Re-valu-ing the American Family, Part Seven: The Crisis Continues—How Family Problems Cause Social Problems

by Richard and Linda Eyre
(www.valuesparenting.com)

Common sense as well as irrefutable statistics tell us of the connections between the breakup of marriages and breakdown of families and the savage increase in our nation's social problems. But which is the cause and which is the effect?

Note: In this sixteen-part column, Richard and Linda Eyre explore the recent revolution of the family from the honored centerpiece of society to a disrespected and seemingly redundant appendage to the larger corporate and cultural institutions of our new world. Re-valu-ing the family, the Eyres believe, is the only alternative to America's demise. The sequence of the column is: A. Re-valu-ing the family (part one); B. The "crux" (parts 2 and 3 -- why family is the foundation for everything, including happiness); C. The "curse" (parts 4 and 5 -- the social problems that plague our society today); D. The "crisis" (parts 6 and 7 -- the breakdown and breakup of families that allows and leads to the social problems); E. The "cause" (parts 8 and 9 -- the reasons our families are failing); F. The "culprits" (parts 10 and 11 -- how our new, large institutions are destroying the small, most basic institution of family); G. The "cure" (parts 12, 13, and 14 -- what you as a parent can do about it); and H. The "case" (parts 15 and 16 -- a case for government and big corporations to pay more positive attention).

Social Problems / Family Problems
The ever-growing evidence of statistics (see last week's column) combines with straightforward logic to help us understand that social problems are never really solved with social programs. The solution lies in stronger families.

Common sense as well as irrefutable statistics tell us of the connections between the breakup of marriages and breakdown of families and the savage increase in our nation's social problems. But which is the cause and which is the effect? Are social problems ravaging our families or are bad marriages and bad families making social problems inevitable?

Both.

Of course it is both. The two-way arrow between the macro of societal social problems and the micro of personal family problems is obvious. In classic chicken-and-egg style, more of one breeds more of the other, and more of the other breeds more of the one.

But chicken-and-egg dilemmas are not entirely imponderable or unsolvable. In fact the metaphor is perfect for this discussion. Viewing social problems as the chicken and ineffective, uncommitted dysfunctional families as the egg should make it clear that we must focus our efforts on the micro if we want to impact the macro. The "chicken" is running around, hard to catch, hard to effectively examine or fully diagnose, expensive and complicated to deal with. The egg is small, stationary, right under our noses, susceptible to our solution.

Social problems are as illusive as a wild, erratic chicken. We try to deal with them with more money, more police, more jails, more public education and more often than not we seem to make them worse. Eventually we bankrupt ourselves and exhaust our well-intentioned idea. Once the "chicken" is hatched -- out of the "egg" and into our court system, our welfare system, our legislative system -- it just becomes impossibly expensive. It is estimated that our country spends over $20 billion annually dealing with the "chicken" of teen pregnancy (the preventive programs, the educational decline, the abortions, the huge welfare payments to unwed mothers, and poverty children . . . the list doesn't stop). Similar "run amuck" scenarios exist with drugs, violence, abuse, gangs . . . with every social problem.

We have to reach the egg. Solutions lie in the home. The home-egg must be valued, prioritized, strengthened so that it produces solutions rather than problems, contributors rather than abusers, builders rather than wreckers.

Values and Families
Turning from the examination of a connection between negatives to a connection between positives . . . two obvious but important questions and one obvious but important answer: Do basic values strengthen and preserve families? Or do strong families teach and proliferate basic values?

Both. Of course, again, both.

But this time a positive and powerful synergy exists -- an ascending spiral of beneficial, mutual dependency. Strong families are based on and built on values of commitment, fidelity, dependability, honesty, loyalty, discipline, courage, love, self-reliance, respect, unselfishness, justice and mercy. And strong families also become the stewards, the safeguards, the preservers, and the bequeathers of those values. Strong families cannot exist without values. Values cannot endure without strong families. They are each other's lifeline.

Lately, in our society, the coupling of the two words has given us the political football of "family values." It is important to push that stereotype aside and concentrate on each word separately and on their overriding individual importance and dependence. Strong families and strong values are separate, absolute necessities which each requires the other. Re-valu-ing the Family, as mentioned earlier, has a powerful triple meaning. 1. We must revalue the family in terms of personally re-prioritizing our children, our parents, and our siblings, of re-enshrining our own families in our minds and in our commitments. 2. We must place ultimate value on families societally -- in our laws, our courts, our whole national, regional, and community outlook. And 3. We must re-value families in the same sense that we fuel a car -- by putting basic values more prominently back into our home, our commitments, our beliefs, and our everyday lives.

Connections to Society
"Values" and "Virtues" have become recent buzzwords, and instead of polarizing or dividing people, the call for stronger public and private morality has become the "solution" (political and otherwise) that seems to unite people. Our book, Teaching Your Children Values, hit #1 on the "New York Times" best-seller list in 1993 and William Bennett's Book of Virtues went to #1 in 1994. Many social observers believe the '90s will be known as the decade of renewed values awareness.

As America becomes more conscious of (and hopefully more committed to) basic values as the antidote for our social ills, we also begin to understand that our economic stability hinges on some individual and societal values.

Since values come principally from and through families, an accurate cause-and-effect diagram still starts with family.

The Third Connection
It is clear, then, that strong individual families must be built on sound basic values . . . and that strong individual families create a stable collective society.

Should there be a third arrow? Indicating society's responsibility for the values of its inhabitants?

Can't we teach saving, enduring values in our society at large -- character education in our schools, virtues in our literature, morality in our business and governmental institutions?

We can. But the arrow should remain a dotted line. There are always disconnects and debates and bureaucratic dilutions when large institutions try to do the job of the most basic institution. Values are personal and intimate and powerfully influential. They must be taught first and foremost in the most personal and intimate setting and the most powerfully influential relationship that is the home and the parent.

Two Additional Metaphors
If we take the rate of increase in our serious social problems (the escalating rate of increase in teen pregnancy, gang membership, etc.) and project it over the next decade or two, an already rushing river turns into a torrent, then into a flood, then into a waterfall. We are a nation adrift, sucking toward Niagara without rudder or oar, tiller or engine, without even a compass. Trying to solve these torrential social problems through our welfare programs or justice system is like trying to reverse the flow of water -- turn the current upstream -- away from the falls. We must learn that the worry is not the water; the worry is the boat and the people in it. The boat is the family. Give a family the engine of priority and commitment and, the tiller of values, and we can escape the current.

Having used the terms "symptoms," "illness," and "cure," the medical metaphor should be completed as a final summary of these connections.

America's severe social problems are painful, life-threatening symptoms. Family breakdown is the loss of health and resistance that makes us susceptible to the germs of negative values and the immune deficiency problems of declining values and false paradigms.

We can recover and reverse our symptoms by rebuilding the strength, immunity, resistance, and health of our families and by attacking the family-destroying germs with the antibodies of recommitment and values.

The cure begins as we understand the cause.

Next week in part eight: The "Cause" (the reason our families are failing).

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For more than a quarter century, as they have written a dozen books and raised nine children of their own, New York Times #1 best-selling authors Linda and Richard Eyre have tried to reach out to parents who really care --who are willing to put in the effort to create family infrastructures that fortify and safeguard their children and to undertake fun but challenging and involving monthly programs to teach their children values, responsibility, and "joy." More than 100,000 parents, worldwide, have become members of what they call valuesparenting.com. Their results, measured in the happiness and success of their children, have been remarkable.