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Family Decay Today​—How Serious the Consequences?

WORLD WIDE, families are coming apart at the seams. Perhaps never before has there been so much domestic trouble.

Divorce figures for the United States and Canada given below only illustrate the severity of the problem that exists elsewhere too. Other countries have as high or higher a rate of increase in divorce.

The breakup of the family, the basic unit of society, might be compared to the malfunction of the cell, the basic unit of the human body. When enough cells become sick​—go “haywire”—​the whole body is adversely affected. The breakup of enough families can similarly lead to the decay of an entire civilization.

Meyer Elkin, an expert on family problems, warns: “We are now raising a generation of children from broken homes​—and creating a social time bomb.”

Really, how serious are the consequences of family decay? The decay of the family is given as a major cause of the following:

SCHOOL VIOLENCE

“In view of the deterioration of the family, it is no wonder that in one year [in the U.S.A.] 70,000 assaults were made on teachers, 100 murders were committed in the schools, and a billion dollars’ worth of property damage was done to the schools,” declares Dr. Harold V. Roth, senior psychiatrist at the Menninger Foundation.

SUICIDE EPIDEMIC

On the average, every week more than 16 youngsters commit suicide in Japan. In West Germany, 1,468 young persons killed themselves in a recent year. Some 5,000 young Americans commit suicide each year​—13 a day!

“A lot of kids feel the traditional sources of support don’t exist any more,” explains Dr. Arthur Froese, head of an adolescent psychiatric unit. “The family’s more mobile, more mothers are working and granny isn’t down the block baking cookies after school.”

CHILD PROSTITUTION

According to a report by the U.N. Subcommission on Human Rights, in just one South American country about 50,000 children are prostitutes. Child prostitution has become epidemic world wide. Why? “Many who become prostitutes typically are the products of broken homes,” notes the Detroit News of May 16, 1978. In some studies 25 percent of prostitutes had incestuous backgrounds.

WORLDWIDE DRUG ABUSE

Drug abuse is growing in many nations throughout the world, particularly among youths. Italy reportedly has 200,000 addicts, England 2,000,000, and the United States 6,000,000. “A consistent finding in the drug user,” says one leading psychiatrist, “is the absent father during the formative childhood years.”

BRUTALITY IN THE HOME

“You are more likely to get killed, injured or physically attacked in your home by someone you are related to, than in any other social context,” states sociologist Richard Gelles.

In the U.S.A., some 2,000 children are killed each year by their parents; nearly 1,000,000 injured. There are also about 2,000 murders annually involving husbands and wives. This is a consequence of deteriorating conditions in the family.

OLDER ONES UNWANTED

No longer is it common for a family of children, parents and grandparents to live together. Over 6,500,000 Americans live alone. Often aging, older relatives are needlessly put away in old-folks homes or otherwise shunted aside. The result​—loneliness and an early death for many.

RAMPANT VD

In Italy, of 1,968,984 young men called up for national service, nearly 65,000 were found to have syphilis. Those between the ages of 15 and 19 account for 25 percent of the million cases of gonorrhea reported in the U.S.A. each year. Daily, some 5,750 girls are absent from school in the U.S.A. because of gonorrhea. The breakdown of the family is given as a major cause of the tremendous sexual promiscuity today.

MILLIONS OF ALCOHOLICS

Many countries have literally millions of alcoholics. Alcoholism is reportedly now killing 40,000 people a year in France. In the U.S.A. one out of five high school students gets drunk at least once a week. Family trouble and unhappiness have been identified as root causes of alcoholism.

CHILD PREGNANCY

Every year about 30,000 girls age 14 and younger get pregnant in the U.S.A.; the total teen-age pregnancies number about a million annually. Of these, some 600,000 have their babies​—two out of every three of them bear their babies out of wedlock. In Canada over 1,000 teen-agers a week get pregnant. And in New Zealand more than one baby in every five is illegitimate​—another sad consequence of the family decay.

Clearly, the decay of the family is having widespread and disastrous consequences. It is indeed frightening to consider hundreds of thousands of teen-age mothers trying to rear their children without a husband. But that is what is happening.

Furthermore, one out of every three British brides under 20 is pregnant on her wedding day. In the U.S. almost one quarter of all newlywed women under 25 either had a child before marriage or were pregnant when they got married. This situation is bound to place a financial and emotional strain on most of these new families.

In some countries now a large percentage of mothers with school-age children are employed​—in the U.S. more than 50 percent are. Since fathers also work, children usually fail to receive the parental guidance they need. As Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner noted: “If there’s any reliable predictor of trouble, it probably begins with children coming home to an empty house.”

Since divorce, separation, adultery and the number of parents simply walking away from family responsibilities have become ever more common, social scientists warn that the family may not survive this century. And some fear that the spreading cancer of family breakdown will lead to the decay of civilization itself.

What has led to the decay of family life? What can be done about it?

[Chart on page 4]

TOTAL DIVORCES

U.S.A. Canada

1960 393,000 6,980

1965 479,000 8,974

1970 708,000 29,775

1976 1,083,000 54,207