Comments On Family Values

Comments On Family Values

The state of our society and family values is unsatisfactory and getting worse.
The consequences of WWII and the advent of television are two principal contributing factors to the present state of family values. WWII validated that it was acceptable for women to do many of the jobs traditionally done by men. That was necessary to fill the void created by the large number of workers that were in the armed services and support the war and the national economy. After the war ended, the period of readjustment was resolving itself just as television was becoming affordable for the middle class. In the beginning, television was a novelty used primarily for entertainment. It did not take long for entrepreneurs to take charge of the technology and begin to use it to define the standard of living for the middle class, making TV primarily a marketing tool. What was viewed on TV became the de facto standard for each family to emulate. Of course the standard was above that in existence at the time, requiring families to generate extra income to achieve it. The pull of TV to increase the expectancy of families has resulted in the need for two wage earner families to achieve the standard portrayed on TV. That of course has relegated parenting to second place behind wage earning. The result has been generations of children raised by the institutions of childcare and babysitters. Until the TV-defined standard of living became the goal, parents in the home, in particular mothers, directly imposed the value system for their children. Mothers, traditionally the family caregivers, were present to oversee the development of their children. With most mothers now in the workforce and not available to supervise their children, values are imparted primarily by strangers who may or may not have the values and control over the children that their parents would have.
The problem has been compounded by the efforts of the feminist movement to declare that there is no difference between the sexes. Most of us know that is not the case. However, by creating laws that artificially enhance the ability of women to take on more of the characteristics of men and attempting to suppress natural male behavior, we have begun to create a society that believes there really are no differences between men and women. We have attempted to create a unisex world. Regardless of what we consciously believe, there are and must be differences between men and women. Eons of human development have evolved the positions of the sexes and to attempt to change nature by legislation and education cannot succeed. It can, however, be destructive. We are seeing the destructive effects now and they will worsen unless the trend is reversed. To reverse the trend and get us back on a course that will foster positive family values requires that we return to the traditional roles of men and women.
During the past several decades, there has been a great increase in the number of divorces. The attitude that no-fault divorce is an acceptable social adaptation has caused divorce laws to be eased to the point where marriage has almost no meaning. The ease with which married couples can get divorced makes marriage merely an inconvenience. Marriage vows have lost their meaning. Vows are corrupted to have no meaning or said merely as part of a ceremony with no intention of abiding by them. The vow makers know that they can ignore them and easily get out of the marriage "contract." The sanctity of the institution of marriage must be returned and we must raise our children to respect and honor it.
We have further degraded the value of marriage by removing the stigma from having children out of wedlock. The single mother household has become an honored institution to the point of being promoted as almost the norm for families. Numerous high profile people flaunt their bastard children, acting proud that they haven’t acquiesced to society’s demands. TV, the most influential educational tool we have, has almost no shows with two parent families. Few of those shows that do have two parent families have a functional male parent. The result has been to educate us that dysfunctional or single parent homes are normal. That trend must be reversed. The stigma related to out-of-wedlock children must return. We must take whatever action is necessary to restore two parent functional families as the norm.
In addition, there is an increasing number of artificial inseminations of single women. Some of those women are in homosexual relationships and the resulting children will be raised in non-traditional homes and subjected to the values supporting homosexuality as a normal behavior. Artificial insemination should be opposed under any circumstance and in particular if it is used to produce a child for a single parent or non-traditional home. In no case should same-sex couples be allowed to raise children.
The result of the changes of the last few decades has been to create new generations of children without strong connections to a family unit. They have little regard for authority since a more anonymous authority, impressed by caregivers outside the family unit, has replaced the authority of the family. In addition, we have embraced children’s rights standards to the detriment of good order and discipline. In the interest of "rights" we have eliminated the essential element of fear in encouraging children to behave and pay proper respect to parental and governmental authority.
Successive generations of children are behaving successively worse. Until we get mothers and fathers back in the care-giving loop and fear and respect for the law back into child rearing, we can expect a continuing problem with the behavior of children that will carry over into adulthood. We should give families an unequivocal right to raise their children as they see fit. The government must not interfere except in extremely unusual and rare occasions. Children should have only the rights that their parents grant them. The government must not be in the position of establishing the standards for child rearing or supervising the care that parents give their children. On the other hand, parents must be held accountable for the conduct of their children.
Another victim of the degradation of family values is the traditional work ethic that until recent decades has been a hallmark of the American work force. As a result, the children of immigrant cultures that still maintain strong family groups, in particular those of oriental origin, generally have work ethics that more closely resemble old time American ethics than do the children of mainstream America. Most of our citizens appear to have been brainwashed with the ideas that the government owes them everything. Children have no basis for acting other than the example set for them by the character of their families and the people with whom they associate. There is little wonder that children raised by anonymous institutions do not have strong values that represent a family character. The fact that parents choose to abrogate the responsibility of raising their children to the institutions indicates the lack of values of the parents. We need to make the restoration of the traditional work ethic a priority in our restoration of family values.

How we teach our kids is as important as what we teach them. We should strive to teach by example. More and more we tend to focus on trying to teach by "telling" while continuing to set bad examples. Kids will always be influenced more by how they see us act than by what we say. For example, we complain about how badly teenagers drive, but when we are driving with our kids in the car, we invariably ignore most of the traffic regulations unless there is a patrolman visible. If we see a patrolman, we immediately scrupulously obey the laws. That teaches by example that laws are to be obeyed only while being observed by law enforcement; that we can apply our judgment over that of the professionals who established the laws and choose when or whether to obey them. Unfortunately, when our teenagers apply the same rules, they usually don't have the driving experience or judgement to know just how far they can push the envelope. Many wind up maimed or dead because we have not taught them that traffic laws exist for a reason.

Another area that parents frequently complain about is the untruthfulness of their kids. But, we continually expose them to cheating demonstrations on their primary visual training aid, the TV. They see cheating on TV that ranges from fooling patrons of high class restaurants by "secretly" switching the type of coffee to spouses cheating on each other. We see our hero Arnold releasing the hand of one he promised not to drop and exclaiming, "I lied." Bit-by-bit, scene-by-scene, we inculcate our kids from very early ages to the concept that lying and cheating are normal.

We can do better. We must do better. We must teach by example that lying and cheating are unacceptable. We must show our kids that, while almost anyone can obey the law while being observed by law enforcement, it is every citizen's duty to obey the law while not being watched. We must teach them that, even if we disagree with a law, we must obey it. If we do disagree with a law, we should work to get it changed.

·  General.

1. We need to reverse the mostly effective assault that has been waged on values by the ACLU. In particular, we should put prayer back in our schools and other institutions.
2. We should eliminate the attempts of recent years to confuse the gender identities of our people.

·  Children and parental rights.

1. Parents have an unequivocal right to raise their children as they see fit without interference from others, including the government.
2. Children have no rights other than those bestowed on them by their parents.
3. Both parents, regardless of marital status, have an unavoidable responsibility to provide basic care for their children.
4. Parents are responsible for the conduct of their children and fully liable for the consequences thereof.
5. Children, when remanded to the care of educational or other institutions shall be fully subject to the rules and regulations of those institutions. Strict adherence to those rules and regulations shall be required or the child shall be denied care.

·  Unwed or single parents who require public support for their children. While this refers only to the specific instance of public support, any birth of children out of wedlock should be strongly discouraged.

1. A prerequisite to obtaining public support for a child should be that the mother names the father and establishes the accuracy of the fact.
2. The father should be required to contribute support adequate to provide an acceptable standard of living for the child.
3. The following instances should be cause for considering at least temporary sterilization of one or both parents:
1. One individual fathers children out of wedlock by more than one mother, and cannot support or refuses to support all children.
2. A woman has children out of wedlock by more than one father, and cannot support or refuses to support all children.
3. A woman has more than one child while requiring public support.
4. A man has more than one child while requiring public support.
5. A mother requiring public support cannot/will not name the father.