Decline of the Family and Importance of the Family Unit

What a fantastic first week learning more about the family!  I'm going to organize this post in subject sections so you can read what may be the most interesting to you.  There will be more information at first and then I'll talk more about how I'm applying this knowledge into my life.

Population Growth and Decline:
We hear a lot about the "Baby Boomers".  Are there more problems today because of the huge population increase in that generation?  Maybe, but there is no one single cause.
We do know that population growth contributes to depopulation because we use the resources of the Earth.  As a result, there are negative results on the economy and the world.  We need to be able to support the population of the world with the resources we are given.  We need to be able to budget the resources we have.
Before we focus on anything negative, it is important to note that population growth is not all bad, and population decline is not all good.  With a lower population comes a lower number of workers.  However, as the world progresses, we need higher quality work and more efficiency in work.  Children, who will grow to become the educated workers and leaders of tomorrow, become what you could call a valuable "commodity".

Individualism:
Individualism is one of the "revolutions" that has occurred in the last several years.  It is a focus on the self, the individual, that has developed in modern society.  We say that there is no need to depend on someone else.  All you need is personal strength and confidence.  Then you can find happiness on your own, focusing on your own perspective and way of thinking.  Thus, young people are focusing more on careers and less on marriage and family.  What will that do to the family?  Delaying marriage lessens the options available.  It is harder to have children and you will have fewer children.  There will be a lower quality of family life due to the career focus, which will potentially cause social and emotional problems in the children in these families.  Society begins to hurt socially and economically with smaller and lower quality families.

Women's Revolution:
The Women's Revolution comes somewhat before the others.  Around the time of World War II, women began entering the workforce more because all the men were away at war.  They were given more opportunities to have a career, which they held onto.  Women began to take more control over their lives, making decisions for themselves.  With higher education for women came lower fertility rates.  Less women wanted children as they developed their own career.  What I would say was one of the most important aspects of this revolution is that women were making decision for themselves more often than before, which helped contribute to the Sexual Revolution.

Sexual Revolution:
This revolution saw women take more control over their intimate life decisions.  Birth control was more widely accepted and sex began to be separated from reproduction.  Now people could have intimate relations with whoever they wanted with no obligation to be married.  They could just take birth control to avoid pregnancy.  The idea of marriage changed.  The basis for marriage, and therefore family, as ordained by God began to erode.

Divorce Revolution:
Along with the other things that were happening around World War II, there was a divorce revolution.  There were more divorces due to infidelity and other causes.  The "no fault divorce" law didn't help anything.  It only allowed people to seek a divorce for seemingly no reason at all other than they no longer wanted to work together for their family.  As divorce rates increased, the quality of family relations decreased.  It is clear, from the observations and evidence we have seen, that the family is an important, if not central, unit in society.  If we lose families and the quality of families, we will lose many blessings and benefits we have thus far enjoyed in life.

Influences/Effects on the Family:
It is very difficult to overcome the disadvantages we have seen in families since all the above revolutions have occurred.  There are greater disadvantages in unmarried households.  There is a higher abuse rate, higher incarceration rate, higher rate of expulsion from school...  Overall, there is less preparation to make good, solid contributions to the economy or to society.
We clearly need to protect and strengthen the family so we can begin to heal the negative effects we already see.  If we want to increase the quality of life, quality of support and the quality and amount of resources and opportunities, we need to nurture and support every family.  In the family we see the next generation, the next leaders in the world.  People understood the value of the family in the early 1900s, but today we have lost sight of what is truly important: the family.

Are There Solutions?
Here's the problem: family decline → fertility decline → economic decline.
Can we find a good solution to this problem?  What I see is that educating people about the TRUTH is important.  If people understand how the world and how society works in this world, they will understand how important good families are, whether or not they are religious.
The attack we see on the family is strong, and the family is getting weaker, but that is NOT good!  We need to find ways to strengthen and protect the family to the best of our ability.
One idea is to create policies that strengthen the family and protect this important unit in society.  Maybe then the quality of families in the modern world will increase.  When families are strong, people are happier and more productive in the things they do.
Another idea is to better budget the resources we have in order to do more things to support and strengthen the family.

The BIGGEST thing that can help, however, is if YOU and I do whatever we can, within our capability and power to have a good family in our life and protect and support those who have families as well.  We can strive to educate those around us who may not fully understand the impact a healthy, happy family has in society.

I makes me so sad to see how the family is being attacked and destroyed.  We need the family unit to survive as a society!

I invite whoever is looking at this blog post, whoever may see it even at a glance, to understand the importance of family and then act to strengthen and support the family unit as best you can, anywhere you can.