Henry Potrykus, Ph.D., senior fellow at the Marriage and Religion Research Institute at FRC was recently interviewed by North Carolina Family Policy Council President Bill Brooks on his radio show, “Family Policy Matters” this week. Henry discussed his new report, “Our Fiscal Crisis: We Cannot Tax, Spend, or Borrow Enough to Substitute for Marriage.”
Did you know that only 45 percent of American children will grow up in an intact family?
Everyone wants to belong, but American family culture has become a culture of rejection. 55 percent of children in the U.S. will see their parents reject one another by the time they reach 18, either through divorce, separation, or choosing not to get married.
To add to the injustice, the misery of family brokenness is concentrated in specific areas; it’s most often inflicted on teens living in urban areas, with high-minority or less educated, less affluent populations.
Rather than being raised in a culture of belonging—a family where parents love and respect each other, and children feel safe, loved, and secure—these teens grow up with an example of marital brokenness and rejection, and the effects are profound.
Children who grow up in broken families are at greater risk of poverty or dependence on welfare, enjoy less academic achievement and social development, suffer more accidents and injuries, and have worse mental health, more behavioral problems, and worse relationships with their parents.
And the effects for individual communities and the nation as a whole are just as profound. The Index of Belonging and Rejection shows that the root of the problem is an improper understanding of the male-female relationship. We’ve forgotten what it means to belong.
As a culture, we need to restore the husband-wife relationship. Help end rejection. Foster belonging.
In the latest Mapping America, the National Survey of Family Growth shows that women who grew up in married intact families and who now worship weekly are the least likely to have had two or more cohabitations in their lifetime.
In the latest Mapping America, the National Survey of Family Growth shows that women who did not grow up with their biological mother and father and who worship less than weekly are much more likely to engage in homosexual conduct as adults than are women who grew up in an intact family and who worship at least weekly.
