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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (22301)	5/28/1998 11:38:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Alex, you ask a lot of good questions about how to define breakdown of the family. I would agree with you that families have always broken down, since the beginning of time. In our earlier history, it was more often due to the death of women in childbearing, which was very, very frequent. So children were often reared by their fathers, sometimes with the help of female servants, or sent to orphanages, or reared by a natural father and a stepmother. The breakdown of the family to which I refer is the modern one, within the last thirty years or so. Since the 1960's, the number of "traditional" American families--father, mother, children all living together--has dropped as a percentage of the population, at the same time that the number of children living with only one parent has risen dramatically, and the number of births to unmarried women has risen as well. Of course you could argue successfully that the divorce rate prior to that time was artificially low, since many marriages which were dysfunctional and unhealthy to the parents and children stuck in them are now dissolved, because of less societal disapproval. And of course, women who were abused in their marriages are now more able generally to establish financial independence and leave, now that many more women work outside of the home. When I discuss the breakdown of the family, it is usually in relationship to the psychological harm done to children who are not firmly attached to both parents. Certainly, most of us remember times when more children spent their entire childhoods living with both parents, and more mothers stayed home to care for children. This seems to present a more stable environment for children, all else being equal. There certainly does seem to be an epidemic of well-armed children, full of rage, who have decided to eliminate anyone who gets in their way. That is a fairly recent aberration. As an aside, though, I read in a newsmagazine this week that the overall child shooting rate was higher in 1992. The difference is that these are mostly white children, and the others were mostly black and brown, and from the inner city, where lives are somewhat devalued. While there are several people at Feelings who seemingly would not only continue to starve helpless children, but would allow poor elderly people to die without any medical care whatsoever, I cannot really think of anyone here who even advocates welfare payments on a continual, long-term basis for able-bodied adults. Can you?