Despite trends in our society towards consumerism where everything and everybody "has a price," there still remain some relationships which cannot be reduced to a mere exchange of goods. One such relationship is the parent-child relationship. Most parents willingly make all kinds of sacrifices for their children. Think how funny it would be if parents gave a bill to their children after 18 years for all the hugs given, hurts kissed away, diapers changed, meals cooked, clothes ironed, toys purchased, sports lessons given or school books bought! Most parents do so out of an unconditional love for their children.

According to Margaret Brinig, author of From Contract to Convenant: Beyond the Law and Economics of the Family, such a relationship can be called a convenantal relationship because of its lasting and sacrificial nature, based on trust and intimacy and the absence of commercial exchange, Those involved in such a relationship often do far more for each other out of love than could ever be required by law. A contract-based world allows a breaking of promises so that one or both parties can find a better deal. But when applied to personal relationships what one gains in freedom comes at the cost of finding that one is profoundly alone. Contract also implies a need to keep a record of what each of the contracting partners has given. In cohabiting arrangements where two sexually intimate people live together, there is neither permanence nor unconditional giving. The two have come together for mutual benefit, but if either one becomes tired or dissatisfied with the arrangement, he or she can just leave. The conditional quality of the relationship discourages real long-term investment. It's like living in an apartment you don't own. Because you can leave when the lease is up each year, there is little incentive to make major repairs or improvements to the place you live. By comparison, families or individuals who buy a home usually have much more motivation to invest time, effort, creativity and resources to make such improvements. In stable, covenant-based marriages (as opposed to contractual marriages such as those involving prenuptial agreements in which it is spelled out who gets what if there is a divorce), couples do not keep precise track of who owes what to whom. Surprisingly, couples who do not keep precise track of who owes what to whom have more stable marriages. For example, in the National Survey of Families and Households, couples were asked in 1987-88 how much time they, and their spouse, spent each week on various household tasks. The spouses were questioned as well, and the responses were found to be highly consistent. The second wave of the study tracked the same people five years later, in 1992-94. Some of the couples had divorced or separated during those five years, others remained intact. The interesting thing is that those couples who answered "don't know" or simply refused to answer the household hours questions had a significantly lower rate of divorce than those who could make such estimates did. In covenant relationships, whether between parent and child, husband and wife, or a particularly deep and lasting friendship or loyalty to one's country or one's Creator, there is a faith that what one has invested will eventually be returned. The parent who loves his/her child unconditionally believes that relationship can never be broken and that some day the son or daughter will have a chance to return that love or that the act of loving itself was the best reward. The husband who takes care of a sick wife or soldiers who volunteer to defend their country are acting in faith that their actions are beyond the mere counting of benefits owed or given. Contracts frequently involve short-run or limited relationships or even instantaneous exchanges. Covenants, because they are designed to be permanent, assume that the balances will be righted eventually or that any imbalance doesn't matter. Their participants are thus, on average, far more giving and selfless than those who enter into contracts. Keeping score of who does what, and who owes whom appears to produce less satisfactory unions. In other words, married people appear to thrive when they depend on one another yet do not keep score.