by Lamar Tyler
A while back I read an article in the Washington Post that took an interesting position. The article asked what if so many people were getting divorced because they didn’t know how to be married. If this is the case in mainstream society, then in the black community we really need to consider this.
In our communities, 7 out of 10 children are being born out of wedlock. What this means is that most of our children don’t see firsthand what a marriage looks like in their home. This just takes into account them seeing any form of marriage not even a good, healthy marriage. If we’re growing up never seeing what a marriage looks like up close, how do we know how to be married when we take the leap ourselves?
What we need to know is that a loving marriage requires intimacy, communication and compromise. We also need to know that conflict will arise and that we need to work through it and not run from it. Hopefully if we know that this is one of the problems then we can come up with solutions like marriage education, premarital counseling etc…
BMWK family, is this possible? Can the problem be that we don’t know how to be married? If this is the case then what’s the answer?