At a time when the National Center for Health Statistics predicts 43 percent of marriages in the United States will end in divorce, families could learn at lot from the Canadian Goose.

Each year, the birds fly thousands of miles with ease, precision and team work.

Flying in "V" formation, as geese do, is 70 percent more efficient than flying alone. As the birds move their wings they create an uplift for the bird behind them. When one of the birds falls out of formation it will suddenly feel the increased resistance of the air flying alone and will soon regain the formation.

As most people view the geese in formation, they visualize a single leader. In reality, however, as the lead goose tires it rotates back into the formation and another takes its place.

Each flock flies at its own rhythm. The pulsating sound of the wings beating together excites and energizes the whole formation. The geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

If a goose becomes sick two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it is able to fly again. ("Lessons from Geese," Utah State Office of Education.)

The selflessness showed as part of the instinctive behaviors of the Canadian Goose may be what is missing in many marriages. In 1990, President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke on the state of families in the United States, where one divorce occurs for every two marriages.

"Why all of these broken homes?" he questioned. "What happens to marriages that begin with sincere love and a desire to be loyal and faithful and true one to another? There is no simple answer. I acknowledge that. But it appears to me that there are some obvious reasons that account for a very high percentage of these problems. I say that out of experience in dealing with such tragedies. I find selfishness to be the root cause of most of it."

In the October 2004 general conference, President Hinckley said divorce is not the cure to most marital troubles. The cure, he said, lies in repentance and forgiveness and in expressions of kindness and concern. It is found in the Golden Rule.

"We can rise above the 'mean and beggarly elements' in our lives. We can look for and recognize the divine nature in one another which comes to us as children of our Father in Heaven. We can live together in the God-given pattern of marriage in accomplishing that of which we are capable, if we will exercise discipline of self and refrain from trying to discipline our companion."

The Family: A Proclamation to the World declares that a husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. Successful marriages and family "are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work and wholesome recreational activities," it further states.

Offering the inaugural Marjorie Pay Hinckley Lecture at BYU in 2005, James Q. Wilson — a noted family scholar from Pepperdine University — spoke about the problems that plague marriage and families today. "Almost everyone in this country, when polled, thinks that marriage, in general, is a good idea. They look forward to the possibility of being married. They think, on the whole, marriage is good for people." However, one-fourth of all children are now being raised in single-parent families.

There is no "magic bullet" to solve the problem, he continued.

However, some answers can be found in following God-given instincts— just like the geese, who seem to understand the principles of flying in formation, accepting and giving help, allowing everyone to lead from time to time and giving encouragement. Geese mate for life and are most protective of each other and their young.

"I very much regret that divorce is so rampant in the land," said President Hinckley to the National Press Club in 2000. "I think it is indicative of the breaking up of the family. I think it is a very sorrowful thing to witness that we have so much divorce, which comes of a disrespect on the part of men and women and a lack of appreciation and an unwillingness to give and take a little here and there. If every man would make his prime concern the comfort and well-being of his wife, and every wife would make her chief concern the comfort and well-being of her husband, we would have very little divorce in the land."