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The Main theme of this presentation is that, not only is
the Child the Future of Society, but marriage is the future of society, and is
the right of every child, everywhere. The child has the right to its natural
family. Just governments protect that right.
Traditional Value people are often accused of looking to
the past and of trying to revive the past but critics have it upside down.
Traditional Value people care about the future , work to build the future, and
build it best by giving the child what it needs to arrive in the future well
equipped for life.
Opponents instead insist on the right of adults to
reject each other even if it means serious detriment to the child and serious
cost to society.
Underlying this presentation is the fact that society is
a web of human relationships. And the most basic relationship in building
the rest of these societal relationships is the marital relationship.
The most important relationship for learning how to
relate to others in all the roles in life is the marriage of one’s parents.
Children thrive on the relationship between their parents.
I learned this in my first years as a therapist when I
treated many children in their middle childhood (from 5 to 10) who were referred
to me by physicians. Being young and inexperienced I was very careful in
assessing each child. By the end of the first year I became convinced that the
children’s symptoms were in reaction to their family situation.
In my second year I began study and training in family
therapy and by the third year I had settled into a pattern:
I would not see the child till I could see the whole
family including father (almost all families were intact back then in the early
1970s in Canada where I worked). I would work with the family till the parents
trust in me grew enough that I could peel them off and work on the issues that
divided them.
In 95 percent of the cases I did not have to do anything
with the child … he or she got better “spontaneously”.
When the parents are united the children thrive.
When parents are in conflict children suffer and don’t
grow as well as they should . They do not learn as well. They are more
anxious, more depressed, less friend, more aggressive or less cooperative.
There is a new and growing body of research on the
impact of religious practice on myriad areas of human life.
We can say that the more people practice their faith the
more they thrive in every dimension measured so far: in health, in learning, in
happiness, in friendships, in mental health ……… and in marital relationships.
We know that when mother practices her religious beliefs
her marriage benefits.
When father practices his religious beliefs his marriage
benefits
When they both practice their religious beliefs their
marriage benefits even more.
And the child benefits even more from this better
marital relationship.
Let us conduct a thought experiment right now.
Think of the most important relationship in your life ….
the person whose friendship means the most to you.
Now I can tell you that in that relationship you both
are very sensitive to how it is going … when it gets even better or when
something disturbs it. You both know these differences immediately …maybe not
why but you both know the state of your relationship.
Though this relationship is not something you can touch,
feel, smell, taste or hear. Yet it really exists. But it is not a creature, a
being, a thing.
Yet it exists …. between your soul and the other persons
soul. It is a spiritual reality between your soul and your friend’s. It is in
the realm of the spiritual.
Yet it is very powerful in its effects on you.
All relationships, not just the most important ones in
our lives, are in that realm of soul to soul – the realm of the spiritual.
This holds for all relationships: Those in the family ,
those among many friends. Among coworkers even with interchanges with strangers
on the street or at the airport.
At work it is the same … you have better working
relationships with some and you both know it
And more difficult working relationships with other ….
And you both know it.
And so on in other more passing relationships … the
interaction with another driver at a stop sign. It can be good and dignified or
it can be dismissal of the other …… and both drivers know that.
Society is a huge web of relationships. The capacity to
relate well with others in myriad situations and roles has much to do with the
strength of any society.
So are all relationships in society. Some are deep and
lasting and very important, others more passing and surface. But the most
important of these relationships are affected by our early experience of our
parents’ marriage, as the following charts will illustrate.
But the Rejection Ratio continues to climb….the
proportion of American children (and much the same throughout the West) stands
at about 60 percent
For every hundred children born in recent years 60
children experience their parents rejecting each other (either in out of
wedllock births or in divorce). In 1950 that number was at 12.
Children in most developed European countries have pretty
similar outcomes in the end. When one ranks the nations of the world by the
level of belongingness within their families the nations that have even higher
rates than the US include
Austria
Canada
Finland
The United Kingdom
Mexico
Denmark
France
Norway
Sweden
These are preliminary figures and need further
verification.
If this represents the ideal that family life could be
(and our ancestors knew how to be society in such a way that they came close)
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the deficit in family in modern western societies.
We will look at the five big tasks every nation has to
work on to see how the presence or absence of the marriage between parents
affects the children of nations.
These institutions are:
Family -- which has the task of begetting and
growing the next generation
Religion -- (or church, temple and mosque) which is
the task of relating to God and struggling to do good and avoid evil with His
help.
School – is the task of learning.
Government – is the task first of protecting the
safety of all members of society and then, if possible, of being benevolent
where most needed.
Marketplace – is the task of producing the goods we
need to live.
Thus society is composed of five major institutions,
each of which does a critical task that the other institutions cannot do
Each institution is critical . Each is needed. If one
collapses the other will fall apart in time.
Interestingly these same tasks make up the work of each
individual’s life time
The person who achieves all five tasks has lived a full
and good life.
These same task are the tasks of a full and vibrant
family life. This is where the child best learns these tasks.
The Five Tasks exist for every married couple. Unity on
these leads to a strong marriage and family life.
First we will look at how marriage and its substitutes
compare in the task of income and marketplace.
First let us look at what the different forms of the family
tell us about the history of belonging or rejection between the biological
parents.
In the intact married family the children and parents have
all always belonged to each other together.
In the step family (second marriage), one of the parents
at least, has belonged to another (and today most frequently has rejected or
been rejected by that other in divorce). The children have experienced
rejection between their parents (except in the case of widowed parents).
In cohabitation there are myriad forms of belonging and
rejection.
In the divorced single parent family the child has
experienced his parents rejecting each other.
In the separated single parent family the child has
experienced his parents rejecting each other.
The child in the widowed family does not experience
rejection but does experience great loss.
The child in the never married single parent family likely
does not experience the rejection between the parents (they never came
together).
Leaving aside the widowed family and a very small portion
of cohabiting families there is only one family where there is no rejection …
the always intact married family…. The natural family.
And this constant belonging comes with its own benefits
across the board.
In this chart we see it in the median income of the
American family with children in the year 2000 from a national government
survey. (All the charts you will see are from national government surveys).
The lowest level of poverty is in the always-intact family
(12 percent), where the parents have always belonged to each other and to their
children.
The next family structure, the stepfamily, is at 13
percent.
The level of poverty in the divorced, single parent family
is much higher at 31%.
The next highest level of poverty is in cohabiting parents
who are characterized by ambivalence about their future with each other (39
percent).
The separated, single-parent family has a similarly high
level of child poverty at 41 percent.
Finally, the always-single mother family has the highest
level of child poverty at 67 percent. This is the family structure where the
father has never belonged to the mother nor fully to his children.
This chart illustrates the power of marriage to rescue
children from poverty.
This chart illustrates a computer experiment performed by
my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation.
In it we took all the children in poverty, in the United
States, living with single parents.
Then (on the computer) we found their fathers and (on the
computer) we “married” them to the mother of their children.
When we did so more than 80 percent of the children moved
out of poverty.
This, more than anything else I have seen, illustrates the
power of marriage to reduce poverty ………by 80 percent for the poorest.
However there is even more to the story:
This slide illustrates the culmination of a series of
research projects which went about isolating the effect of marriage on men’s
earning power.
On average married men earn 27% more than they would had
they remained single.
On the other hand, divorce leads to a 42 percent drop in
the household income for a child.
Here we see the relationship between the task of owning
family property and the form of belonging and rejection between the parents.
The future of your stock market and diffusion of wealth is linked to marriage
…to belonging between fathers and mothers.
Broken families are bad for the economy of the family. As
the belonging ratio goes down the median family income stagnates even as the
economy grows!
Poland gave us the big revolution in astronomy …
Copernicus stopped the sun and moved the earth,
made the sun the center of the universe not the earth.
Europe and the world needs Poland to show us how to make
the needs of the family, not the individual, the center of the economy and how
to make a vibrant economy while doing that.
How to make the economy grow without diminishing the
family, how to have a growing economy without a collapsing family.
That is the big challenge for modern governments.
If this represents the network of working and earning
relationships for the whole economy when families are intact and parents are
working ------------
We can say that the economy is depressed by the family
significantly when the family is as broken as it is.
The task of education or school is to know and understand
the world around as well as to know and understand how oneself and other humans
function well.
This is a picture of the median high school scores for
American teenagers by their family structure.
Here we can see the significant difference that being in an
intact married family makes to educational achievement.
This in turn will have its own effect on the income of
these students later on ….. on the economy and productivity of society.
Children from intact, always unified, families are least
likely to be expelled from school.
If this represented the ideal of full educational
attainment ---------
Something in the order of this represents the deficit in
educational attainment resulting from the breakdown of the marriage of parents.
The first task of government is protection and safety.
Then if it has resources left over to engage in
benevolence for the common good.
There is a significant relationship between abuse in the
family and later crime.
In a key study of 14 juveniles condemned to death because
of murder in the United States 12 were found to have been brutally abused and 5
had been sodomized by family relatives.
However, drawing from British data because there is yet no
similar data from the United States, we get a picture of the different levels of
serious child abuse across family structures. The lowest level of serious abuse
occurs in the always-intact, married family. In Britain the stepfamily abuse
levels are six times higher; the always-single mother family, 14 times higher;
cohabiting family 20 times higher, and the single-father family 20 times higher.
The most dangerous family structure is when the mother cohabits with a boyfriend
who is not the father of the child. This abuse rate is 33 times greater than in
the intact, married family. Here the father neither belongs to the child nor the
mother.
This chart looks at serious abuse that results in the death
of the child.
Fatal abuse occurs in this family setting 73 times more
often than in the intact, married family.
When a society fails to regulate marriage, the child
suffers.
When governments do not promote, protect and shelter
marriage they fail to protect the overall safety of children.
Running away (permanently) from home is highly correlated
with drug crime and prostitution in most countries.
The rates of running away vary significantly by family
structure (by levels of belonging and rejection between the parents).
The step family has the highest rate of running away from
home.
Partner abuse varies significantly by family structure and
contrary to the radical feminist critique, the safest place for women is in the
married family (though when divorce or separation takes place there is a very
significant rise in abuse).
However even taking these rates of divorce and separation
into account the ‘ever-married’ woman experiences a much lower rate of abuse
than does the ‘never-married’ woman. Cohabitation is a form of ‘belonging’ that
has the highest rates of abuse of women. Radical feminists have it wrong.
Married men are the most protective of their wives and children.
Incarceration rates for for juvenile delinquents is lowest
in the intact married family.
The highest rate of incarceration (of boys in the main
part) is in families where the mother comes from outside the original biological
family to form the reconstructed stepfamily. The next highest is when the father
is brought from outside the original biological family to form the new
stepfamily. The next comes in the never married, single-mother family. The
lowest rate is in the always-intact, married family. There are dramatic
differences among these rates: 1, 2.07, 2.71, and 3.7.
If this were to represent the ideal state of safety in
society as we look at the effect of family structure on safety --------
------- this gives an impression of the lowering of
safety in society that results from the absence of marriage.
Religion’s task is working out the meaning of life,
one’s relationship to God and then the practice of good and the avoidance of
evil.
The more that religious worship is attended to the more
benefits can be seen in the other great tasks.
The more American teenagers worship regularly the better
they do on educational outcomes.
The less that adolescents worship the more likely they
are to use drugs.
The less that adolescents worship the more likely they
are to get drunk.
The less that adolescent girls worship the more likely
they are to have multiple sex partners.
The less that adolescents worship the more likely they
are to use run away from home.
If this were to represent the ideal state of society in
so far as worship effects those outcomes on key tasks then ---------
------- This graphic gives some idea of how much
society misses in not worshipping … and this graphic likely underestimates the
effect for the United States and massively underestimates it for most European
countries.
The Family’s great task is to bring forth the next
generation, through the marital exercise of the sexual act and through
affection, care and kindness in the raising of children and the conduct of
marriage.
The more monogamous women are (one sexual partner in a
lifetime) the more stable their marriages.
When they engaged in one non marital sexual relationship
(normally before marriage) the likelihood of stable marriage dropped to 54
percent and with two sexual relationships to 44 percent. More frequent
relationships further diminished the stability of unions.
This chart alone is one of the strongest arguments for
teenage chastity ….the future stability of one’s future marriage!...saving one’s
future children from divorce.
The more monogamous mothers are (one sexual partner in a
lifetime) the less likely is the chance of abortion.
American teenagers are much more likely to rate their
married fathers as warm and loving than are teenagers from any other family
group. Father’s affection is critical to the child’s ability to control its
sexuality and its aggression.
From this we see how fractured the US is in its family
relationships.
If this represents the ideal that family life could be
(and our ancestors knew how to be society in such a way that they came close)
-------
----- Then this represents something of the order of
the deficit in family in modern western societies.
And you can get 2,800 detailed research findings on
family and religion at this Heritage Foundation database of
Findings. By the end of the year 2007 it will have
4,000 findings.
If we look at the outcomes related to combinations of
family and religious practice we get some idea of the probable impact on
society’s major tasks of these two significant relationships: the marital
relationship and the relationship with God.
Who does best in school ?
This is a snap shot of the teenagers of the whole United
States. And we are looking at their combined Math and English scores.
The intact family that worships weekly does best while
the broken family that worships little or none does worst.
Governments, Poland, the EU ……… all nations … are
interested in good educational outcomes. They are central to the functioning of
the economy.
Politicians and employers take note!
This graph tells its own story: Who is least likely to
get expelled from school and who is most likely?
Teachers and principals take note.
Among teenage girls who is least likely to become
sexually involved? And who is most likely?
Parents and doctors take note.
Who is most likely to run away from home? And who is least
likely?
Police and social workers take note.
Which teenagers are most likely to get drunk ? And which
are the least likely to get drunk?
Police, politicians and doctors take note.
Who is least likely to get take hard drugs? Who is
least likely?
Parents, politicians, physicians and police take note.
The culture is all about how we belong to each other at
different levels and in different ways. At the heart of culture is ‘cult’ …the
practice of worship of God.
All the following data is from the Federal Government’s own
survey.
The social science research is summed up in this graph:
The Child thrives on the marriage of a father and mother
who both are unified around the five basic tasks of
life.
Such a child becomes the most capable future member of
society.
But when father and mother do not their marriage to
their child
The child suffers significantly:
Either in abortion
Or lessened capacity to grow.
This costs society a huge amount, but it especially
costs the child the most.
To reach his potential every child needs the marriage
of his parents…every child ..in all times, all places, all cultures. It is his
most basic right ………..right from the moment of conception if he is to survive
till birth and thereafter to become the adult he or she was meant to be…to reach
his potential.
Both religion and government have major interests in
marriage.
Government because of the great good it does to society,
especially to the future of society and to the child.
Religion because it is God’s plan for children and the
family.
It is a matter of justice: Every child can address the
two people who gave life to him or her and say “You owe me your marriage.
Without it I will not become the person I was meant to be. You owe me this.”
Society also has the right to demand the same marriage of all parents so that it
will have the capable citizens it needs to build the future and not be given
more problem citizens instead.
But modern governments have given rights of easy legal
rejection to adult parents and sacrificed the most basic right of the child to
the marriage of his parents.
Were this most basic right of the child to the marriage
of his parents enshrined in the social treaties of the UN they would loose
almost all of their dangers and they would be advancing the most most basic
right of the child… even the right to life.
By claiming the child’s right to the marriage of his
parents we uphold “belonging” while or critics protect “rejection”.
We ask for a strong future for the child they ask for a
weaker future.
We ask parents to sacrifice for their children, they ask
the child to sacrifice for the parents.
Children in most developed European countries have pretty
similar outcomes in the end. When one ranks the nations of the world by the
level of belongingness within their families the nations that have even higher
rates than the US include
Austria
Canada
Finland
The United Kingdom
Mexico
Denmark
France
Norway
Sweden
These are preliminary figures and need further
verification.
It is time to reverse this. But the first necessary
step in this reversal lies not in government but in the church, temple and
mosque. They must first deliver this most basic right to the child in their
communities before they can preach this most basic right of the child to the
governments of the land.
When church, synagogue and mosque begin talking and
delivering on this justuce to the child in their communities it will be heard
all around the world and others will follow for it is the most obvious of
rights. There is no parent who could say to any of his children: I do not owe
you my marriage to your mother (or father).
Where will the courage be found to give the child its
due and then to ensure it for all children?
Before the child looks to the governments of the world
can it look to the religious people of the world to give it its due, to honor
its first right in time …the right to the marriage of its parents?
Both religion and government have major interests in
marriage.
Government because of the great good it does to society,
especially to the future of society and to the child.
Religion because it is God’s plan for children and the
family.
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