Saturday, June 28, 2008

another "study" that states the obvious

Bradford Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, analyzed three national studies... His research led him to conclude that men who regularly attend Christian services are engaged in happier and stronger marriages and are more involved in the lives of their children than men who do not.
"70 percent of husbands who attend church regularly report they are 'very happy' in their marriages, compared to 59 percent of husbands who rarely or never attend church," explained Wilcox, who also said that the studies indicated that wives experienced more marital happiness when their husbands attended regular religious services....married couples who attended regular Christian services were approximately 35 percent less likely to divorce then those couples who did not.

Fathers who attended regular Christian services spent an average of two more hours a week engaged in ...activities with their children. Christian fathers also spent more one-on-one time with their children and were 65 percent more likely to hug and praise their children.



The studies also found that children born inside of wedlock had much more "involved, affectionate, and consistent relationships" with their fathers. This is an important statistic given Wilcox's findings that church attending men are more likely to have children inside of wedlock then non-church going men.


"I find that fathers who are religious, and who have partners who are religious, are - on average - more likely to be happily married, to be engaged and affectionate parents, and to get and stay married to the mothers of their children." LifeSite News

A statistic that gets thrown around a lot in orthodox Catholic circles is that married couples who use NFP only have a 2% rate of divorce. I don't know if that is based on actual studies, but following the logic of the above mentioned study, it seems that the more a couple allows God to be part of the decision-making, the more likely God will give them grace to persevere in times of massive difficulty such as death of family members or financial troubles.

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