If marriage is no longer taken for granted or considered useful for a happy life, educators have the task of giving motivated and persuasive reasons, free from nostalgia for the past and falsely 'innovative' models, which are often pejorative."

This is one of the observations in the inaugural speech for the beginning of the Academic Year at the Pontifical Salesian University, held in recent days in Rome on the academy's campus. This lecture, prepared by professors Giulia Paola Di Nicola and Attilio Danese, entitled "The Family Today amid Challenges and Resources," describes the current situation of the family in the world. With an analysis well anchored in data and numbers, the two speakers recall many of the problems and impediments connected with the family today, proposing new approaches and answers that allow especially young people to desire—and then put into practice—the yes forever.

In fact, for these two professors, "organizing marriage preparation courses is not enough, if the families themselves do not educate their children from infancy to selflessness and fidelity. It would be advisable not to dwell too much on the frailty and pathologies of marriage—as sociologists and journalists unfortunately often do—, but we should instead consider in depth the conditions that can make it successful, understand the aspiration of young men and women to reconcile a good job, adapted to acquired skills, with a beautiful family and want "contentment in tandem," with common goals to be pursued with determination, by putting their own resources into circulation."