Time for some straight talk

Time magazine has a good article on the state of the American family, including the devastating effects of divorce on children. Two snippets:

a lasting covenant between a man and a woman can be a vehicle for the nurture and protection of each other, the one reliable shelter in an uncaring world —or it can be a matchless tool for the infliction of suffering on the people you supposedly love above all others, most of all on your children...

...is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function — to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation's own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can't be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children's lives — that's the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.