God’s intention for men and women is a relational Paradise. However, as we have seen in recent posts, that is not the experience of our culture. We have noted the curse of androgyny, and the rise of the professional woman, both results of feminism and the sexual revolution. In addition the revolution has decoupled sex from marriage and commitment. So great is the disconnect that, according to The Social Trends Institute, over forty percent of births are now to single moms.
About four million babies are born in the United States each year. In addition, there are about one million abortions. Forty percent of four million is about 1.6 million babies born without fathers. But for abortion, it would be 2.6 million, or over fifty percent of today’s pregnancies. In summary, over 50% of American pregnancies are aborted or born to a single mom. In addition, The New York Times reports that, for the first time in American history, over 50% of births to women under age thirty are to unmarried women. By contrast, in 1960, without either birth control or legal abortion, only five percent of our children were born out of wedlock. This is a social disaster. No culture has survived, long term, the abdication of fathers from the crucial process of socializing children. “Virtually every major social pathology of our time,” writes Dr. Stephen Baskerville: “violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy and scholastic failure, unwed pregnancy, suicide, and other psychological disorders—all these correlate more strongly to fatherlessness than to any other single factor.” Fatherless children are susceptible to a host of well-documented social pathologies. Confirming Baskerville’s quote is the Fatherhood Initiative . “Teens from fatherless homes are: 5 times more likely to commit suicide, 32 times more likely to run away, 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 9 times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
In addition, the greatest correlate between poverty and affluence is the presence or absence of a father. The government could end the bulk of its anti-poverty programs just by motivating men to get and stay married.
Illegitimacy is not God’s plan for the human family, but this is the reality in our day. We should be deeply grieved. Of greatest concern is the truth that these trends have invaded our local churches more than we care to admit.
I think the younger generations, who are growing up in the midst of this choas, can probably understand the reality of the sadness and damage of a dysfunctional home more clearly than their parents, who were the first generations to experiment with the sexual revolution, free sex, and no commitment.