Marriage is About Children

I found out a few years ago that the Bible said so, but it has only been in recent years that I understood the civil perspective on marriage. Governments have been involved in marriage throughout history, but many people are questioning if government has a role in the regulation of the marriage contract. Why is government involved at all?

The most obvious answer is the orderly devolution of property. A government recognized marriage is the basis for knowing who belongs to one's family - and hence, who is entitled to inherit. This is a critical bit of knowledge for an orderly and nonviolent economy. Instead of vultures gathering to pick the bones of the dead, we have an acknowledged wife, or legitimate children, or blood relatives who naturally and peacefully step into the estate.

A less obvious, and perhaps more important answer is that the traditional family is the foundational unit of civilization. It is the first government established on the earth and the most basic in terms of its function. The function of a family is for mutual help and protection. If that is so, why aren't nontraditional marriages of equal use to society? Children.

I noticed many years ago that the vast majority of the heartbreaking child abuse stories I read in the newspaper involved a perpetrator that was not a blood relative of the child. Now it seems others are noticing, too:

Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as
likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological
parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal
of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005

This is really heartbreaking news, but I think it points up that God created the family to be one man and one woman for life raising their children. Only in such a family can the adults in the household all have the bond of love and affection of blood relationship that restrains them. What about adoption? In adoption, you have a covenant of commitment in which someone has willingly chosen to contract themselves to accept a child as their own. Commitment and covenant are what marriage and family are all about. When they are missing, it is not a family, and unfortunately, the contract of mutual help and protection is never made. My father died when I was 14, and I do understand that many find themselves single parents through no fault of their own. I urge them to never bring a lover into their home, but only a spouse, and only one willing to adopt their children. Covenants keep families what they were meant to be.

The civil government has a very real interest in encouraging the formation of natural families. In these families, children are protected and adults are committed to help each other throughout their lives. That makes civilization easier to perpetuate.