Don’t Give Up on Marriage, Ladies

Frustrations with men and the institution of marriage are real, says Jennifer Marshall , but shouldn’t obscure our hope in what God is doing.

[Kate Bolick] is one of countless women who have struggled with the unexpected in-between of prolonged singleness. “If I stopped seeing my present life as provisional,” she writes, “perhaps I’d be a little . . . happier.” (The ellipsis is hers.)
Bolick seems to have resolved the sense of being betwixt-and-between by demoting marriage. In her book, marriage should no longer enjoy pride of place as the basic building block of society and the relationship that harmonizes the needs of men, women, and children like no other.

In other words, if experience doesn’t match up to the ideal, toss out the ideal.

But should we give up on an ideal just because it hasn’t worked out for us personally? That might make sense if marriage were an ideal simply because the majority, the powerful, or forces such as evolution or economics made it so. The unique status of marriage, however, is timeless. God ordained it as the basic institution for ordering human relations.