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American Family Decline
H/T Rod Dreher
The New York Times has an interesting article on a regional divide in the integrity of the American family:
“When it comes to family arrangements, the United States has a North-South divide. Children growing up across much of the northern part of the country are much more likely to grow up with two parents than children across the South.
It’s not just a red-blue political divide, either. There is a kind of two-parent arc that starts in the West in Utah, runs up through the Dakotas and Minnesota and then down into New England and New Jersey. It encompasses both the conservative Mountain West and the liberal Northeast. …”
Here are the shocking numbers of children who live in two parent families in the South with their married, biological parents:
Missouri: 43%
Kentucky: 42%
Arkansas: 37%
Oklahoma: 39%
Tennessee: 40%
West Virginia: 41%
Maryland: 46%
Virginia: 48%
North Carolina: 42%
Texas: 45%
Louisiana: 36%
Mississippi: 32%
Alabama: 38%
Georgia: 39%
South Carolina: 39%
Florida: 41%
In other words, a majority of children who are growing up in the South no longer live in a stable household with their married, biological parents. Despite the headline, the North isn’t doing so much better. The White family is collapsing there too, but there are a fewer blacks, which skews the numbers.
Here are some of the strongest Northern states:
Minnesota: 56%
Utah: 57%
Massachusetts: 52%
Nebraska: 55%
Kansas: 49%
Half of children in overwhelmingly white Kansas are now growing up in households without their married, biological parents.
Can what to we attribute this stunning decline in the traditional American family? I answered that question in my reviews of Andrew Cherlin’s The Marriage-Go-Round, Marilyn Yalom’s A History of The Wife, and Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, a History. The American case is part of a trend found in all Western countries.
(1) First, it is due to the rise of the mass media in the mid-twentieth century, and the emergence of a global popular culture that was only made possible by the advent of film, radio, television, etc.
(2) Second, it is due to the unusual concentration of secular, leftwing Jews at the apex of the mass media – film, radio, television, social media, etc. – in both Europe and the United States.
(3) Third, it is due to recent changes in the nature of Western marriage, an institution which had previously regulated sex, which was fundamentally about procreation and inheritance, and which placed the interests of society above the individual, but which is now thought to be about “love” and individual self fulfillment.
(4) Fourth, and most importantly, it is due to the invasion of the Christian household, an arena which was considered off-limits to the public by law and custom until the mid-twentieth century, by the forces of Americanism, otherwise known as liberalism. Basically, what has happened is that the doctrine of Americanism, which privileges individualism, equality, freedom, and self expression over all other values, which comes into the household through books, movies, the television, has triumphed over the claims of society and its interest in preserving the established social order.
In such a way, the Christian household (like the integrated public schools) has become another test tube for experimentation with equal rights, individual freedom, self expression, etc. That’s why we have had this explosion in miscegenation, abortion, gay marriage, childlessness, divorce, single parent households, etc. A thousand deviant flowers have bloomed because the freedom, equality, and self expression of the rights bearing individualist is now a trump card that beats any other compelling social interest.
(5) Fifth, the state assumes responsibility for subsidizing all these proliferating lifestyles because egalitarianism holds that no lifestyle is better or should be privileged above any other, except in the case of racists.
Note: Rod Dreher’s blog has been excellent lately. I have started reading it on a daily basis. He seems to have either recently awakened to the destructive nature of Americanism or has become a lot more honest in writing about it.
I attribute this sudden change to giving up on the Republican Party and the American political system after Indiana. Some scales have fallen from eyes. Eventually, we will see if Rod’s alienation from Murika takes him all the way, or whether he will retreat from his present course in order to maintain his “mainstream” respectability.
Ann Coulter has also been flirting with heresy in her latest book on immigration. Unlike Dreher though, Coulter seems to still be interested in telling the GOP how to win elections. Dreher has realized that won’t change anything, that his “mainstream” days are numbered, and that Christians are next in line to board the bigot bus.
Source: http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2015/06/11/american-family-decline/
