—For much the same reasons veterans want to raise families. After so much destruction they want to build, they want to create life, life bearing their own likeness, life that will continue after they are gone. Watching and guiding one’s own children while they grow up is one of the greatest pleasures of marriage. A couple who deliberately abstains from having children is a selfish couple. Surveys show they mostly do it out of selfishness, the desire of the wife for a career or “dislike for children.” These reasons are those we would expect from maladjusted people. Certainly by voluntarily remaining childless they miss one of the greatest chances to achieve a happy marriage.
By achieving a happy marriage and having children many people make up for the frustrations and disappointments they have received from life, their dissatisfaction with their job and their own childhood. Children bring them compensation for their own failures.
—Finally, marriage enables two people to work together in setting up common goals and—by dreaming, planning, struggling—to achieve those goals. Perhaps the goal is to build a home or take a vacation trip to South America together or to put a son through college. The specific goals are not important. The enrichment comes from the two people’s merging their hopes and efforts toward one mutually-desired goal.
Getting married is one of the biggest steps a person takes in life. In fact, for most people life boils down to coping with three big problems:
—Learning to get along with people.
—Choosing a career and succeeding in it.
—Picking a mate and living happily thereafter.
The three are interdependent. Marriage counselors have noticed the significant fact that the individual who makes friends readily, who likes his work and is successful in it, is also the person who tends to choose an excellent mate for himself and work out with that mate a happy marriage.