Marriage is Best / Retreat for Boomers/Empathy/Black Teens/AAHMI Deadline/Crocs - 9/06

[Smartmarriages]

- MARRIAGE IS BEST FOR BRINGING UP CHILDREN
- MARRIAGE RETREAT FOR RETIREMENT-AGE COUPLES
- EMPATHY 101 
- BLACK TEENS NEED TO SEE HOW GODLY MARRIAGES LOOK, PASTOR SAYS
- SEPT 9TH: REGISTRATION DEADLINE FOR AAHMI RESEARCH CONFERENCE
- TIL DEATH THEY DID PART

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- MARRIAGE IS BEST FOR BRINGING UP CHILDREN

> Diane, 
> My new study <http://www.bcft.co.uk/Family%20breakdown%20in%20the%20UK.pdf>
> made the front page of the UK Daily Telegraph
> <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/07/nmarriage07.x
> ml>  today.
>  
> Harry Benson
> Bristol Community Family Trust, UK

Excerpts from the Daily Telegraph:
> The findings will put intense pressure on David Cameron to offer voters a
> cast-iron guarantee that he will put marriage at the heart of Tory policies on
> the family. . . .

> The findings are based on a study of 15,000 mothers who gave birth during
> 2000-01 - the so-called Millennium Cohort Study. It found that cohabiting
> couples were twice as likely to experience a family breakdown during the early
> years of parenthood than married couples of a similar income.
> 
> When the sample was expanded to include all unmarried couples ‹ including
> those cohabiting and "closely involved" ‹ family breakdown is five times more
> common than among married couples.
> 
> Almost 3,000 of the women involved in the study had become lone parents during
> the first three years of their child's life.
> 
> However, analysis of the figures reveals that six per cent of married couples
> had experienced a family breakdown compared with 32 per cent among all
> unmarried couples. When the unmarried figures are broken down, they show that
> 20 per cent of cohabiting couples experienced breakdown while the figure among
> "closely involved" couples was 74 per cent.
> 
> Evidence from the study suggests that the low breakdown rates among married
> couples can be explained by a range of factors including commitment, fathers
> playing a greater role in their children's upbringing and better
> communication.
> 
> Mr Duncan Smith said that the study offered compelling evidence that marriage
> must be the basis of Government policy to tackle family breakdown.
> 

See links above to read the full article and the actual study.
- diane 

#######
- MARRIAGE RETREAT FOR RETIREMENT-AGE COUPLES

I think every community marriage initiative should be offering retreats for
this age group.  

Tip of the Day: Marriage Retreat
Pioneer Press (St Paul, Minnesota)
Sept 6, 2006 

Are you over age 50, married and feeling that you barely know your spouse?

Maybe you're retired and feeling tired of togetherness. Or with more time
for your relationship, eager to take it to a deeper, richer level.

A Marriage Encounter for retirees and people edging into retirement could
ignite the sparks of love again.

The fourth retreat in the Twin Cities geared to retirement-age couples, the
event is scheduled Sept. 15 through 17 at Marriage Encounter headquarters,
tucked among the trees in Mendota Heights.

The retreat is led by three long-married couples and includes personal
reflection and group discussion but focuses primarily on married partners'
dialogue with each other focusing on their challenges and their dreams.

"Retirement years can be joyous ones, even though there are necessary
adjustments to make," says Mary Jackson, director of Marriage Encounter, the
Minnesota affiliate of the national organization.

Cost is $100 per couple; a freewill offering is requested on the weekend.
For more information on Marriage Encounter and its programs, testimonials
and a list of monthly retreats, visit www.marriages.org.

########################
- EMPATHY 101 

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked
to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor
was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon
seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old
gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother
asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing. I
just helped him cry."  

########################
- BLACK TEENS NEED TO SEE HOW GODLY MARRIAGES LOOK, PASTOR SAYS
AgapePress  
By Mary Rettig
September 5, 2006

A black pastor and radio show host in Georgia says he has found that black
teenagers tend to be very tentative about the idea of marriage, and he
believes he has gained some insight into why this may be so.

Dr. Crawford Loritts is senior pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Roswell,
Georgia, and also the host of a radio program called "Living a Legacy." He
says he has found that today's black teens are afraid of marriage because of
the types of relationships they have observed in their families --
particularly their parents and grandparents' relationships.

At a time when almost 70 percent of black families are single-parent
families, Loritts notes, it can be difficult to find good relationship role
models or a working example of a godly marriage.

"When you see the legacy of the disintegration of the family," the Georgia
minister observes, "or when you can go back and see that your mother and dad
didn't make it, or you didn't know who your father was, you tend to become
what you see and become fearful of anything beyond that."

Also, Loritts posits, hip-hop music and the culture that has grown up around
it have influenced black teens and others to treat sex so casually that many
see no excitement in being wholly committed physically to any one person. As
a result, he says, many black teens today have a warped sense of what love
and marriage actually mean.

"The problem has been the institutions that should be the positive models of
what a balanced marriage relationship is all about and what marriage should
look like have let these kids down," the pastor of Fellowship Bible Church
asserts. For that reason, he feels the Church needs to be teaching young
people more clearly what they need to know to build stable marriages and
families.

The Church needs to be helping black teens learn the answers to such
questions as, for example, "What is the biblical role and the biblical ideal
of marriage?" and "What is it really all about?" Loritts says.

In order to change these young people's minds about marriage, Loritts
contends, they need to see strong, godly, working marriages modeled for them
by members of the Church. He believes if Christians in stable, spiritually
healthy marriages will step in and model what scripture teaches, they can
prove to skeptical black teens that God's plan for marriage actually works.

##############################
- SEPT 9TH: REGISTRATION DEADLINE FOR AAHMI RESEARCH CONFERENCE
And, speaking of the needs of Black Teens and black marriages and families
in general, the full agenda of the African American Healhy Marriage
Initiative Conference is now on line at:
http://www.aahmi.org/app/nc/info.asp

#############################
 - TIL DEATH THEY DID PART

Irwin's life: A documentary about love, not crocs
Orlando Sentinel 
Sheryl P. Kurland |
September 8, 2006

While grief over the tragic loss of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin
reverberates around the world, the loss of his life hit home. Not because I
believe in his conservation causes. (I do.) Not because I agree with his
humanitarianism. (I do.) Not because I adore crocodiles. (I do.) It's the
two words I have written in parenthesis -- I do -- that tell the story.
Irwin's death fell on the cusp of my 17th wedding anniversary. And, as news
interviews with those who knew him best reveal, Irwin was, above all, a
committed husband to Terri, his only wife and wife of 14 years, and devoted
father to his two children.

With our 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages, 67 percent for second
marriages and 74 percent for third marriages, their love was a sight seldom
seen these days.

Click to Visit
Irwin's life was not about the crocs. His antics with animals were merely a
front that allowed us to peer into his heart. And how ironic it is that
death befell him by the physical piercing of that extraordinary heart.

As I spend hours watching reruns of his most memorable shows on Animal
Planet, I notice that the dynamics between Irwin and his creature friends in
the wild pale in comparison to those between him and Terri. The couple
shared an unspoken rhythm. Their eyes locked often, they were both filled
with verve and gusto, they were both so alive. (Even his 2002 cornball movie
Collision Course gushed with romance, though the two never shared a love
scene.)

The Irwins lived as husband and wife were meant to be. Working together.
Laughing together. Dreaming together. A role-model couple whose dreaming has
been cut short. It should have lasted forever.

Fans tuned in for danger, close calls and his trademark beaming grin, but he
unabashedly broke stride to take us up close and personal. Footage from
their wedding showed a tearful Irwin as he and Terri exchanged "I do's." The
newlyweds took us on their camping honeymoon to northern Australia. At the
birth of their first baby, he wept. At the birth of their second baby, he
wept more. (Note the order, marriage first, children second. Another
fledgling trend.) Irwin showed how marriage and family life are connected to
one's larger sense of purpose in life.

Their role-model marriage is one in which we should revel. Yet, it is soon
to be overshadowed by the erupting global mania over Vanity Fair's new cover
story heralding Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, unmarried, and the first public
photographs of their newborn daughter. Consider the facts: This is Tom's
third young damsel to be anointed "the one." His first, a marriage to "the
one" terminated in less than three years. His second, a marriage to "the
one" lasted less than 10 years. Any bets in Vegas how long TomKat will last?
Will they tie the knot before Katie awakens from his rule and decides to
take charge of herself? Their lavish, glamorized, glorified relationship is
probably just one more notch in the bedpost of celebrity shams. Time will
bear witness.

Indeed, Steve Irwin's life and legacy remind us that life is not about fame
and fortune. He leaves us with lessons about true love and human passion.
Crikey, Mate, we're gonna miss you!

I do.

Sheryl Kurland is a speaker and author of "Everlasting Matrimony: Pearls Of
Wisdom From Couples Married 50 Years Or More" -www.EverlastingMatrimony.com.

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