The years go by and the cycles of growth
Unwind from the spool and weave into cloth
The basic plan for healthy generational cycles is
1. Courtship/get married
2. Stay married
3. Have children
4. Raise your kids to repeat
2 and 3 happen simultaneously.
Which raises the question: what the ages when these stages should occur?
Some of them are obvious. The termination of courtship is marriage. Staying married begins with getting married. Having children begins when married and ends when fertility and health no longer permit it. Raising your kids to repeat that living cycle begins when they are born.
Lets fill in the blanks.
Courtship
Courtship properly begins when young. The foundation of a solid courtship is laid by seeing your parents be attracted to each other and lay solid visions of male and female roles in interlaced harmony. That implicit low-level erotic ambient in the childhood home is the foundation of successful courtship later on.
In our current environment the ideal courtship termination age—in other words, the ideal age of marriage—is generally the early 20s for men and a year or two younger than that for women. However, for some who have a good prospect it is better not to wait. And if the ideal doesn’t happen, keep courting until it does.
That said, in an extremely important sense, marriage is not the end of courtship. It should continue on. That delightful dance of man and woman is not meant to end with marriage but to reach its full flower.
Stay married
Clearly divorce is devastating on the young. It will ruin your family project. From which one might conclude that staying married needs to last until the youngest child is grown.
Less known is the devastating effects that divorce has even on the adult children. It also affects the grandchildren. Divorce is always brokenness and always weakens.
Staying married until the moment of death is critical to the success of your family project. We hope that even after your death your joint married spiritual influence will continue and persist.
Among us have lots of experience that marriages can be miserable, sometimes for years, and then turn the corner. Children generally do better in unhappy marriages with fighting than they do in divorced ones in all but the most extreme circumstances.
Have children
It is better not to wait, certainly not for long. Delaying children is in effect delaying marriage. Playing house together—“Ok, you be the mom and I’ll be the dad”—is the most gorgeous and delightful and abundant thing. It is the fountain of happiness. It is why you got married in the first place. The sooner the better. You are at your most fertile and at your best as a first time parent when you are basically an overgrown kid yourself.
You will have to stop having children when fertility ends, but there will probably be issues of health or waning fertility that end it sooner.
Still, we have seen a mother nursing at her oldest daughter’s wedding and it made our eyes shine with joy.
Raise your kids to repeat
Obviously this begins when your kids are born (or even with proper nutrition in the womb). Your happy, healthy, values-filled family begins immediately.
However, your effort doesn’t end when the kids turn 18, because you care. Your vision and your love doesn’t allow you to wash your hands of them. You help them with counsel and with guidance and money, you look for courtship opportunities and jobs and business, you help them get their first home, you babysit, you arrange for extended family get togethers, you mentor and nourish your grandchildren.
After you die, you, a mighty soul, continue to spread your watchful influence over them.
Even in secular terms, the habits and stories and sayings you leave behind continue to grow your family for generations after you are gone.
Your great great grandchildren may not know that it is because of you that they have inherited the earth. But it is.
To paraphrase Santayana, not even the dead have seen the end of life.