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News

“Problem families” cost British taxpayers £9 billion per year

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From the UK Telegraph. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

The majority of Britain’s “problem families”, some of whom are blamed for last summer’s riots, are fatherless, official research has found.

About 72,000 of the most troubled families, 60 per cent of those being targeted by the Government, are headed by a single mother. The rate is about triple the national average.

An official review into the causes of last summer’s riots is expected to highlight the lack of “male role models” for many of the youths arrested in the wake of the widespread disturbances.

The riot panel, set up to investigate the problem, is thought to have become frustrated that few details of the family backgrounds of problem children have previously been recorded, despite it being such an important influence on their behaviour.

The issue has now quickly risen up the Prime Minister’s agenda and Downing Street aides believe that family breakdown is one of the most urgent problems facing Britain.

Last night, Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, said: “These troubled families are in total breakdown.

“The absence of a positive father figure is a huge problem and often the fathers who are present have severe drug and alcohol addictions and are not working.

“Clearly we want to work towards a situation where the fathers in these families provide stability, which means getting them back to work, so they can bring in money and be a positive role model to their children.”

It is understood that another “problem” identified among the troubled families is the large number of children. About 20 per cent of the 120,000 families have at least five children, which can lead to a lack of parental attention.

That’s about $15 billion U.S. dollars per year. The cost of family breakdown in the United States is $112 billion per year, and rising as the illegitimacy rate rises.

Reconstructing marriage

We need to stop the destruction of marriage to stop these runaway costs.

One of the ways to do that is to encourage men to marry. But the problem is that men without fathers in the home will not be as likely to marry, since they have never seen the way that a man operates in a marriage – as a protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. Men need to see an example of mature, married love that is different from lust – an example of steady self-sacrificial service. The more we subsidize the destruction of marriage, the fewer younger men will understand what marriage really requires of men at the experiential level.

But there is another problem. Where does this money for social programs come from? It comes from businesses and taxpayers. In particular, a lot of it comes from working men and their employers. When business taxes and income taxes go up to pay for this problem, it is much harder for men to bear the financial costs of marriage.

Young women, take note: if you do not do your part to fight against divorce and unwed motherhood, then you cannot complain that men are not marrying. To get men to marry, society has to have in place a framework of laws, policies and economic incentives that make marriage natural and inviting to men. Taxing employers and incomes is not the right way to encourage men to marry. If we want men to be providers and to take responsibility for families, then we need to encourage them and make it easier for them to do those things.

Christians ought to care

Christians have an extra reason to be opposed to divorce and unwed motherhood – Christianity is “appropriated” by children most when there is a father in the home who is engaged as moral and spiritual leader. That means when the mother lets the father lead on moral and spiritual issues.

Excerpt:

In 1994 the Swiss carried out an extra survey that the researchers for our masters in Europe (I write from England) were happy to record. The question was asked to determine whether a person’s religion carried through to the next generation, and if so, why, or if not, why not. The result is dynamite. There is one critical factor. It is overwhelming, and it is this: It is the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children.

If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers, and 41 percent will end up attending irregularly. Only a quarter of their children will end up not practicing at all. If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars. Thirty-eight percent will be lost.

If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly. Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church.

Let us look at the figures the other way round. What happens if the father is regular but the mother irregular or non-practicing? Extraordinarily, the percentage of children becoming regular goesupfrom 33 percent to 38 percent with the irregular mother and to 44 percent with the non-practicing, as if loyalty to father’s commitment grows in proportion to mother’s laxity, indifference, or hostility.

Women who are serious about serving God with their marriages should therefore get very comfortable with the idea with having a man in the home who will lead on moral and spiritual issues. I recommend that women prepare themselves by studying things like Christian apologetics, politics, economics, etc. so that they are able to test men on their knowledge of these things. There is simply no other way to know if a man can lead on moral and spiritual issues. The woman must study these things, and the woman must detect and select men who can lead. She must have enough of a developed, integrated Christian worldview in order to test his worldview. This is especially important if her own father does not have a well-developed worldview, since she will have to do more of the testing herself.

Christian women need to become comfortable with men who are solid on moral issues, especially when they can be persuasive using reason and evidence when articulating their views. Christian women need to become comfortable with men who are solid on exclusive truth claims, especially when they can be persuasive using reason and evidence when articulating their views. And the best way to get comfortable with men being bold and assertive on moral questions and truth questions is for women to study these things themselves.

Just as an example, I know a Christian woman who a year ago who was not using the standard arguments for God’s existence from physics. She sent me some pictures of her bookshelves and they are literally filled with apologetics books. She sent me a snippet of a conversation she is in with an atheist scientist and she is pounding him with peer-reviewed articles from science journals showing how the progress of science supports theism. Women need to be like that so that they are capable of recognizing and preferring men who will lead.

What church leaders don’t seem to get is that a man’s ability to lead on moral and spiritual issues is not strong enough if it is merely based on his “”faith” opinions. Moral and spiritual leadership is stronger when it’s grounded by studying the data and becoming familiar with the evidence pro and con. There is no shortcut to being a moral and spiritual leader through Bible reading, singing and praying. More is required. And more is required of women who expect to be able to be comfortable with such a man. Women need to study these things themselves, like my friend, so that they are able to recognize and prefer men who have those required skills.

To encourage marriage, we have to be practical. We have to think about dollars and cents. We have to think about incentives. We have to put ourselves in the place of men and ask ourselves: what does it take to make you commit? What are your needs? What are your fears? It’s not going to work to just order men around and spout slogans like “man up”. It’s a problem and it needs a rigorous engineering/economics approach to solve. We need leaders who think about problems as engineers and economists, not as charismatic speakers.

Commentary

Research paper explains why college students abandon courtship for hook ups

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This study is from the Institute for American Values. It was done by Elizabeth Marquardt.

The PDF of study is here.

If you download the 88 page PDF, the first few pages are an executive summary.

I’d been exposed to this research before when I read Dr. Miriam Grossmann’s book “Unprotected”. (Boundless review here) I just got Dr. Miriam Grossmann’s new book “You’re Teaching My Child What?” and I also got Elizabeth Marquardt’s new book “Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce”. I don’t think either of them is conservative, but I like their research anyway.

There are a couple of things that really struck me about this IAV study on hooking-up.

First, this one from p. 15:

A notable feature of hook ups is that they almost always occur when both participants are drinking or drunk.

A Rutgers University student observed, “You always hear people say, oh my gosh, I was so drunk, I hooked up with so and so…” Perhaps not surprisingly, many noted that being drunk helped to loosen one’s inhibitions and make it easier to hook up. A number of students noted that being drunk could later serve as your excuse for the hook up. A Yale University student said, “Some people like hook up because they’re drunk or use being drunk as an excuse to hook up.” A New York University student observed, “[Alcohol is] just part of an excuse, so that you can say, oh, well, I was drinking.”

A Rutgers University student commented, “If you’re drinking a lot it’s easier to hook up with someone… [and] drugs, it’s kind of like a bonding thing… and then if you hook up with them and you don’t want to speak to them again, you can always blame it on the drinking or the drugs.”

Other women observed that being drunk gives a woman license to act sexually interested in public in ways that would not be tolerated if she were sober. For instance, a University of Michigan student said, “Girls are actually allowed to be a lot more sexual when they are drunk…”

A University of Chicago junior observed, “One of my best friends… sometimes that’s her goal when we go out. Like she wants to get drunk so I guess she doesn’t have to feel guilty about [hooking up].”

Some reported that drinking had led them to do things they later regretted. A University of Virginia student said, “My last random hook up was last October and it was bad. I was drunk and I just regretted it very much.”

And this one from p. 30 on the effects of hooking-up on their future commitments:

A few women did see an unambiguous connection between present relationships and future marriage.

[…]Many women either saw little or no connection between present and future relationships, or their understanding of this connection was curiously flat. A student at New York University said, “[The present and the future are] connected because I will still have the same values and principles that I have now, but I just won’t be single anymore.”A number of women said that the present and the future are connected because whatever heartache or confusion they experience now gives them lessons for the future.

A University of Michigan student said, “Early relationships prepare you for marriage because it’s like, oh, what type of person do I want to be with? Oh, I’ve had these bad experiences. Or, I’ve learned from this relationship that I should do this and I shouldn’t do this.”

A sophomore at Howard University said that “I am kind of learning from a lot of the mistakes that I have made.” At a further extreme, some women saw their future marriage as the reason to experiment widely in the present. A Rutgers University student said,“I think hooking up with different people and seeing what you like and don’t like is a good idea. Because eventually you’re going to have to… marry someone and I’d just like to know that I experienced everything.”

Although it is admirable to take risks and learn from one’s mistakes, these women would probably find it difficult to explain how having your heart broken a few or even many times in your early years — or trying to separate sex from feeling, as in hooking up — is good preparation for a trusting and happy marriage later on.

And on p. 42, we learn what women think marriage is and isn’t for:

For instance, in the on-campus interviews one student complained, “[With] marriage…you have to debate everything… Why do you need a piece of paper to bond a person to you? …But I know if I don’t get married I’ll probably feel like… [a] lonely old woman… If anything, I’d get married [because of] that.”

This student went on to say that she would be satisfied to live with a man, but added that, if the man was committed to her, he would offer to marry her, and that this was the kind of commitment that she wanted. A student at the University of Washington said,“I don’t want to get married right after I graduate from college. I just think that would stunt my growth in every way that there is. I would like to be in a very steady, committed relationship with a guy.”

And on p. 44, we learn that they like co-habitation, which increases the risk of divorce by about 50% (but they don’t know that):

In the national survey, 58 percent of the respondents agreed that “It is a good idea to live with someone before deciding to marry him.” This belief often coexists with a strong desire to marry, because it was embraced by 49 percent of the respondents who strongly agreed that marriage was a very important goal for them.

[…]Women we interviewed on campus reflected a similar range of attitudes about cohabitation. Some women thought that cohabitation was a good way to test whether one could spend a lifetime with a potential partner. In such cases, women often cited fears of divorce as the reason for trying cohabitation first. A senior at the University of Washington said, “I kind of don’t really see marriages work ever, so I want to make sure that everything’s all right before [we get married]. I don’t see how people can get married without living together because I know like I have a best friend and I live with her and we want to kill each other, like, every few months.”

Other women felt that, in an age of divorce, cohabitation was a preferable alternative to marriage. A student at New York University said, “You see so [many] people getting divorces… I just don’t see the necessity [of marriage].” She went on to say, “I think that I don’t have to be married to [the] person that I’m with…. You know like… Goldie Hawn [and Kurt Russell]? They’re not married.”

But let’s get back to the drinking and the hook-up sex…

Once a woman abandons femininity for feminism, then sex is all that she can use to get noticed by a man. Men are like hiring managers, and courting is like a job interview for the job of marriage and mothering. If a woman tries to get the job by having sex with the interviewer, he isn’t going to hire her since sex has nothing to do with the job. There are children involved, you know – he has to think of them when he makes the hiring decision. But women have been taught to think bad things about men (they’re rapists) and marriage (it’s slavery) by feminists – so they don’t even try to understand men, or to respect men, or prepare their character for being a wife and mother. Feminists just don’t understand that hard work is needed to understand men and prepare for marriage.

In a previous post, I explained how feminists wanted to get women to drink like men, have sex like men, and to abolish courtship and marriage. Under the influence of feminism and Hollywood celebrities, women began to choose men to have sex with without any consideration of morality, religion, marriage, etc. They thought that sex was an easy way to trick a man into committing to them without having to treat him like a real person, or to take the demands of marriage and parenting seriously. (They have been taught to value education and careers over husbands and children, you understand). This results in a cycle of binge-drinking, one-night-stands, cheating, co-habitating, breaking-up, stalking, aborting, etc., until the woman’s ability to trust and love anyone but herself is completely destroyed. And yet these college women somehow believe this is “adventurous”, that it makes them feel “sexy”, and that the experience of being selfish and seeing the worst kind of men acting in the worst possible ways, point blank, somehow prepares them for marriage and motherhood.

Often, a young unmarried woman’s biological father was NOT selected by her mother based on his ability to make commitments and moral judgments. Many feminists prefer men who do not judge women morally, nor impose his religion on her. But those very things that young unmarried  women today seem to dislike most about men, because they fear rejection on moral and religious grounds, are exactly the things that make men good husbands and fathers. They don’t want to be judged or led spiritually, so they choose immoral, non-religious men. Men who are not firm on morality and religion do cannot be counted on to act morally and self-sacrificially. And when they fail, and the marriages break up, the children grow up fatherless and may develop negative views of men.

Every young unmarried woman who chooses a bad man, and then has a bad experience with him is pushing away marriage with both hands. The more she destroys her ability to trust, love and care for others, the less she is able to be happy and effective in a marriage.

Mentoring

Study: 80% of single evangelicals aged 18-29 are no longer virigins

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Mary sent me this disturbing article from Relevant Magazine.

Excerpt:

[A] recent study reveals that 88 percent of unmarried young adults (ages 18-29) are having sex. The same study, conducted by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, reveals the number doesnʼt drop much among Christians. Of those surveyed who self-identify as “evangelical,” 80 percent say they have had sex.

[…]Of those 80 percent of Christians in the 18-29 age range who have had sex before marriage, 64 percent have done so within the last year and 42 percent are in a current sexual relationship.

In addition to having premarital sex, an alarming number of unmarried Christians are getting pregnant. Among unmarried evangelical women between the ages of 18 and 29, 30 percent have experienced a pregnancy (a number thatʼs actually 1 percent higher than among those who donʼt claim to be evangelical).

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of all pregnancies in America are unintended. And of those, 40 percent end in abortion. More than 1 million abortions occur in the United States each year. But perhaps the most disturbing statistic for the Church: 65 percent of the women obtaining abortions identify themselves as either Protestant or Catholic (37 percent Protestant and 28 percent Catholic). Thatʼs 650,000 abortions obtained by Christians every year.

The pregnancy stats are shocking to many—and the abortion stats horrifying— but the root problem is the willingness to have sex before marriage. Without sex, pregnancies and abortions donʼt happen.

If abstinence messages were actually working—and this generation of Christians was genuinely committed to saving sex for marriage—then the other issues would dwindle considerably.

If this generation wants to reverse the trend and reduce the number of Christians having premarital sex, the first step is trying to figure out why so few are waiting.

What do I have to say to this? Well, I am in my mid-thirties. I am chaste. In fact, I have not even kissed a woman on the lips, since I am saving that for when I get engaged. So I know how to be chaste and I know why I am doing it. I don’t see the value of sexual activity in a relationship. I don’t see how it helps me to achieve any deeper intimacy with a woman or to increase the probability of having a stable marriage that influences others and produces effective Christian children, which are my goals for marriage. I think the reason why people resort to sex in relationships is because they don’t have the same goals as I do for their relationships. They want recreation, and they think that marriage is a continuation of the fun they are having as singles. But I have a different goal for my relationships, and sex doesn’t fit into it my courting procedure.

What I do instead of sex is that I try to make Christian women read about apologetics, science, marriage, economics, parenting, foreign policy, politics, and so on. I try to undo the influence of non-Christian ideologies like feminism, socialism postmodernism, moral relativism, pacifism, etc. I try to get them to practice disagreeing and arguing with non-Christians so that they are more bold and persuasive in their witnessing. And finally, I try to provide them with a model of what a man should be, so that they find it easier to choose good ones and reject bad ones. All of this worldview development and debating tends to make them feel closer to God, because now they are able to serve him by understanding him and defending him in public. Premarital sex would not help any of my goals for women. I am not trying to have fun with them – I am trying to make them grow and be more effective.

The reason why most Christians don’t follow a plan like mine, and instead prefer sex is because they think that marriage is not a lifelong commitment with the purpose of serving God, but a recreational arrangement in which they will get their needs met without having to do anything. They go to church, they listen to sermons, they sing songs, and they have feelings about all of their churchy stuff. But they don’t really know what marriage is about or how to prepare for it or how to choose someone who will be a good mate. Rather than do the work, they try to short-circuit the process with sex, and then hope for the best. They trust their emotions and intuitions. They don’t want to take away the spontaneity of romance by sitting down and evaluating people to see if they really are Christians and whether they think of marriage as being about commitment and self-sacrifice as a way of serving God.

I do blame pastors for not educating women about how to prepare for marriage. I think the problem is that Christians pastors are too focused on reading the Bible, and not focused on integrating the Bible with external truth from history, science, etc. They stand at the front of the church giving speeches, but they never explain why what they are saying is true. Pastors are notoriously bad at apologetics – they tend to just drone on and on about things that they are not able to support evidentially. And the people listening just don’t bother to do it, since they are not persuaded that anything the pastor says is true. So, even if the pastors tell their flocks to get married and stay married, they don’t really convince why they ought to care what the Bible says, or how to achieve the goals set in the Bible through practical preparation and wise decisions.

I think that the right place to start with people on chastity is by showing them the costs for children who grow up in broken homes. Just studying that brings up the question: what should adults do in order to make sure that they don’t hurt children by being reckless and irresponsible? The answer is: adults should be chaste before marriage and then get married and be faithful and fulfill the roles or father/husband and mother/wife. And, adults should understand what laws and policies encourage or discourage people to get married and stay married, and vote for pro-marriage (anti-feminist) policies. All of the studying laws, policies, economics, etc. flows from that desire to do no harm to children. Even better than doing no harm would be to have a plan to have a marriage that will be a model to non-Christians while producing influential Christian children at the same time.

Who is supposed to explain why people should get married and how to prepare for marriage and how to select someone to marry and how to proceed with a courtship? Well, pastors are the ones who should know about these things. But they are often afraid to put moral boundaries on people who want to be guided by their emotions and the moral standards of their same-age peers and popular culture. And it’s not just a refusal to set moral boundaries and to prove them out using evidence – pastors also shy away from telling their flocks about how different laws and policies provide incentives and disincentives to people to either get married or not, or to stay married or not. How can people vote intelligently for a set of laws and policies that are marriage friendly when they never even think about such things? Pastors don’t want to annoy their flock, and they think that reading and thinking annoys their flock.

I think that we need to ask pastors to do a better job of integrating their Bible teaching with real evidence and arguments, and to integrate Christian values with laws and public policies that support those values, and to have real, practical advice on how to prepare for and execute courtship and marriage.

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