Every day we read about Swaziland's financial woes and her efforts to get money to stay afloat. There are other ways, however, that a nation can sink: one of them is the disintegration of marriage and family. A Swazi friend recently told me stories of relationship chaos in the country. Story one: a man and a woman have a child together, then the father marries some other woman and the wife doesn't want the child around. The mother doesn't want the child, and so this daughter is left rudderless. Is it any wonder that this girl starts getting into trouble? She has never known the love and direction of her father or mother. She tells my friend, in as many words, that no one cares for her-so why should she care what she does? Story two: unmarried mom starts dating a man and introduces him to her daughter. Thing is, boyfriend and daughter are better "introduced" than mom knows, as they have a relationship that mom doesn't know about. Story three: A man stays in town with his live-in lover. Additionally, he marries a girl back in his home area. The "girl back home" knows about the woman in town, and when the man dies, the home girl comes to collect all the late man's possessions. "But we had a joint bank account, and children together!" protests the woman in town. "Irrelevant", replies the home girl's family. "You and he were never married. Give us all the stuff".
If you try to build a house with crumbling bricks, the house will fall. The family is the basic unit of society; if too many families disintegrate or never truly form in the first place, poverty, juvenile crime, teenage pregnancies, and the pain and heartbreak that accompany these ill-effects will multiply. As my friends' stories illustrate, these negative outcomes are already upon us.
Unlike Swaziland's current financial predicament, the resources to repair the marriage and family crisis are within reach. Saving sex for marriage, and keeping sex in marriage between one husband and one wife, is the way to increase love and security for generations. May men and women save sex for their one and only spouse. Doing so will multiply happiness and strengthen the nation.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
