One of the major battlegrounds of our society today is in the area of whether the one man/one wife family is superior to other arrangements. Between the Gay Movement, Planned Parenthood, the New Morality advocates, and a variety of pop psychology radicals, the public has been bombarded with the idea that there is not support for the biblical standards of sex and family makeup and conduct. Those of us who maintain that sex should be reserved for marriage, that fidelity to your mate is highly important, and that the family of one man/one wife is the only ideal for raising children are frequently ridiculed and accused of being out-of-date and of denying the enlightenment of the age in which we live.

The fact of the matter is that virtually all studies done on these issues in the last several years support the biblical view. Consider the following examples:

1. Of all sexually active people, married couples report being the most physically pleased and emotionally satisfied. (Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, and Edward O. Lauman, Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1994, page 124.)
2. Sex is best if you have had only one sexual partner in a lifetime. "Physical and emotional satisfaction started to decline when people had more than one sexual partner." (Ibid.)
3. Cohabiting couples have less healthy relationships than married couples. (Jan E. Stets, "The Link Between Past and Present Intimate Relationships," Journal of Family Issues, 114, 1993, page 251).
4. Cohabiting partners "experience significantly more difficulties in subsequent marriages and with issues of adultery, alcohol, drugs, and independence than couples who had not cohabited." Marriages preceded by cohabitation are 50 to 100 percent more likely to break up than those not preceded by cohabitation. (William Axinn and Arland Thornton, "The Relationship Between Cohabitation and Divorce: Selectivity or Casual Influence?" Demography, Vol. 29, 1992, page 358.)
5. Males beating female partners are "at least twice as common among cohabitors as it is among married partners." (Jan E. Stets, "Cohabiting and Marital Aggression: The Role of Social Isolation," Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53, 1991, pages 669-670)
6. The number of cases of major depression per 100 people per year: Married and Never Divorced--1.5; Never Married--2.4; Divorced Once--4.1; Cohabiting--5.1; Divorced twice--5.8. (Lee Robins and David Regier, Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study, New York: Free Press, 1991, page 72.)
7. Adolescents who have lived apart from one of their parents during some period of childhood are twice as likely to drop out of high school and to have a child before 20 and 1 1/2 times as likely to be out of work and out of school in their late 20s. (Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up With a Single Parent, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994, page 1).
8. Families without fathers "more often have lowered academic performance, more cognitive and intellectual deficits, increased adjustment problems, and higher risks for psychosexual development problems." (George Rekers, clinical psychologist, University of South Carolina in testimony to U.S. House of Representatives, 99th Congress, 2nd session, February 25, 1986, pages 59-60.)

This is just a sampling, and we want to make it clear that we understand that many adults and children succeed in spite of the odds against them. The point we are making is that the biblical plan for the family is not an archaic dinosaur of the past; it is the very best way to live and to bring satisfaction, health, and stability to all concerned.

(Our thanks to Glenn Stanton for the sources used in this article which were taken from Focus on the Family, August, 1995, pages 2-4.)

                            --John N. Clayton