Across generations, a quiet pattern has repeated itself, so common that it has become almost invisible. Society has grown numb to it. The problem has become the new “normal.” Our forefathers married. Our grandparents married. Our parents married. We marry. Our children are getting married. In some families, even grandchildren are beginning the same journey. Yet through all these generations, one question has rarely been asked: What preparation did any of us receive for marriage or parenting? The uncomfortable answer is: very little, if any. ALSO READ: Why marriage preparation is the foundation of good parenting Most people enter marriage guided mainly by what they observed while growing up, what they saw in their families, communities, churches, and what they absorbed from popular culture and media. These influences often become the only “training” people receive before assuming one of life’s most demanding responsibilities. This pattern is so deeply embedded that it is rarely questioned. Yet its consequences are visible everywhere: broken marriages, homes marked by unresolved conflict, children growing up without stable relational models, and families struggling to maintain emotional and moral cohesion. Despite these outcomes, society rarely asks the fundamental question: Why are we so unprepared for something so important? Consider how we approach other responsibilities. No nation would send a soldier into battle without training and expect victory. No hospital would allow a doctor into the operating theatre without years of preparation and expect patients to survive. No airline would place a pilot in the cockpit without rigorous instruction and expect safe flights. We instinctively understand that complex responsibilities require careful formation. Yet when it comes to marriage, an institution that shapes the emotional, psychological, and moral environment of future generations, we often assume that two individuals can simply meet, fall in love, and somehow build a stable life together without preparation. We expect two people who may have grown up in very different homes, cultures, and emotional environments to suddenly unite as husband and wife and successfully navigate finances, communication, intimacy, conflict, parenting, and lifelong partnership. And we are surprised when it proves difficult. The deeper concern is not only the difficulty of marriage itself, but the generational transmission of unpreparedness. Children raised in struggling homes often carry those relational patterns into their own adult relationships, not intentionally, but through formation. What we repeatedly observe becomes what we internalize. Thus, the cycle continues. One generation learns marriage by imitation rather than formation. The next repeats the pattern. Over time, this absence of preparation begins to resemble a generational curse, not mystical or supernatural, but structural and cultural. It is the quiet inheritance of relational habits that were never intentionally formed. The tragedy is not simply that marriages struggle. The greater tragedy is that society invests little in preventing those struggles, and the silent but fetal outcomes that, if accounted for, would far exceed the losses of all major wars. Schools prepare young people for careers. Universities prepare them for professions. Training programmes prepare them for leadership, business, and technology. But where do we prepare young people to become husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers? Where do we teach emotional maturity, conflict resolution, financial stewardship, relational commitment, or the responsibilities of parenting? For most people, the answer is nowhere. Yet if society can mobilize solutions for many public problems, why do we hesitate to address the one unfolding daily in our homes? Perhaps marriage and family life feel too private to confront collectively. But silence has not solved the problem. It is time to question that silence. A simple but transformative idea is this: marriage preparation should begin long before marriage exists. Marriage and parenting should be treated with the seriousness given to other life-shaping responsibilities. The absence of preparation does not affect couples alone; it shapes the environment in which children grow and the values they carry into adulthood. Breaking this generational pattern will require asking questions previous generations rarely asked: What does healthy marriage formation look like? What character qualities sustain lifelong partnership? How should young people be prepared for family responsibilities? What role should parents, schools, faith institutions, and governments play? These questions are not merely personal; they are societal. Stable societies rest upon stable families. And stable families begin with prepared marriages. Until marriage preparation receives the same seriousness we give other life responsibilities, the pattern will continue. The generational inheritance of unpreparedness will quietly pass from one generation to the next. Amb. Gerald J Zirimwabagabo is a retired educator, development professional and author.
