*** Video Transcript Below...
Hi friends, this video is a follow-up to our video from last week, The Role of the Family Unit, and today we're going to talk about a Cornerstone of American Society: The Family.
Now I do want to do a quick review, just on a couple of things we covered in the last video, and then let's talk about why that Cornerstone is kind of crumbling.
The Founders saw the family unit as one that had a key role in creating a free society and family unit, their purpose and part of the process was to procreate and then to educate children who would become the next and future generations of free citizens able to manage and operate a self-governing society. Within that traditional family unit we saw the tendencies to produce the type of citizens who had an understanding of societal behavior, they had an understanding of financial stability, of maintaining physical health, of maintaining and strengthening a work ethic, of keeping morality, and then of understanding the importance of education and academic performance. All of those for the betterment of society in general. So in short, families better prepare people to take on the responsibilities of freedom and citizenship.
Here is the article we're referring to for this concept, "responsibilities of freedom and citizenship."
It's really important that we put that deep in our hearts because that's part of what's missing today. The decline of the family unit has seen these results in our culture and that's why I said at the beginning that we are seeing that Cornerstone start to crumble. Just think about the news reports you see and what you see going on in your own community and you'll definitely find, like I do, that there is a decline in the importance of the family unit.
Socio-economic disparity, okay, more people come from broken homes, they are less prepared for adulthood responsibilities resulting in a great deal of disparity in earning power and stability.
Educational disparity, you know, children, again, from traditional family units tend to be better educated. Children from broken family units tend to miss out on some of the educational process.
Fewer children are being born as cultural norms change, you know, as the vision of the family unit is dwindling. We're not birthing at a rate to replace our citizenship.
Fewer lasting relationships, of course, we see that: in divorce rates, in broken homes, we see the decline in the ability to maintain healthy relationships.
Less responsible parenting, oh my goodness, don't we see that! God bless the parents who are doing their best to raise great children because this is on the decline in our country. We're seeing it all around us, with criminal activities, with drug issues, a very sad state.
Less industrious people in the marketplace, and again we're seeing this in our culture, we're seeing that reliance on government to sustain a living standard that is just barely above poverty level instead of that desire to get out and go and produce and achieve and succeed.
The bottom line, with the decline of the family unit we're seeing less hope in our culture. Less hope in our society.
At the beginning of the video, I mentioned the word cornerstone and that this cornerstone in our society is decaying a little bit. Well, a cornerstone is by definition an important quality or feature upon which a particular thing depends or is based. It is a stone that forms the base of a corner of a building joining two walls. Now if you've done any building you know that a wall by itself doesn't stand very well, you need that angle to create strength. You need a cornerstone in a culture, in a society, as a foundational piece of strength. Think about that in regard to the family unit. If we allow the family unit to crumble our society is weakened considerably.
My question to you today is this, are the risks of devaluing the family unit worth it when we consider the effects on our society?