Families—Draw Close Before It’s Too Late
“Family is the oldest human institution. In many ways it is the most important. It is society’s most basic unit. Entire civilizations have survived or disappeared, depending on whether family life was strong or weak.”—The World Book Encyclopedia (1973 Edition).
THE family unit is an umbrella of protection for children. In many places today, that umbrella is full of holes; in many other places, it’s being closed and stuck in the closet. The traditional family is frequently sidetracked as outmoded. Television comedies often portray fathers as ninnies, mothers as smarter, but children know best.
Marital infidelity is commonplace. In some industrialized countries, one of every two first marriages ends in divorce. As divorces escalate, single families proliferate. In increasing numbers, two become one without benefit of marriage. Homosexuals seek to dignify their relation with marital vows. Sex, normal and abnormal, takes center stage in movies and videos. Schools view chastity as impractical and pass out condoms to make fornication safe—which they don’t. Sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies skyrocket. Babies are the victims—if they are allowed to come to birth. With the demise of the traditional family, children are the primary losers.
Years ago, Nobel prize winner Alexis Carrel, in his book Man, the Unknown, sounded this warning: “Modern society has committed a serious mistake by entirely substituting the school for the familial training. The mothers abandon their children to the kindergarten [sooner now, with day care and preschool] in order to attend to their careers, their social ambitions, their sexual pleasures, their literary or artistic fancies, or simply to play bridge, go to the cinema, and waste their time in busy idleness. They are, thus, responsible for the disappearance of the familial group where the child was kept in contact with adults and learned a great deal from them. . . . In order to reach his full strength, the individual requires the relative isolation and the attention of the restricted social group consisting of the family.”—Page 176.
More recently, comedian Steve Allen commented on television’s assault on the family, with its preoccupation with foul language and sexual immorality. He said: “The flow is carrying us all along right into the sewer. The very sort of language parents forbid their children to use is now being encouraged not only by anything-goes cable entrepreneurs, but the once high-minded networks. Shows that depict children and others using vulgar language only point up the collapse of the American family.”
What legacy is society now leaving to its children? Read the papers, watch television, note the videos, tune in the evening news, listen to the rap music, see the adult examples everywhere around you. Children are glutted on mental and emotional junk food. “If you want to destroy a country,” former British education secretary Sir Keith Joseph said, “you debauch its currency.” And he added: “The way to destroy a society is to debauch the children.” “Debauch,” according to Webster’s, means “to lead away from virtue or excellence.” That is being done with a vengeance today. Much is said about juvenile delinquency; more should be said about adult delinquency.
They Will Come Back to Haunt Us
Geneva B. Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Family Service America, said in a lecture delivered earlier this year: “The family is deeply, perhaps fatally, ill.” Calling it a “grim picture for many of our children,” she then said forebodingly: “The willingness of the nation to relegate so many of our poorly housed, poorly fed, poorly treated medically, and poorly educated children to the role of outcasts in a rich society is going to come back to haunt us.” It is already coming back to haunt us. You can read about it in the newspapers, hear about it on the newscasts, and see it on your television set. Here is a small sampling:
Judonne pulls out a gun and shoots Jermaine three times in the chest. Jermaine is dead; he was 15. Judonne is 14. They had been best friends. They argued over a girl.
One hundred people gather at the funeral of 16-year-old Michael Hilliard. He was shot in the back of the head as he walked away from an argument at a basketball game.
In Brooklyn, New York, three teenagers set fire to a homeless couple. When rubbing alcohol didn’t work, they tried gasoline. It worked.
In Florida a five-year-old pushed a toddler to his death from a fifth-floor stairwell.
In Texas a ten-year-old took a gun and shot his playmate and stuffed his body under the house.
In Georgia a 15-year-old boy stabbed his principal while being disciplined.
In New York City, a gang in their late teens and early 20’s, armed with bats, pipes, axes, knives, and a meat cleaver, went “wilding” near a settlement of homeless men, injuring many and leaving one with his throat slashed. Motive? One investigator explained: “They were getting their jollies attacking the homeless.”
In Detroit, Michigan, an 11-year-old boy joined a 15-year-old in raping a 2-year-old girl. They allegedly left their victim in a garbage Dumpster.
In Cleveland, Ohio, four boys ages six to nine raped a nine-year-old girl at an elementary school. Commenting on this, columnist Brent Larkin, writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, said: “It speaks volumes about what’s happening in this country, about how our value systems are headed straight for the sewer.”
Dr. Leslie Fisher, a professor of psychology at Cleveland State University, blamed television. He called it “a big sex machine,” and “kids 8 and 9 years old are watching these things.” He also blamed parents for the deterioration of the American family: “Mommy and daddy are too involved in their own problems and can’t take the time to tend their children.”
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Various elements in society, especially the media, entertainers, and the entertainment industry—elements that profit by pandering to the worst in humanity—disgorge sex and violence and corruption and thereby contribute heavily to the degradation of the young and the family. So the rule goes into operation: Sow rot, reap rot. Garbage in, garbage out. The chickens are coming home to roost—and the homecoming is horrendous.
Is society breeding a generation of children without conscience? The question was raised after the notorious “wilding” spree in New York’s Central Park where a 28-year-old woman was beaten and raped and left for dead by a roving gang of teenagers. Police said they were “smug and remorseless” and when arrested “joked and rapped and sang.” They gave reasons for doing it: “It was fun,” “We were bored,” “It was something to do.” Time magazine called them “psychic amputees” who had “lost, perhaps never developed, that psychic appendage we call conscience.”
U.S.News & World Report urged: “This nation must act to avoid another generation of the children without conscience.” Dr. Ken Magid, a prominent psychologist, and Carole McKelvey highlight that very danger in their explosive book High Risk: Children Without a Conscience. Case histories and testimony from many psychologists and psychiatrists give overwhelming support to Magid’s contention: The root cause is a failure of strong bonding between parent and child at birth and in the formative years that follow.
Surely, families must draw close during those formative years before it’s too late!