity are asking, "What can we do to solve its problems?" But to solve a problem, one must first ask the right question. "How many miles can I sail before my ship falls off the end of the …
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More Lasting Unions: Christianity, the Family, and Society. By Stephen G. Post. Eerdmans, 205 pp. Paperback. Christianity and the making of the Modern Family. By Rosemary Radford Ruether. Beacon, 284 pp. These two books should nudge Christians toward a more compassionate, gender-conscious and tradition-aware understanding of marriage and the family. On the basis of empirical …
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Book Review: The Child in Christian Thought Edited by Marcia J. Bunge. (Eerdmans, 513 pp., paperback). Neil Philip’s Illustrated Book of Myths includes a story the Algonquin Indians tell, titled “Glooskap and the Wasis.” Glooskap, the mightiest warrior of all, returns home after a lengthy period of conquests, only to be defeated by the mighty …
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Book Review: Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands. By W Bradford Wilcox. University of Chicago Press, 337 pp., and paperback. By exploring the contradictions between official theologies and the actual behavior of religious communities, sociologists of religion help religious people to view themselves more honestly — a sometimes deflating and …
Article
One of life’s most cherished values is the experience of familial community. The love between husband and wife, parent and child, and between members of the extended family ranks high among our blessings. For most of us, home ties provide enduring joys. Unless we are world figures or persons of great office, our most important …
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Book Review Huck’s Raft: A History of American childhood By Steven Mintz. Belknap, 464 pp. The path from innocence to experience is inevitably complicated: we are tempted to think that the world has become treacherous, not that we ourselves were once blazingly naïve. If we fail to recognize our own glorious grandiosity, then as …
Continue reading “Kids These Days: The Changing State of Childhood”
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Marriage After Modernity: Christian Marriage in Postmoder Times. By Adrean Thatcher. New York University Press, 329 pp. In the past few years, Christian theologians and ethicists have paid increasing attention to the state of modern marriages. Out of this concern has grown, among other things, a new Christian marriage theology that supports what has been …
Article
The causal explanations for the rise in the divorce rate are as numerous as the breakfast cereals on the supermarket shelf. I Extended adolescence. Young people grow up more slowly, find employment later, depend on parents longer but marry too early. Before the adolescent becomes an adult, he or she makes an adult commitment. Thus …
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Book Review: The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier and Better off Financially By Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher. Doublday, 256 pp. Recently Time magazine published a cover article titled “Who Needs a Husband?” It chronicled, if not celebrated, the trend of women “flying solo” — never getting married, and even …
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Recently on late-night television news, some vivid footage showed a college campus protest against current legislative attempts to reinstate the draft. The New York Times contends that today’s students are apathetic about such issues, but apathy wasn’t what I saw. The students were screaming “Hell, no, we won’t go” at Representative Pete McCloskey, effectively preventing …
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Books Reviewed: Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. By Judith Warner. Riverhead, 304 pp. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women. By Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels. Free Press, 400 pp. The Myth of the Perfect Mother: Rethinking the Spirituality of Women. By Carla …
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In her book Between Two Worlds; The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. Elizabeth Marquardt examines the impact of divorce on children. Her book is based on a survey of 1,500 young adults which allowed her to compare the experiences of children of divorced parents with the experiences of children of married parents. Marquardt, a …
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BOOK REVIEW: The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America’s Beleaguered Moms and Dads. By Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West. Houghton Mifflin, 302 pp., $24.00. It was a nice irony that Sylvia Hewlett and Cornel West came to Philadelphia to promote their book the night the last episode of Seinfeld aired. As …
Continue reading “Parenting and Politics: Giving new Shape to “Family Values””
Book Chapter
The authors share their experience as parents and family counselors, as the base for this book designed to give help and encouragement to the parents of troubled children.
Article
In their introduction to Domestic Revolution: A Social History of Domestic Family Life (Free Press, 1987) Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg paint a portrait of family life today: Today the term ‘family" is no longer attached exclusively to conjugal or nuclear families comprising a husband, wife, and their dependent children. It is applied to any …
Continue reading “Pro-Family Public Policy: Creating a Just Society”
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Book Review: Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood. By Susan Linn, New Press, 304 pp., $24.95. It’s Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture’s Influence on Children. By Karen Sternheimer. Westview Press, 288 pp., $26.00. The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modem American Children’s Culture. By Gary Cross. Oxford University Press, …
Article
Divorce is a disruption of the collective interests of the family by the self-interest of one or both of the spouses. Divorce is selfish. In 35 years of practicing family law, I have seldom encountered a spouse who obtained a divorce out of concern for his or her partner or for the sake of their …
Continue reading “Rethinking Divorce Laws Fault or No Fault?”
Article
Are families declining or simply changing? This question continues to provoke heated debate in our society. Some say that while family forms are changing, families are not in trouble. These same people say that the problems of the family are temporary dislocations caused by evolutionary social change. Such a view implies that once church and …
Article
Child care — provided to preschool children outside of their homes — once was considered to be remedial care for children of pathological or needy families. Today it is America’s way of raising its children. Child care is available in a dizzying array of forms and price ranges. Often the form it takes is dictated …
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Book Review Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. By Stephanie Coontz. Viking, 400 pp. The central message of Stephanie Coontz’s history is that marriage is in big trouble. In fact, it is about to collapse, she says, and there is little anyone can do about it. The forces disestablishing …
Article
A great debate is taking place over the condition and prospects of the American family. This debate reflects the fact that Americans are worried about the family. Republicans had hard evidence during the 1992 presidential campaign on the extent of this concern. The Wirthlin Group, which does most of the national polling for the Republicans, …
Article
Father Ron meant well. He would never have intentionally excluded some children from his sermon. It was Wednesday mass, and the congregation was primarily children — kindergartners through eighth-graders — with a sprinkling of teachers, administrators and parents. The text was Colossians 1:15: Christ is "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all …
Article
In the past ten years, the number of marriages in the U.S. that end in divorce has doubled. While the rapid rise in the divorce rate does appear to be leveling off as we end the 1970s, the numbers confirm what most of us have already experienced among our own families, friends and parishioners: that …
Article
When we were given this topic, we were pretty confused as to what to discuss. Identity is part of sexuality and sexuality is part of identity — both are big topics. So Chris and Jim talked and faxed back in forth for a few days to help us focus. Jim told us that this topic …
Continue reading “Towards Reclaiming the Symbol of the Family of God: Identity and Sexuality”
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Book Review Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. By Christian smith, with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Oxford University Press, 368 pp. Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton have conducted the most comprehensive and reliable research ever done on youth and religion. For the next 50 years writers on the topic will …
