Here’s the problem:
Devastating new research by sociologist Geoff Dench shows that not only is one in four mothers single, but more than half of such mothers have never lived with a man at all and are choosing to live alone on state benefits.
[…]Back in the mists of time … relationships between men and women were based on a bargain between the sexes which, although never stated openly, everyone accepted as a given.
Women realised they needed the father of their children to stick around to help bring them up.
In turn, men committed themselves to the mothers of their children on the basis that they could trust they were indeed the father because the woman was sexually faithful.
Today, this bargain has been all but destroyed. A number of factors have conspired to make women and girls think they can go it alone without men.
The first has been that so many women work and are therefore economically independent. Next was the sexual revolution which saw women becoming as sexually free as men.
In short order, any stigma over having babies out of wedlock was abolished. Then there was the collapse of manufacturing industry, which deprived many boys of the job prospects which once made them an attractive, marriageable proposition.
Finally, the coup de grace was administered by welfare benefits to single mothers which enabled them to live without the support of their babies’ fathers.
The result of all this was that many women and girls decided they no longer needed their children’s fathers to be part of the family unit.
This has given rise to an increasing number of women-only households where fathers have been written out of the family script for three or four generations or more.
The consequences of such family disintegration – as is now indisputable – are in general catastrophic for both individuals and for society.
This problem will not be cracked, however, unless women come to believe once again that their interests lie in attracting one man to father their children and then stick with them. Which is where my proposal of a Man Benefit comes in.
Click here to find out what the “Man Benefit” is. This is a fine article, and every man and woman who wants to understand how big government government causes the destruction of the family should read it. Then forward it to all of your friends. I think that we have a problem today where we just don’t think intelligently about what it takes to have a good marriage. Does government help children to grow up in stable homes, or does government make it more likely for children to grow up in a broken home? What does the evidence say?
This column by Stephen Baskerville is a nice follow-up to Melanie’s article.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Big Picture: Our country is in a moral decline, a moral decay, even.
Historic view: Nations have been rising and falling for as long as we have documented history, and probably even before that.
We have the documented history of the nation of Israel from before they became a great nation, through the time of the Judges and Kings and on into it’s split and captivity. We’ve also seen it make a come back. And their history is full of the people falling into immorality which led to being oppressed by neighboring nations then returning to God and crying out to Him for deliverence and Him rescuing them.
The thing to note, when you read the O.T., is that God was after their hearts first, and then their minds/intellect.
Jeremiah was thrilled with the reforms that Josiah (the boy king) made during his reign until he realized that these reforms were outward and did not capture the hearts of the people. Jeremiah, often referred to as the Weeping Prophet, also wrote Lamentations where he laments over the nation of Judah being taken into captivity because God could no longer bless their immorality and apostasy.
I laid this foundation to make a point.
I’m very discouraged by the direction our nation is taking and if I’m reading this blog right, so are many here.
And I’m all for legislation that encourages rather than discourages the family. But I’m painfully aware that outward reforms and legislation are limited and don’t get to the core of the issue.
To continually insist that feminism and women are the problem is to be ignorant of the source of moral decline. There was no feminism back in Jeremiah’s day. There was no feminism in the fall of the Roman Empire. Blaming women and their actions as the main or sole cause of our present moral decay is to miss the point entirely.
I believe the family is an important part of a healthy nation. But reducing it to the most base, human, cultural bargain is to miss God’s best.
God has far higher ideals for the family and marriage than that.
Do you mind if I give you a Bible verse I’ve been meditating on lately?
Psalm 89:14 Rightousness and justice are the foundation of Thy throne; Lovingkindness and truth (faithfulness) go before Thee.
We, male and female, are made in God’s image. He should be our foundation. Him as our foundation should include rightousness (doing right) and justice. And we, like God, should be displaying lovingkindness and truth (or faithfulness).
We should be founded in and displaying the above things as individuals AND our marriages should be founded on righteousness and justice. Our marriages should be displaying lovingkindness and truth and faithfulness. It should originate in our hearts due to our connection to God as our source, the True Vine.
I understand the feeling for the need to make rules to try to stop the decay. But I want to make others aware of something.
Though the intellect and reason, planning and action are important, the best plans will fall flat in the face of a nation hell-bent on living without God and His morals.
Both men and women are guilty of this, not just the women. In fact, the women are learning from and taking their cues from the men. Sexual promiscuity is highly rewarded in our present culture.
Men and women cannot handle the freedom democracy gives them, at least not without God. They look upon this freedom as a ‘go light’ to sin. As an entitlement, forgetting all about the responsibility that comes with such a great gift.
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