The need for strong family relationships is one thing Wendy Morris has heard loudly and clearly articulated by parishes during her time as Anglicare's Parish Partnership Co-ordinator.
Since August last year she has been travelling across the diocese visiting parishes to find ways in which Anglicare can assist churches connect with their local community and support them.
Almost all have requested the need for counsellors and family programs with approximately ninety per cent of rectors indicating in one form or another that marriages and family relationships in general seem less stable these days.
"That's not to say that all marriages are falling apart, but it's always helpful to find ways to keep marriages and family relationships healthy," says Wendy.
"Certainly in some areas family issues may be more disguised, but I don't think most ministers would say that it didn't exist."
With an estimated one in three Australian marriages statistically destined to end up in the divorce courts, the consequences of broken family relationships can be far reaching.1
A large number of studies published since the 1990s have found for instance, that divorcees experienced lower levels of psychological wellbeing than their married counterparts.2
Relationship breakdown is generally viewed as a prominent cause of depression in adults, with parents undergoing divorce often exhibiting marked emotional liability.3
Marital disruption and the associated distress can even have a physiological impact that depresses the immune system, making divorced persons more vulnerable to diseases and infection.4
Consequences of divorce for adults also found a decrease in the income and standards of living, especially for women, with single parent families experiencing significant economic disadvantage.5
Furthermore, studies are now finding ramifications of divorce extending into old age. While spouses are the most common source of support for the frail elderly (AIHW 2000), many Australians are now entering old age without a spouse due to divorce.
Personal consequences aside, in Australia an estimated 50,000 children a year will experience the effects of family breakdown resulting from separation and divorce (ABS, 2004).
About half of all children will reside at least temporarily in single parent households, often with their mothers (Amato, 2000) and many children will live in blended families as the result of their parents' remarriage.6
Andrew Cameron, Moore College lecturer and author of the Healthy Relationships Kit, highlights that Christians should not assume that family breakdown is exclusive to the secular world.
"The Christian community should assume that every marriage has problems: ever since Adam and Eve were tossed out of the garden, all us married people stumble through the wilderness in our attempts to be married," he says.
"Everyone has dark times, every couple drifts apart from time to time, we all have sins that keep dragging us into ourselves and away from each other, and it is normal for marriage to be hard sometimes."
In Family: A Christian Approach published by the Social Issues Executive, Andrew states there is a dark side to family life that emerges almost immediately in the Bible which stands in stark contrast to sanitised notions of Christian "Family Values".
Appearing from Genesis 3 onwards, the Bible shows how the man blames his wife for his own sin [Gen. 3:12] and the curse signals the start of the war of the sexes [Gen 3:16b]. The first recorded human death is also a first degree murder between brothers [Gen 4:8].
This dark side is also evident in the epistles, from the man sleeping with his father's wife [1 Cor 5:1], to a lack of parental respect [2 Tim 3:2] culminating in matricide and patricide [1 Tim 1:9]. "The Bible is brutally honest about this "dark side' of family life.
But our efforts always to look like everything is rosily happy make couples who are having troubles feel abnormal," Andrew highlights.
"It's better to have an ongoing, honest discussion about what helps, what doesn't, and how to be married well. While we cannot leave divorced and single people feeling excluded by this discussion, even they need to honour marriage [Heb. 13:4] by allowing us married people to keep having that discussion, and helping each other to be married well."
Across the harbour and a many postcodes away from his north shore roots, David Cole, Rector at Rosemeadow Anglican Church says there is a desperate need for more relational and counselling support in his area.
Only one of two churches in an area with 45,000 people, the parish of Rosemeadow is located bang in the middle of two suburbs full of public housing and another full of first and second home buyers feeling the pinch of interest rate hikes.
"The public housing areas have every social problem you can possibly think of and possibly some more you didn't think of," says David.
"There are very few community services in the local area and those that are closest are located just far enough away to be difficult to get to. We do what we can to provide food parcels, prayer support and a listening ear, but it's quite superficial given the scale of the problems."
For David, the need to build stronger, healthier families resilient to external pressures is not just a middle class concern.
"Dean Shillingsworth, the boy found floating in a suitcase, lived within our parish boundary. But there are a lot more kids who are dying and suffering abuse under similar circumstances that mostly go unnoticed by the media," he says.
Manager of Anglicare's Liverpool centre Sylvia Sant says financial stresses from cost of living increases, food insecurity and the housing affordability crisis all feeds into family relationships.
"If you can't get into public housing, the rents in the private sector are astronomical for low income families. Some go into arrears to pay for their food and general bills and it all adds stress to families," explains Sylvia.
Add to that complications with health ranging from a chronic disability to mental health issues and you can get some families in desperate and dire need for support.
But people can be resilient, Sylvia adds. Some family relationships that seem to be in deep trouble can sometimes be salvaged.
"Good support structures help," reminds Sylvia.
"If families know there are people around them who care enough for their welfare " just being listened to and validated " can sometimes help. Often knowing they are not alone can help them through a crisis situation. Believe it or not, just being able to talk things through can sometimes keep a family together."
Andrew Cameron thinks that strong societies are formed by not one but two ways of living.
"We are called either to be faithfully, lovingly and carefully married; or as an unmarried person, to care for others without the special attachment that sexual involvement brings," he says.
"The best societies " starting with those little "societies' we call our churches " are built of people who are doing singleness or marriage well. Each has a different role. We then create a place where both singles and marrieds welcome children among us, teaching them what it looks like to live together well.
"Christians should keep trying to find this shape for harmonious community. We will never quite get there, because "all have sinned' [Romans 3:23]. But we can keep shooting at it. We can trust that God knew what he was doing, building people to thrive in societies like that."
End Notes
1. Bruce Heady, Diana Warren and Glenys Harding, Families, Incomes and Jobs: A statistical Report of the HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute of applied Economic and Social Research, TheUniversity of Melbourne 2006
2. A O'Hanlon, A Patterson and J Parham (Ed.s), Monograph 2: Managing the impact of separation and divorce, published by Auseinet 2007.
3. Tennant, C (2002) Life events, stress and depression: A review of recent findings. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, 173 " 182.
4. Weston, R. and Wooden, M. (2003), ‘The HILDA Survey and research on families.’ Paper presented at 8th Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, Melbourne, 12-14 February 2003.
5. See also Monograph 2: Managing the impact of separation and divorce, published by Auseinet 2007.
6. 31% of men and 33% of women who remarry have children from a previous marriage (ABS, 2003). See also Monograph 2: Managing the impact of separation and divorce, published by Auseinet 2007.
