By Dr. Bernardo Villegas
Part I
Children in the future
generations will be very grateful to President Duterte if he is able to prevent
a divorce law from being passed under his watch. His recent announcement that he is not in
favour of a divorce law because its worst victims are children who will be
deprived of a two-parent home which is indispensable for integral human
development. He hit the nail on the head
when he considered children, the most vulnerable of human beings, as the
beneficiaries of a society that does not legalise divorce. This instinct of his is fully supported by
the strongest evidences of social scientists from all over the world,
especially from the United States—where divorce has reached epidemic
proportions—about the harm done to children by broken families that are
facilitated by a law that allows the breaking of the permanent bond of
marriage.
As I have already discussed in previous columns in this same
publication, the largest assembly known
of social scientists from the most diverse disciplines met in December 2014 in
Princeton, New Jersey (not the University) under the auspices of a think tank
called The Witherspoon Institute (www.winst.org) and brought empirical results
from their respective fields of studies to relate the stability of marriage and
the family with the common good. The conference brought together 70 scholars
from History, Economics, Psychiatry, Law, Sociology and Philosophy to share
with each other the findings of their research on why marriage, understood as
the permanent union of husband and wife, is in the public interest.
Without using religious arguments (which President Duterte does
not), one can explain to the uninformed masses—whatever their religious
affiliations—that a divorce law can lead to a host of social and economic
problems as can be gleaned from the experiences of other countries that have
had a divorce law for decades. Although
the 70 experts whose consensus is summarised here also cite data from other
countries, most of the information used was from the United States which can be
considered as the mecca of divorce. Over
a forty-year period (1960 to 2000), the divorce rate more than doubled in the United States, from about 20 percent
to about 45 percent of all first marriages.
The data suggests that approximately two-thirds of all divorces
involving children break up low-conflict marriages where domestic violence or emotional abuse is not a factor in the
breakup of the marriage. Unfortunately,
as President Duterte points out, the children seem to bear the heaviest burden
from the divorce of their parents.
Children from broken homes are significantly more likely to divorce as
adults, to experience marital problems, to suffer from mental illness and
delinquency, to drop out of high school, to have poor relationships with one or
both parents, and to have difficulty committing themselves to a
relationship. Furthermore, in most
respects, remarriage is no help to children of divorced families. Children who grow up in stepfamilies
experience about the same levels of educational failure, teenage pregnancy and
criminal activity as children who remain in a single-parent family after a
divorce.
The adverse impact on boys is especially worrisome. As an anecdotical evidence, I have observed
that practically all the perpetrators of mass killings in the United States are
by teenage or adult men who come from dysfunctional families. The Princeton group came out with the strong
evidences that boys benefit in unique ways from being reared within stable,
married families. Research consistently
finds that boys raised by their own fathers and mothers in an intact, married
family are less likely to get in trouble than boys raised in other family situations. Boys raised outside of an intact family are
more likely to have problems with aggression, attention deficit disorder,
delinquency, and school suspensions, compared to boys raised in intact, married
families. Some studies suggest that the
negative behavioural consequences of marital breakdown are even more
significant for boys than for girls. One
study found that boys reared in single-parent and step-families were more than
twice as likely to end up in prison, compared to boys reared in an intact
family. It is pretty clear that stable
marriage and paternal role models are crucial for keeping boys from
self-destructive and socially destructive behavior.
The seventy scientists who met in Princeton came out with
abundant empirical evidences that included control for socioeconomic,
demographic, and even genetic factors that might otherwise distort the
relationship between family structure and child well-being. They followed the strictest statistical rules
for correlation analyses. For example, the link between family breakdown and
crime is not an artifact of poverty among single parents. Moreover, the newest work on divorce follows
adult twins and their children to separate out the unique effects of divorce
itself from the potential role that genetic (and socioeconomic) factors might
play in influencing children’s outcomes.
This research indicates that divorce has negative consequences for
children’s psychological and social welfare even after controlling for the
genetic vulnerabilities of the parents who divorce.
The findings of the Princeton group are independent of religious
beliefs. That is why I find it
irrelevant if the majority of Catholics in the Philippines, including
unfortunately a few misguided priests, are in
favour of the divorce law. The evils of
divorce go beyond doctrinal differences among religions. They are rooted in the nature of human beings
and of families. Looking at all the
studies cited by the Princeton group, scientific evidences link stable,
permanent marriage to an impressive array of positive outcomes for children, the
main concern of President Duterte. Both
social and biological mechanisms seem to account for the value of an intact
marriage in children’s lives. From a
sociological perspective, stable marriages allow families to benefit from
shared labor within the household, income streams from two parents, and the
economic resources of two sets of kin. A
married mom and dad typically invest more time, affection, and oversight into
parenting than does a single parent; as importantly, they tend to monitor and
improve the parenting of one another, augmenting one another’s strengths,
balancing one another’s weaknesses, and reducing the risk that a child will be
abused or neglected by an exhausted or angry parent. The trust and commitment associated with stable marriages also give a
man and a woman a sense that they have a future together, as well as a future
with their children. This horizon of
commitment, in turn, motivates them to invest practically, emotionally, and
financially at higher levels in their children than cohabiting or single
parents.
Part 2
Considering the realities of human behaviour, empirically
demonstrated in countries that have long legalised divorce, a law allowing the
dissolution of a valid marriage leads to a slippery slope that inevitably leads
to an epidemic of divorce where close to half of all first marriages end up
being dissolved. His Excellency Romulo
Valles, Archbishop of Davao and President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of
the Philippines (CBCP) was not citing Catholic doctrine but merely making an
empirical observation, backed by data in other countries, that a divorce law
inevitably results in an easy recourse
to the dissolution of a marriage when couples begin to face challenges of marital
love and commitment. In a pastoral
letter that he issued last March 13, 2018, Archbishop Valles correctly points
out that “in a context in which divorce
is presented as an easy option, marriage and families are bound to break up
more easily. More children will grow up
disoriented and deprived of the care of the parents.” If a society makes it difficult for married
couples to break the permanent bond that they
contracted in marriage, many so-called “failed marriages” could have been saved
by the intervention of family, friends, pastors and counselors. If the Philippines, considering all these
hard scientific evidences of the evils of divorce—especially to children—will
persist in being the only country in the world where there is no law permitting
divorce, we will have the reputation of being the most children-friendly nation
and can retain our very high ranking in the happiness index since many surveys
have affirmed that the greatest joy of Filipinos comes from an intact and happy
family.
So far, we have brought up evidence that saying no to the
divorce law can have significant benefits to individual persons, especially
children. We can refer to this as the
micro environment of marriage
and the family. There are, however,
equally strong and ample evidences that the macro benefits of intact and stable
families can be significant. The
Princeton group gathered enough evidences that marital breakdown through
divorce reduces the collective welfare of children, strains the justice system,
weakens civil society and increases the size and scope of government power.
As I have already pointed out in an article that appeared in
this same publication more than one year ago, in the U.S. there are more than one million children
who see their parents divorced and 1.5 million children are born to unmarried
mothers. The collective consequences of
this family breakdown have been catastrophic, as demonstrated by myriad
indicators of social well-being. For
example, recent Brookings survey indicates that the increase in child poverty
in the U.S. since the 1970s is due almost entirely to declines in the
percentage of children reared in stable and intact families, primarily because
children in single-parent homes are much less likely to receive much material
support from their fathers. The harm is
also done to adolescents. Paul Amato, a
Penn State sociologist, estimated how adolescents would fare if our society had
the same percentage of two-parent families as it did in 1960. HIs research indicates that this nations’s
adolescents would have 1.2 million fewer school suspensions, 1 million fewer
acts of delinquency or violence, 746,587 fewer repeated grades and 71,413 fewer
suicides. And may I add, fewer victims of mass killings, especially in U.S.
public schools. Similar estimates could
be done for the collective effect of family breakdown on teen pregnancy,
depression, and high school dropout rates.
It is quite obvious that children have paid a heavy price for adult
failures to keep their marriages intact.
President Duterte is not just theorising. His views on divorce are based on hard facts.
Empirical research also shows that family breakdowns can lead to
increased spending by Government on crime-fighting, imprisonment and criminal
justice. George Akerlof, a Nobel
laureate in economics, has shown empirically that the crime increase in the
1970s and 1980s in the United States was linked to declines in the marriage
rate among young working-class and poor men.
Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson concludes from his research on urban crime that murder and
robbery rates are closely linked to family structure. In his words:
“Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest
predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States.” Public spending on social services has also
risen dramatically since the 1960s, in large part because of increases in
divorce. A study found that local,
state, and federal governments spend $33 billion per year on the direct and indirect costs of divorce—from
family court costs to child support enforcement. Increases in divorce also mean that family
judges and child support enforcement agencies play a deeply intrusive role in
the lives of adults and children affected by divorce, settling terms of
custody, child visitation, and child support for more than a million adults and
children every year.
The introduction of a law that allows divorce will clearly
further increase the fiscal burden on the Government that will be forced to spend more on social services. Research in Scandinavian countries, for
example, by sociologists David Popenoe and Alan Wolfe suggests that increases
in state spending are associated with declines in the strength of marriage and
the family. The breakdown of marriage
goes hand in hand with more expensive and more intrusive government; the
increase in divorce goes hand in hand with growing hardship in disadvantaged
communities, making the call for still
greater government intervention even more irresistible. It is a pathological spiral which only a
restoration of family stability can hope to reverse. I hope our legislators will heed the wise
advice of President Duterte: Say No to
Divorce.
Part 3
As we have seen in the first two parts of this article, it has
been demonstrated in studies after studies in the Western world that divorce is
associated with poverty, depression, substance abuse, and poor health among
adults. More broadly, widespread divorce—which
inevitably results from a law facilitating the breaking of the permanent bond
of marriage—poisons the larger culture of marriage, insofar as it sows
distrust, insecurity, and a low-commitment mentality among married and
unmarried adults. Couples who take a
permissive view of divorce are significantly less likely to invest themselves
in their marriages and less likely to be happily married themselves. For all these reasons, divorce threatens
marriage, hurts children, and has had dire consequences for the nation as a
whole.
Another reason why a divorce law will be catastrophic is the
very negative impact it will have on the already disadvantaged children of the
married individuals among the more than 10 million Overseas Filipino Workers
(OFWs). When couples are separated
because of the need for one of them to earn a living abroad, there are more
than enough stresses on their marriages and on the children left behind. In fact, this is a serious concern of the
Government, civil society and the various churches that was the topic of a
recent conference held at the University of Asia and the Pacific on how to keep
the families of OFWs intact. With a
divorce law, the easy way out for the separated couples, who face myriad
challenges to their marriage, would be to
seek the dissolution of the marriage bond. The slightest temptation to infidelity
of either spouse will hardly be resisted
if the lonely spouse knows that he or she can easily break the marriage bond
through divorce. As Archbishop Valles
wrote in the pastoral letter with great human wisdom, “Even couples in
seemingly successful marriages would often look back and recall the countless
challenges that had almost brought their relationships to a breaking point if
they had not learned to transcend personal hurt though understanding and
forgiveness, or through the intervention of a dialogue facilitator such as a
marriage counsellor. In a context in
which divorce is presented as an easy option, marriage and families are bound
to break up more easily.” The toxic
combination of the phenomenon of OFWs with a divorce law can easily result in
an epidemic of marriage breakdowns,
especially among the poorer households, further prejudicing millions of
children who are already handicapped by economic deprivation.
Instead of legalising divorce, there should be efforts on all
fronts (Government, civil society, and the various religious denominations) to
educate and counsel married couples on how to constantly strengthen their
marital relationships and to overcome the numerous challenges to their mutual
love brought about by financial difficulties, clashes of personalities and
opinions, challenges in the upbringing of their children, etc. The Department of Social Welfare, the
Department of Education and the various agencies devoted to the welfare of OFWs
should partner with the numerous family-oriented NGOs like the Couples for
Christ, Marriage Encounter, the CEFAM of the Ateneo University, Ligaya ng
Panginoon, Bukas Loob, Educational Programs for the Upbringing of Children
(EDUCHILD), Parents for Education Foundation (PAREF) and many others so that
there can be timely intervention and counselling made available to married
couples, and even before they get married in pre-nuptial seminars and
conferences. An ounce of prevention is
much better than a pound of cure.
In fact, many of these private initiatives are targeting the
poor in helping them overcome the usual difficulties they encounter in their
married lives. And for those poor
couples who have legitimate reasons to seek for the declaration of annulment of
their marriage, some of these NGOs give legal assistance so that they can
overcome the financial difficulties of
doing so. I can cite, for
example, the case of the Asian Institute for Marriage and the Family (AIMF)
founded by Noel Gamboa and Fr. Jaime Achacoso, an expert on marriage laws. AIMF
has a mission of accompanying dysfunctional or problematic marital
situations at all social levels by helping regularise irregular family
situations by examining the possibility of seeking the declaration of nullity
of a previous canonical marriage, or to
proceed to the celebration of a valid canonical marriage for the existing and
functioning union. Especially for poor couples,
they carry out this initiative through a
pool of 200 trained prejudicial law counsellors and a legal aide centre for
marriage law. For more info, email
aimarriagefamily@gmail.com. A
more constructive thing that the lawyers among the members of the House of
Representatives who voted for the divorce law can do is use their legal
expertise to establish NGOs like AIMF to
extend assistance to the poor who are seeking the declaration of nullity of
their marriages. At the same time, I
know for a fact that the Catholic Church authorities are doing everything
within their ability to simplify the process of getting an annulment. These are the more sensible measures that
should replace the passing of a divorce law, which can only inflict serous harm
on children and on Philippine society as a whole.
In the final analysis, the example to keep a marriage intact
should come from individual married couples whose faith tells them that the
marriage bond is indissoluble, that they have committed themselves to be united
till death do they part. In this regard,
I would like to cite the edifying example given by the lead character in the
recent musical blockbuster, “The Greatest Showman” starring Hugh Jackman. Without meaning to be a spoiler, the movie
had a happy ending for the family of P.T. Barnum, his wife Charity and their
two daughters Caroline and Helen because
the father of the family was able to resist all the temptations of honour,
human glory and passion (attraction to the beautiful Swedish singer Jenny Lind)
strongly motivated by his great love for his two precious daughters Caroline
and Helen. Here, P.T. Barnum should
represent all of us who are supporting the view of President Duterte: that saying No to Divorce will redound to the
benefit of numerous children who will be spared the agony of seeing their
parents separated. So, together with
Jenny Lind let us sing “Never Enough” of stable, intact and lasting marriages
in the Philippines. With her, too, we
can raise our voices crying out: “Never, Never, Never” to Divorce in unison
with the honourable Senators who will vote No to the Divorce Law. ***
If you wish to write to the Senators, click
here for their email addresses.
One of the latest news from the Vatican is that Pope Francis is about to release a new document, an Apostolic Exhortation, on the very topic of sanctity this April 2018.
