This week I began training as a volunteer for the Florida Guardian ad Litem program – a partnership of community advocates and professional staff providing a voice on behalf of the state’s abused and neglected children.  During the training I learned that prescription drug abuse by parents is now one of the leading reasons for the need to put their children into foster care; drug use often leads to abusive parenting, sexual assault, and neglect.  Remedial measures for the parents such as counseling, rehab, and anger management workshops are often insufficient, and the children remain in a system in which worker turnover limits the ability to establish and maintain relationships with the children and their families.  That is why the Guardian ad Litem program was started, to provide consistency in a child’s life.  The court-appointed guardian is often the only person consistently advocating for the best interests of a child – ensuring the child has visitation with siblings and is progressing educationally, medically, and emotionally. 

 

What is disturbing is the following: court-appointed guardians are still only a bandage – a very much needed one at present, but nonetheless a bandage on a mounting social problem – parents are increasingly failing to be an example of honesty, integrity, and respect to their children.

 

There are many excuses for the deterioration of the family structure; the trend in our times is towards the deinstitutionalization of marriage and a blended or single parent family. With the high rate of divorce more people are choosing to stay single and even become a parent through artificial means. There may be many genuine reasons for breaking up a family unit, but what reason can we invent for not being an example of honesty, integrity, and respect to the children – inside or outside a traditional family arrangement?

 

The way we treat one another, faithfully reflects the otherwise unobservable progress of our internal spiritual and religious development.  When higher spiritual meanings and values are missing in our lives, dysfunctional behavior becomes generational and the prospects for the marriage institution grow dimmer. This trend is reflected in current statistics. (Although our discussion here focuses mainly on the United States, data about other countries is included for context and comparison.)

 

In our society today there is an increasing inclination in the younger generation to extend childhood—to play video games every night, hang out with and text friends, and live a life free of responsibility. The cosmic importance of marriage is undervalued; life revolves around self, the tendency toward self-indulgence grows, and the value of unselfishness is ignored.

 

A study conducted in 2000 by Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project showed that among adults aged 20–29, marriage does not represent the grand social, economic, religious, and public ideals it once did. Ninety-four percent said that finding their soul mate is more important to them than matters of religion, finances, and the ability to be a good parent. According to the study, young Americans are more interested in having fun than in developing lasting relationships that lead to marriage. Marriage is now often seen less as a necessary institution and more as a celebration that brings together family and friends. More marriages are being built on the concept of materialism and romance instead of a life-long partnership of self-effacement, compromise, devotion, and unselfish dedication to the children.

 

Troubling statistics and other documented trends reflect a breakdown of traditional marriage mores that have served to stabilize society for millennia. 

 

1.      About one in three Americans will be divorced at least once.[1]

2.       In 2008, 67 percent of children in America ages 0–17 lived with married parents, down from 77 percent in 1980.[2]

3.      Out-of-wedlock births have kept pace with the rise of civil unions. In France, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and Bulgaria, for example, out-of-wedlock births have passed the 50 percent mark. In the United Kingdom, it is over 40 percent.[3]Unmarried childbearing in the United States reached historic levels in 2007, accounting for 39.7 percent of all births. In Catholic countries while births to married couples are still the norm; the percentage of out-of-wedlock births has doubled in the past decade. [4]

4.      In the United States, more than one million children each year experience the breakup of their families.  In September 30, 2008, there were 463,000 children in foster care as a result of parent abuse/neglect, or living situations.

 

The lack of commitment and increasing self-absorption between parents is taking a serious toll on children. Children are witnessing violence, the abuse of alcohol and drugs, and a drift in and out of their lives by their parents. The percentage of parents who work together at the significant job of rearing healthy children who have a love for wisdom and a righteous character is decreasing at an alarming rate. Too many children lack a healthy parental role model to emulate for a higher understanding of love and selflessness, trust and respect. Organized religions understand the social implications of such a trend, but myopic dogmas hinder their ability to successfully address this social crisis.

 

Marriage is what gave humanity the home, and the home is the crowning glory of the whole long and arduous evolutionary struggle. While religious, social, and educational institutions are all essential to the survival of cultural civilization, the family is the master civilizer. A child learns most of the essentials of life from his family and neighbors.

 

The amount of loving care and consideration that men and women are willing to bestow upon one another and their children is directly related to their attainment of higher levels of creative spiritual awareness. Selfless affection between two people is the spiritual connection that sustains a marriage and nurtures a family.

 

The value of family in today’s world of turmoil cannot be overemphasized: civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family unit. Family life is the ancestor of true morality, of the consciousness of loyalty to duty. The enforced associations of family life stabilize personality and stimulate its growth. But even more, a true family—a good family—reveals to the parental procreators the attitude of the Creator to his children, while at the same time such true parents portray to their children the love of the heavenly parent. A child best relates to its surroundings by first mastering the child–parent relationship and then by enlarging this concept to embrace the family as a whole. As the mind of the child grows, it is able to adjust to the concept of family relations, relationships of the community and the world, and then to those of the universe.  With the experience of a healthy, stable, and loving parent-child relationship, a child has the framework from which to relate to others lovingly as members of a family.

 

Marriage is the enterprise of home building, offspring-rearing, mutual culture, and self-improvement – a never-ending work in progress that draws on continually maturing self-understanding. If we committed ourselves to move beyond the comfort zone of our beliefs, build character, and deepen our sensitivity to spirit guidance, we would go a long ways towards halting the current negative trend in the moral health of society.

 

 

Marriage and family life represents the highest potentials in human nature, simultaneously providing the ideal avenue for the development and expression of the highest attributes of human personality. The home is the natural social arena wherein the ethics of brotherhood may be grasped by the growing children. The family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in which parents and children learn those lessons of patience, altruism, tolerance, and forbearance which are so essential to the realization of unity among all people. 

 

We can continue making excuses for failing our children and continue patching the system to make up for the lack of effective parenting, but personal denial and indifference will only take us so far. Progress is impossible when the art of living: truth, beauty, and goodness in human experience - has reverted to the simple urge of living: the attainment of the satisfaction of present desires.  We stand at a crossroads. Are we willing to intentionally elevate our attitudes and interactions with our family, friends, and colleagues, or is this someone else’s responsibility because we believe we live our lives just fine?  The state of the family unit in our society will faithfully continue to reflect back to us our judgment.