Yesterday, I re-blogged a post on the decline of the American middle class and how that will negatively affect U.S. global power. One of the factors for the decline is a social one — the increase in single-mom households, which are associated with poverty, and the corresponding decrease in the traditional two-parents (mom and dad) family.
Here are the latest, depressing statistics.
Msgr. Charles Pope writes for the Archdiocese of Washington, Dec. 29, 2013:
It is not difficult to demonstrate that most of our modern problems center around struggles and misunderstandings regarding marriage, sexuality, and the family. Collectively as a nation and the culture, we have departed significantly from the teachings of God and common sense, when it comes to our thinking and behavior regarding these three fundamental pillars.
Today’s Feast of the Holy Family presents us an opportunity to reflect, and provides a rich tapestry of Scriptures. Many of these teachings are not “politically correct,” but for that, no apology should be made. They remain God’s teachings and it is hard to argue that modern notions of sexuality, marriage and family have produced anything short of catastrophe and disaster. And as is usually the case, it is the children suffer the most.
Any look at statistics, show facts and trends that are not merely alarming, they are downright astonishing, especially given how steeply and suddenly they have occurred. Currently more than 40% of children in this country are raised without two parents. Numbers have declined even more steeply for minority communities.
In 1961, the year of my birth, 80% of black children were raised in a two parent family; today that number is 20%. And for whatever assertions may be made regarding racism and poverty, the fact is these numbers are demonstrably improved over those of 1961. Even with far greater social stressors and pressure, Black families used to stay together and work out their difficulties. Today with far greater affluence, this is no longer the case. “White” families and other ethnic and racial derivations may have numbers that are only slightly less shocking, and when we factor in age and generational differences the numbers are not that far apart.
The two-parent, heterosexual family is becoming quickly an endangered species. Along with this decline many grave social consequences follow, to include: lower SAT scores, and graduation rates, higher rates of juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, cohabitation rates, sexually-transmitted diseases, higher rates of homosexual inclinations and a higher tendency to divorce. Clearly as the model of the stable faithful heterosexual marriage becomes rarer, the capacity of young people to form stable families becomes less and less likely.
And whatever attempts to make the claim that this disordered state of affairs is probably just fine, and that “alternative family arrangements” are just as good as traditional ones, most people know that this is a lie. It just makes common sense that psychologically, the best environment for any child is to be raised in what nature, and nature’s God has set forth. Namely: that there should be a father and a mother, a male and female, who form a stable, committed, and lasting bond where their children can be formed in a safe environment of trust and learn the male and female genius of being human. A mother alone, or a father alone, or two fathers, or two mothers or any other combination is far less than ideal, and to intentionally subject children to this is an injustice.
Yet such departures from God’s plan for marriage and family are increasingly the norm today. There is much about which to pray and reflect on this Feast of the Holy Family.
Read the rest of the essay here.
~Eowyn