Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D.

If you visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., you will see in the lobby a large bronze sculpture of a woman playing with her three children.  That sculpture is called, “Happy Mother.” Consider the unspoken implication: the kids and that mother are “happy” . . . without a father in sight!

Nothing illustrates the peril to today’s children better than the philosophy behind that sculpture. Nothing more perfectly embodies the false values of today’s culture ––that a woman alone with her children is the archetype of happy motherhood. Yet, that myth –– that marriage is not necessary, fathers are extraneous –– is the basis of forty years of failure by the research communities to honestly report on the problems that are undermining the foundations of the family and devastating children’s well-being around the world.

Contrast the sculpture’s deceptive message with the timeless wisdom of the declarations issued by the World Congress of Families both in Geneva and Mexico: “Steadfast commitment in marriage provides the security in family life that is needed by children. Children are entitled to the complementary parental love and attention of both father and mother, which marriage bestows.”

After arriving in Washington, DC nearly two decades ago, my work centered on analyzing the social science data related to the functioning and well-being of families and children. While working at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, then at the White House, and later heading a non-profit think tank, I have studied the trends and correlations of a wide array of data series to understand the factors and policies that impact children’s well-being.

Nearly 20 years of analyzing the data have drilled into me, that when it comes to children, it is not just “good” to have a mother and father within a committed marriage; it is the very best!  Children need parents who establish a family, are jointly committed to their children’s well-being and give them unconditional love, nurturing, training, and discipline. Such parents meet their children’s basic needs for emotional connectedness. They provide sound moral and spiritual development that enables them to reach their fullest potential.

The conclusions that I have reached are in my latest book, due out this fall, called, Children at Risk. My findings are corroborated by a just-released study in England that scholars around the world are calling a “wake-up call for parents.” The British study declares that childhood in the United Kingdom is “under threat,” “toxic,” or “disappearing” and dares to assert that “moral and spiritual values” are a necessary foundation for children. They report that parents in the United Kingdom put status and success ahead of sacrifice; working mothers and absent fathers have children materially spoiled, frequently indulged but often ignored. Though showered with playthings and electronic gadgets, they are deprived of moral instruction and given no spiritual foundation. One newspaper summarized the report’s findings: “Our children are desperate for love, for time and for affirmation of their fragile self-esteem. Yet we too often substitute toys, TV and Facebook.”

What is true in the U.K. is certainly true in America, in Australia, Africa, Mexico, South America, Canada, and all across Europe.

Currently, about 40 percent of American children are born out of wedlock. Countries with a higher proportion of births to unmarried mothers include Iceland, Sweden, Norway, France, Denmark and the United Kingdom; countries with a lower percentage than the USA include Ireland, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy and Japan.  Here in the Netherlands, the percentage has increased ten-fold since 1980 when it was only 4 percent.

The major problems facing children today in all our countries are:  the breakdown of the family, the decline in marriage, negative cultural influences, and the erosion of Judeo-Christian values and morals as the foundation for nurturing children and building a strong society.  

I call your attention to three simple points: (1) Material prosperity cannot compensate for moral poverty, (2) Toxic cultural influences harm children, and (3) Family structure matters.

Without a doubt those convened here for the World Congress of Families believe that material prosperity cannot compensate for moral poverty. We all know that the family is the glue that holds our communities, society, and world together. But without the necessary maintenance, that glue is weakening and the moral foundation necessary for a humane, civilized, functional society is crumbling all around us. When the family becomes, not an inviolable sacred spiritual unit, but as many social scientists would have it, merely “any group of people living together,” there is no moral source to be the final authority in terms of standards of behavior. Children are left to find their own way; we see them drifting aimlessly in an “anything goes” culture.

The Geneva declaration of the World Congress of Families asserted without qualification or reservation, “[t]he natural family provides the optimal environment for the healthy development of children. . . . [Moreover,] The family is the child's first school, parents the first and most important teachers.” The family is where a child first learns what it means to “share and care,” to “take turns,” to be  an ethical, moral, and empathic person, one who will become a contributor to a good and prosperous society. Most moral qualities—such as a sense of responsibility and self-control, caring and respect for others, delayed gratification, compassion, sense of fairness, generosity, empathy, and honesty, among others—are not so much learned rationally through instruction as they are absorbed through seeing them modeled in everyday family life. In order to imbibe and internalize those moral qualities, children need to witness those characteristics day-in and day-out in the interactions, reactions, and relationships of the adults around them. How can they learn to trust or treat others fairly if they have little opportunity to see adults exhibit those qualities? Children miss out on critical moral development if they do not have the benefit of seeing essential moral qualities lived out in the efforts of their mothers and fathers doing the hard work of keeping their commitments to each other and to their children. For all these reasons, the family needs to be whole and healthy.

For nearly fifty years, opinion leaders have relentlessly advocated and modeled a self-indulgent life style, making it appear to be free of any negative consequences. Massive Playboy-style marketing efforts were launched aiming to persuade the public, young women in particular, that sexual self-restraint is “prudish” and unhealthy. No effort has been spared to promote a rose-colored view of promiscuity. Researchers of a certain stripe have produced an endless stream of studies obfuscating the causes of the social problems that common sense tells us are the direct consequences of self-absorption and exploitation of women and children.

Reality, however, cannot be suppressed. An ever-growing body of research documents the real-life consequences of promiscuous behavior, the breakdown of morality, and the dissolution of the natural family.

Moral boundaries, not moral relativism, provide a safe haven for children by preserving their innocence and protecting them from predators and pedophiles. When truth and goodness are not vigilantly upheld, error and evil flood in to take their place like the sea flooded the polder lands when the dikes were bombed during WWII. Without authentic moral absolutes, children are at risk. Dare we forget the lessons of Hitler’s Youth Movement or Mao’s Red Guards?  When parents and society throw authentic religious faith overboard, children are no longer safe. When the wisdom of the scriptures are no longer the institutional values unifying the populace, even the noblest ideals and most honorable intentions are doomed to failure.   

When the family disintegrates and marriage declines, the inevitable result is erosion in the quality of community life and a corresponding breakdown in social cohesion. A casual look at the world that our children inhabit reveals that the values vacuum has been filled by those who disparage traditional morality, virtue, and good manners. The result is moral decay, as vulgarity spirals downward into viciousness and base immorality.

Many children now face a senseless theft of their childhood because television and popular entertainment are producing a toxic cultural environment that is robbing them of their innocence, distorting their view of reality and undermining their character growth. An overview of contemporary entertainment enjoyed by children, teens, and young adults gives us a glimpse into what is thriving in today’s values vacuum. Rock music and pop stars are notorious for pushing the envelope with a hedonistic lifestyle and songs with misogynistic, crude, coarse, and shockingly vile lyrics. Cartoons, popular movies, and television programs portray parents as out-of-touch, old-fashioned, and prudish; defiant with rebellious children talking back to teachers and parents; patriotism, family traditions, and religion are treated with disdain. Children are regularly bombarded by derogatory media images of adults who exemplify traditional moral values; such adults are typically held in contempt, subtly mocked, or openly ridiculed as old-fashioned, priggish, and out-of-touch. Adults in positions of authority are regularly portrayed as buffoons that no one respects or admires. A favorite tactic of television situation comedies is to poke fun at bumbling, inept, and out-of-touch fathers.

This frequent portrayal of disrespect for family is especially harmful for children’s well-being because it calls into question their belief that parents know what is good and their innocent faith that their parents are able to keep them safe. By weakening children’s respect for their parents and other adult authority figures these messages encourage covert or overt rebellion, and tempt inexperienced youths to make far-reaching decisions or take huge risks with potentially costly consequences. When their bad choices create troubled or broken relationships, anger and alienation, they begin to taste, at too young an age, what it means to be isolated, unconnected and alone in facing the perplexities of life.  Increasingly, children grow up too fast—having too little time to experience normal childhood pleasures; and facing too many adult challenges before their emotions and reasoning powers have matured.

Over the past four decades, many researchers have sugarcoated the ill-effects of the flawed utopian family policies pushed by the so-called progressives. Now, reality is forcing them to open their eyes to the obvious fact that family structure makes a huge difference in children’s well-being.

One disastrous contemporary claim is that the married-couple –– mother and father family –– is outmoded and passé. Thus, children are often thrust into poverty when their parents reject marriage. When a single parent is overwhelmed with responsibility and obligations, as is often the case, or when parents are too consumed with their own ambitions or pleasures, children are neglected. Too many children are emotionally abandoned, abused, ignored, and their needs sacrificed when an immature single mother has to choose between a boyfriend, her addictions, and/or her fun and her children. Sometimes, children are merely pawns in the struggle between cohabiting partners or divorcing parents.

In analyzing these problems, we’ve seen that changes in grassroots attitudes and the cultural climate of a nation don’t just happen because research data indicates the necessity for such changes. It is glaringly obvious that government solutions are never enough to compensate for the breakdown of the family.

A sustained public effort is required in order to achieve needed social changes. Consider two efforts in America’s recent history that show dramatic success in producing broad cultural transformations. Their purpose has been to convince women not to smoke or drink alcohol during their pregnancies because of the potential danger to their babies. Subordinate campaigns sought to convince parents that second-hand smoke is damaging to children and that drinking and driving can be deadly. The results have been overwhelmingly positive.

First, these efforts to change public behavior were based on solid research data showing that certain behaviors produced negative health outcomes, especially for pregnant women and their unborn children.

Second, both campaigns for change included broad public relations efforts that focused on the whole nation and enlisted the efforts of a wide spectrum of opinion leaders, politicians, educators, entertainers, local pastors and religious leaders, celebrities, corporate moguls, journalists, experts, movie and television producers, policymakers, grassroots activists, artists, athletes, executives, and local community activists.

As a result of the campaign, most women who smoked and/or drank made every effort to stop when they became pregnant. Those pregnant women who did not and were seen smoking or drinking were no longer considered sophisticated, but were viewed as selfish, self-indulgent, and irresponsible. The researchers’ findings coupled with effective public relations efforts changed perceptions and cultural values. Women, seeing the threat to their unborn children, have changed their behavior.

The burning question we face today is whether the epidemic of single parenting is likewise amenable to influence by researchers’ findings and whether those who influence public opinion will support the effort to change those attitudes and behaviors that lead to the establishment of single-parent households where children face higher risks.

The research from the international scholars presented here at the World Congress of Families documents what actually works for children and youth in contrast to those experimental pipe dreams that have done so much to diminish children’s hopes and possibilities for a bright and promising future.

Let us be clear. If our children and grandchildren are to have a future, we must continuously maintain the dikes of truth and knowledge against the unending assault of the sea of fallacies, folly, and ideas as maliciously evil as Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy. We must identify what is good and true and constantly teach the wisdom of the ages. We must continue to reinforce the powerful declaration from the very first World Congress of Families, 1997 in Prague:  “The family is a “man and woman bound in a lifelong covenant of marriage, as ordained by God, for the purpose of . . . welcoming and nurturing of children.” 

You can speak up against the harmful effects on children of growing up deprived of the presence and support of a married-couple father and mother!

You can urge married couples to care enough about their children’s well-being to work through their problems together rather than try to escape by getting a divorce!

You can teach the risks that are involved for children living in a household without a married mother and father, so that young, single individuals choose marriage rather than have children out of wedlock and attempt to raise them alone!

You can work to change public attitudes on these contemporary issues so important to children’s well-being, using the research findings presented at this conference to be an advocate for children in your home country.

Our hope for the future is based on the dynamic we have experienced firsthand. When we exchange those first loving smiles with a tiny child, life’s true focus is revealed and we sense that there is no higher purpose and no greater joy than—in the words of the original World Congress of Families declaration—“welcoming and nurturing children.”