I thought of how important the strength of a marriage is to children when I saw a quote by Pete Rose, Jr., recently. The betting scandal his father was in meant little to Petey. He still dwelt on his parents’ years-old divorce. His father was remarried with a new child and another on the way. His mother was tending bar in Cincinnati. Petey is a better-than-average big league prospect himself, and athletes at that stage in their careers are usually single-minded and driven. Yet Petey said something like this: “I would trade whatever future I have in big league baseball to see my parents get back together.” It was as if he hadn’t read the papers, didn’t know the truth about his parents’ marriage. Pete, Sr. had such an incredible reputation for chasing women, and such nasty, impossible-to-take-back things had been said by each about the other, that no one would give two cents for the possibility of any civility, let alone a reconciliation. And with Pete, Sr., remarried, there’s no chance. Yet that comment from little Pete, if he were my son, would haunt me to my grave.

Jerry Jenkins, Hedges, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989, p. 128