a letter found on the Internet worth repeating:
Dear Vaisnavas,
Please accept my most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Babhru Prabhu wrote:
You want some tapasya? Try sticking to a marriage and raising kids.
Well said! I never had kids, but I know what a tapasya it is to make a
marriage work.
So many of our society's problems can be traced to men and women who dump their spouses for a life of "renunciation" when the gloss wears off, or when things become difficult, or after a couple of kids have been born.
Srila Prabhupada writes:
"These things cannot be taken so lightly, otherwise the whole thing will become a farce. Simply get married without considering what is the serious nature of married life, then if there is little disturbance, or if I do not like my wife or my husband, let me go away, everyone else is doing like that. So in this way the whole thing is becoming a farce." (letter to Madhukara)
"We cannot imitate Krsna, but we can follow Krsna. We can follow His footsteps, how He was living. He was a grhastha. He was not a sannyasi. So our sannyasi is not very great credit. To remain grhastha, because we are going back to Godhead, back to home, the whole, our master, is grhastha. Not only grhastha, He has got so many wives. So to become sannyasi is not very great credit, according to our Vaisnava philosophy. To become perfect house-holder, that is credit. Perfect householder, like Krsna." (Tokyo, Apr 23, 1972)
More:
"Now you are a sannyasi, but do not think it is a great credit for you. It is easy to renounce. The ones performing austerities are the householders." (Srila Prabhupada to Sudama Swami after giving him sannyasa, as told by Sudama Swami to an audience of householders in LA around 1973.)
"Just because no woman will have you, you think no one should get married." (Srila Prabhupada to a Swami disciple. The same can be applied to unmarried women promoting equal rights. They may not be desirable to men, but that doesn't apply to women in general.)
I may not have the exact words to these quotes, but they are pretty accurate.
Your servant,
Umapati Swami
ALSO A GOOD QUOTE IN THIS REGARD:
"Devahüti ...proposed her father that 'I want to marry that gentleman, that yogi.' .. And she was troubled in so many ways because she was princess, daughter of king. And this yogi, he was in a cottage, no food, no shelter, nothing of the sort. So she had to suffer. She never said that 'I am king's daughter. I was raised in so opulent condition of life. Now I have got a husband who cannot give me a nice apartment, nice food. Divorce him.' No. That was never done. That is not the position. 'Any way my husband may be, whatever he may be, because I have accepted some gentleman as my husband I must look to his comforts, and whatever his position, it doesn't matter.' This is the duty of the woman. But that is Vedic instruction. Nowadays, as soon as there is little discrepancy, disagreement-divorce. Find out another husband. No. She remained. And then she got the nicest child, Personality of Godhead, Kapila." -SB 3.28.1 lecture, 6/1/75, Honolulu