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Perhaps the hundreds of efforts by professional pundits to help us understand the tragedy visited last month on Newtown, Conn., will serve to teach us an important lesson—things like that don’t happen for just one reason. Many commentators have a piece of the puzzle or have accurately described a symptom of the larger problem, but they do not look deeply enough. Such horror will not then have one simple solution. More money or legal support for the mental health industry will not be the magic pill. Neither will adding to our already voluminous laws regulating the manufacture, distribution, and ownership of firearms. Our challenge is much more difficult than laws or budget allocations can begin to address.
During my lifetime and memory our culture has changed its mind about some things. I remember when we had cigarette commercials on television, when pretending to be drunk was a staple of some comedy routines, and when there was a stigma attached to some kinds of sexual behavior. About the same time that cigarette commercials were banned from TV, the first primetime program showed a main character, a hero, living with a girlfriend without benefit of marriage. Sexual immorality was certainly not new to entertainment media but in this context, the normalized portrayal of this behavior was novel … for a little while. In those days, a girl who was pregnant out of wedlock was “in trouble” and a divorced family was a “broken home.” Jump forward a few years. Now, a movie is rated PG if a main character smokes; public intoxication is not rare but also not exactly respectable; sexual behavior has become a casual matter; high school kids throw baby showers for one another; and marriage is fairly optional for the rearing of happy healthy kids—at least in pop culture. The facts are a bit more stark.
Those who follow their celebrity heroes into divorce and serial marriage find that it’s not as much fun as it seemed. Divorce is the number one cause of poverty among women and children. Most children who live below the poverty line live with single or divorced mothers. Boys who live with single mothers are significantly more likely to be depressed, friendless, act up in school, drop out, get in trouble, engage in criminal activity, and go to jail. Girls who live without benefit of a biological or adoptive father are likely to have an unreasonable self-image, act out sexually, and go with boys who will treat them badly. Kids who grow up this way are more likely to become parents who divorce, are poor, etc. Ninety percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes, as are 63 percent of those who commit suicide.
Yes, America has a higher ratio of legally owned firearms to population than other countries. We also lead the world in the percentage of mother-only families. Perhaps the radical individualism and sense of personal liberty that leads to the first fact also impacts the second.
How do children learn how to relate to the opposite sex except by watching their parents? How do kids learn how to deal with other people at all unless they have involved and positive interaction with a dependable woman who will tend to nurture them and a dependable man who will tend to challenge them toward independence and achievement? Kids who live with both parents even develop a higher IQ than do those who live with only one parent. Pastor, does this call to mind any occasion when a troubled couple told you that they were divorcing “for the good of the children?
Reversing the trend in our culture away from healthy and lifelong marriages doesn’t sound as simple as allocating more money to counsel troubled young people. In fact, I can imagine us doing the latter but cannot imagine how difficult it would be to encourage healthy marriages and families.
But consider this: When some other social phenomenon is so solidly proven to be causative in negative outcomes, we tend to frown on it, big time. We begin to vilify those who encourage it or who profit by it. Think again of the way we think of drug dealers or cigarette companies, even the way we often portray the users of those products. Is it your impression that our society discourages divorce or single motherhood? In some cases we’d have to admit that our churches do not do enough to support strong marriages or encourage traditional families. No-fault divorce has resulted in a rapid increase in the number of broken families, poor kids, and emotionally disadvantaged adults, as well as an industry that would fight tooth and nail to preserve these harmful laws.
So last December a troubled young man who lived without a father, spent his days alone with video games, and who seemed unable to make friends, murdered his single mother and then destroyed 20 grade school kids. Is it reasonable to blame this event on too few mental health resources and too many guns? Regardless of how you answer that question, it is clear that our continued scorning of traditional families is reaping a bitter harvest in America.
