The American family is the backbone of society. If you believe in the Bible, you know that after God created Adam and Eve, he commanded them to have children. From the beginning, the ideal family included a biological mother and father to both be in the home, raising their children together. By removing God from our public discourse and breaking down the family unit, progressives have damaged and weakened society.
This series explores how the traditional family unit is statistically superior for people and society --- and the devastating impact of secularism and liberal policies.
Listen to the full series:
Breakdown of the Family Part I: The Children
In 1950, 75 percent of black families were two-parent homes. A strong family unit was the backbone of black America. Three out of four children had both parents at home. Today, 73 percent of black families are not traditional family units. Most black children now grow up without fathers. The result is a world turned upside down as children copy what they see and repeat what they learn.
While the black family has been the hardest hit, by no means is it the only segment to suffer. The American family of every race, every ethnicity, continues to disintegrate as virtually no one steps up to address the problems and propose solutions. Since 1980, the marriage rate has dropped 45 percent and 41 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers (73 percent in the black community). Fatherless or single-parent homes produce children who are two times more likely to be arrested for juvenile crime and twice as likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems. They are also 33 percent more likely to drop out of school and three times more likely to end up in jail by age 30.
This isn't to say that single moms can't be fantastic loving parents or single dads are just not capable of raising wonderful, well-adjusted, highly successful kids --- because they can and they do. Grandparents can and do wonderful child-rearing. Same-sex couples certainly love their children. And sometimes the ideal family unit, for whatever reason, just is not possible.
But in general, where possible, traditional family units produce the best results, consistently, over decades of studies.
Could it be that biologically a woman brings certain traits and skills to child-rearing that a man doesn't, and vice-versa? And is it just possible that that combination leads to the most well adjusted, highest functioning human beings?
Breakdown of the Family Part II: The Cause
What caused the destruction of the American family? In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced the War On Poverty. Twenty-two trillion dollars later, that battlefield is lined with remnants of broken American families. Huge government welfare and indoctrination programs have contributed to dependency, stripping people of dignity, raising unemployment and enslaving three generations of American citizens.
Also taking a toll on the American family was the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Progressives told women they couldn't be fulfilled by staying home with their children. The movement also had strong anti-men sentiments. After the women's movement, society and culture changed. With two working parents, children were often left with caregivers or on their own. In 2008, ABC reported that three-quarters of American girls would become pregnant that year.
Even many liberals understood many years ago that the family is the building block of civilization. If it crumbles, so does civilization. Yet far too many Americans have been swallowed up in political correctness. Today, society will tolerate virtually any substitution for the traditional family unit in the name of tolerance. But tolerance is only one side of the coin. The other side is truth. Without both truth and tolerance, everything falls apart.
Breakdown of the Family Part III: The Black Family
At the turn of the last century, black families were thriving. Today, the majority of black children grow up without two parents or a father figure. What caused the disintegration of the black family? According to Burgess Owens, former NFL star and author of the book Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps, liberalism and Democratic policies destroyed the black community:
In order to understand what the impact of liberalism has been, I think it's important to, first of all, recognize where the black race had been the first hundred years after the Civil War. From 1865 to 1965, the black community had 50 percent of all black Americans as part of the black middle class. We had the highest percentage of black men committed to the family and their marriage, the highest percentage of entrepreneurs in our country.
The introduction of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society attacked the very fabric of American black families. Massive government programs had the opposite effect of what we were told they would. For example, incentives were put in place for black women to have babies, stay unemployed and no longer need men in their households. The result was a dependency on government that has been absolutely devastating.
Today, one of the biggest threats facing black families is located, by design, primarily in their own communities: Planned Parenthood, an organization voraciously supported by Democrats. Progressive racist Margaret Sanger founded what would become Planned Parenthood to eliminate the black family, and her efforts have been wildly successful. In New York City alone, more black babies were aborted than born in 2012.
Can we change course and restore the American black family?
Burgess Owens believes we can:
We were the best example of what the American dream is all about. Someone can come here, in any situation, any background, any kind of baggage, and still make it if you decide to dream big and go forward. So I look forward to my race once again being a great example. I think that it will be a small minority of our race who still believe in our country that will pull out my race back from the abyss of socialism. And in doing so, will also do the same for our great nation, pull ourselves back and be an example of what we can do to revive ourselves, to be the great vision that our forefathers saw us as.
Breakdown of the Family Part IV: The Solution
Since the Progressive Era began, traditional American values have been continually attacked, and the hardest hit has been the family unit.
The first step toward healing our families is wanting to heal them. According to a Focus on the Family study, Americans do want that. When asked what mattered most to them personally, Americans agreed that a loving family is the single most important priority among a list of many high priorities:
• 54 percent = loving family
• 50 percent = health
• 43 percent = financial security
• 33 percent = happiness
According to Marc Mero, president of Family First, we can reverse the damage done to the American family, but it won't happen overnight. It will take a committed effort and positive messaging to reverse the disintegration of the family.
He also summed up the most important things he believes need to happen in order to heal American families:
First, overall, we need to speak truth into the culture. We really do. We need to speak truth into the culture and say, "This is really what's happening in our culture." We need to identify the problem, as we've already discussed, but we need to also talk about the solution.
Secondly, I believe one of the most important things we can do to make the family thrive once again, to bring the family back together, is to get fathers more involved in their kids' lives. We have two problems: We have one that many fathers are physically absent from their kids. There are 24 million children in our country right now who are growing up without their biological fathers. We have many millions more who are growing up with fathers who are in the home, but are emotionally absent from their kids. And so if we can reverse those two trends and really get fathers engaged in their lives, I believe that we can really turn things around and have families that don't die, that don't just survive, but actually thrive in our country once again.
The American family needs an advocacy group like the LGBT community, which overcame overwhelming odds, huge approval deficits to turn public opinion around in an incredibly short period of time. They went from states flat-out refusing to even consider same-sex marriage, to losing referendums in every single state that held a vote, to same-sex marriage being accepted by the majority of the people and the law of the land in under 20 years. If advocates for the traditional family had such focus, organization and commitment, the American family could be saved. And with it, perhaps America itself.
Listen to all serials at glennbeck.com/serials
