Study Shows Number of U.S. Divorces is Down Dramatically

I found this article and thought I would share it:

(AgapePress) A report being released this week shows America's divorce numbers seem to be going down.

However, one of the key reasons for that decline is one that many Christians will find troubling.The report is called "The State of Our Unions 2005" and is put together by New Jersey's Rutgers University using U.S. Census Bureau statistics and other data.

The report shows the U.S. divorce rate is now 17.7 percent per 1,000 married women, compared to 22.6 percent in 1980. But the authors of the report indicate this drop probably has little to do with more stable marriages. Instead, they say it can be attributed mostly to a huge jump in the number of couples cohabitating without benefit of marriage.

In fact, the report says the U.S. marriage rate has plummeted 50 percent since 1970.

Meanwhile, it would seem that, as one of the report's authors, David Popenoe, noted recently in an interview with USA Today, "Co-habitation is here to stay."

And that is not good news, he added, especially not for children. Popenoe says as society shifts from marriage to co-habitation, family instability only increases.

You know the idea of the divorce rate coming down it great! However if the fact that it is because people are Co-habitating that is terrible. So really do we know if it is down or not. The sad part is I had a young person at my church tell me a while back that someone in leadership at the church said to them "Sometimes it is good live with a person before you marry them." My mouth about dropped when they told me this. I pray that it was just a misunderstanding. How sad it would be if the church begins to support co-habitation....what a sad day that would be.