A few weeks back one of my favorite Families.com commentators, Jade Walker, PM’d me with a subject line that read “A Case for Long Marriages.” Within the PM she included a link to an article and the brief note: “Apparently, the key is to have the wife stay at home.”
I would have clicked the link anyway, but that was a definite attention getter.
“Has there been some kind of study done proving there’s a correlation between stay-at-home wives/moms and long marriages?” I wondered.
Not exactly. But if we study the seven siblings (five sisters and two brothers) who make up the Estes family, we might learn a thing or two.
The Estes Family
I had seen this story on the news about the brothers and sisters all from one family who had been married nearly 400 years collectively, but had forgotten to make a note to myself to write about it. (See Jade? That’s why it’s so good you keep me in the loop like you do. You’re helping me keep my resolutions!)
Anyway, the story made news when Sue Bass, the youngest of the Estes kids, celebrated her Golden Anniversary with her husband Edwin in early February. She was the last of the siblings to reach that milestone.
As Edwin put it, “The others made it and we weren’t about to get beat!”
Rare Breeds
A professor of history from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington was also interviewed in the article. She said how rare it is for so many siblings to have stayed together so long. Especially ones from the fifties on.
Why? Because as I touched on in Did You Commit to marriage Before You Even Were, divorce rates rose once women entered the work force. That’s something none of the Estes sisters ever did.
Did it contribute to their long marriages? Maybe. But was it the only one? The Estes siblings couldn’t define one specific reason for their successes, but they named some of the same ones.
What the Estes Siblings Attribute to Their Long Marriages
• Their parents, who set a loving example for them to follow and were themselves married 58 years.
• Respecting each other. (Something they learned from their parents.)
• Listening to each other’s problems. (Something else they saw their parents do.)
• Working through problems together.
Roll Up Your Sleeves
But maybe the key to it all is that one verb in the last bullet point: “work.” Marriages are like any other living thing –-they need tending. It was a key component Sue and Edwin emphasized in the article.
“A marriage is definitely teamwork. It’s not one-sided, that’s for sure,” said Sue.
“You’ve got to let love grow,” added Edwin. “You’ve both got to pitch in, in order for it to work. You have to work at it, and we still work at it every day.”
~-From “391 Years of Marriage and Counting” by Associated Press writer Rick Callahan-~
Courtney Mroch writes about animals great and small in Pets and the harmony and strife that encompasses married life in Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.