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LESSON 1: What are True Family Values?

This lecture outline appears in the midst of the national debate on Family values. What exactly are Family values? According to Webster's Dictionary, a value is something, as a principle or quality, intrinsically valuable or desirable. The common expression, family values, then, would mean those principles or qualities associated with the family which are intrinsically valuable or desirable.

The obvious family value, then, would be love. Others might include care, acceptance, intimacy, commitment, shared responsibility, and so forth. To call these family values would be to say that all people find love, care, acceptance and so forth Intrinsically valuable or desirable. And of course, all people do desire these things; this is what makes us human. And everyone seems to affirm that something called family values will help our society. Thus everyone from Catholic bishops to homosexual activists endorse something called family values.

However, we will use the term, true family values. We do this because there is something missing from the consideration of values alone. What is missing is a sense of good and evil, of what is healthy and what is unhealthy, or of what leads to prosperity and what leads to misery. The term is so general that it is meaningless.

For instance, we can be sure that both saints and murderers desire care and acceptance. Both virgins and adulterers surely desire love and commitment. Espousing family values alone has no relationship with what people actually do. The cry for family values does nothing to improve the safety of the streets or the sanctity of society. It does not even answer the question, What is a family? This is why we must examine the question of true family values.

To accomplish this, we are developing the notion of values beyond simple reverence of love, care and acceptance. We believe that to have meaning, our values must define both norms and goals. Our values should enlighten us as to the behaviors or actions which lead to the accomplishment of those norms and goals. Therefore we need more than values; we need principles for the growth of love, through which we can achieve our shared goals, such as freedom, peace, unification and happiness.

We put forth the following seven principles, which we believe bring about the growth of love:

These principles clarify the essence of family values. Their study reveals why the family is a subject of universal interest, is so controversial, and is of crucial importance to the future of our world. More than that, these principles are stepping stones for our families and communities to achieve that which we most value: the growth of love.

A. All social problems begin with family problems

1. Family life is breaking down in America: It has been called The fraying of America's moral fiber (New York Times, Feb. 11, 1996).

2. Evidence of family breakdown.

Divorce: From 1901 to 1970, the divorce rate increased by 700%. 60% of American families are in danger of divorce. Within six months of their marriage, 50% of newlyweds begin to doubt the marriage will last, 39% report Big fights at least once a week and 4% had already separated for at least one night. Today, 62% of Americans over 20 are married; 20 years ago it was 72%.
Illegitimate children: In 1989, 28.5% of women giving their first birth were not married; nearly 40% were unmarried when the child was conceived. Today, almost one third of live births are to single women; this figure has risen every year since 1952. 66% of all black children in the inner cities are illegitimate. 1.2 million children per year are born into fatherless homes. 85% of teenage fathers abandon the girls they impregnate.
Broken homes: In 1970, 87% of all family households in the U.S. were headed by married couples; by 1990 the number had decreased to 79%; today it is far less. Today, 36% of American children grow up without a father; 20 years ago, only 17% did. Twenty-five million children return from school to find no parents at home; they are both working. Over 25% of American children live in single-parent households. In 1960, 243,000 children were living with a single parent who had never married; by 1993 this figure had risen to 6.3 million.
Child abuse: Each year, 2.5 million children are the victims of domestic violence. A child is sexually abused on the average of every two minutes; 7,123 child abuse incidents reported daily. One in twenty American children is a push-out or throwaway.

3. Social ills which result

Economic ills: The cost of teenage pregnancies in 1985 alone was $16.65 billion, paid through welfare benefits. One study on the cost of crime estimated that in 1984 the total cost of crime to victims at 92.6 billion dollars. This did not include larger costs of crime to society, such as lost sales, because people are afraid to go out shopping, lost jobs, when businesses leave crime-ridden neighborhoods, and lost tax revenues, when sales, businesses, and jobs no longer exist.
Effect upon health: Married people live 10 years longer than single people, who are more likely to be overweight and get cancer. In 1992 there were 37 abortions for every 100 live births in America. In the last twenty years we have triple digit increases in STDs and AIDS.
Sexual promiscuity: Two-thirds of American 10th graders have engaged in sex; one-third have sexual intercourse regularly. Everyday in America, 8,441 teenagers become sexually active, 2,756 teenage girls become pregnant, and 1,100 teenage girls have abortions. 20% of full-blown AIDS cases are contracted by teenagers.
The effect upon youth: Since 1960, the juvenile crime rate is up 600%. 135,000 teenagers bring a gun to school daily. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers (one attempt every 80 seconds). A 1994 study by Duke University reported that family breakdown is the main cause of suicide by young males. There are 600,000 child prostitutes, boys and girls, in the U.S. An estimated 4,000 young persons are kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered each year.
Crime and poverty: Since 1960, the rate of violent crime has risen over 300%, sexually-transmitted diseases are up 200%, economic productivity has dropped by 90%. In Los Angeles County, gang murders ran about 1,000 a year in the mid-1990s. 5,000 violent crimes are reported daily in America. In 1990, more than one third of all murders were committed by someone under the age of 21. 54% of Americans see homeless people in their community or on the way to work; 29% observe the sale of illegal drugs in their community or on the way to work.

4. Civilizations fall as a result of family breakdown. Rome fell as a result of this problem. American society is like the latter days of the Roman Empire. The family is the basic unit of our society, and it has a cancer. And yet the components of the cancer, illegitimacy, promiscuity, adultery, increased divorce, homosexuality, are accepted as lifestyles and even exalted. (Cited in William F. Buckley, Family breakdown is a crime, Washington Times Weekly Edition, Feb. 19-25, 1996) America will fall, just as surely as Rome did. America, like Rome, suffers from:

Family breakdown. According to a 1989 report on America's young people, entitled, Code Blue, . . . the challenges to the health and well-being of America's youth are not primarily rooted in illness of economics. Unlike the past, the problem is not childhood disease or unsanitary slums. The most basic cause of suffering in our youth today is profoundly self-destructive behavior
Hedonism, a materialistic, individualistic, pleasure-seeking culture. Gambling, corruption of advertising, debt rather than savings, entertainment industry. In its report on the state of marriage in America, The Council on Families observed, In the domain of marriage and family life, our recent explosions of freedom have taken a terrible and largely unexpected toll. Relationships between men and women are not improving, they are becoming more difficult and more unhappy. Many women are experiencing chronic economic insecurity. Many men are isolated and estranged from their children. Many more people are lonely.
Corruption of religious life (adulterous clergy, homosexuality condoned, child abuse by priests). The Christian spirit is superficial (divisiveness, racism, lack of ability to solve social problems despite large numbers of professing Christians and great wealth of the churches).
Excessive governmental power, with the expectation that politics and economics will solve social ills. Special interest groups, political factions, high taxes, deficit spending, ethic of entitlement.

In our next lesson we will look at the reasons family breakdown, which at first glance seems to be a private matter, has such a terrible effect upon society in general.

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