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Sam, that is true, but most of those children are young men – and there usually is no analysis of how many of those young men never had a father or a community of fathers in their lives. For example, there is a huge difference between a single mother raising her children as a widow, whose children knew the love and example of a good father, and a single, never-married mother with multiple children from different fathers, whose children never lived with or met their father(s) – or even knew who they were. There is almost as big a difference between a single, active, LDS mother (or any other traditional family centric community) whose children have multiple father-figures in their lives and a single mother with no extended “family” support. There also is a huge influence surrounding young women in those scenarios – especially in communities where the widespread example and expectation are no marriage, multiple children and a life on welfare.
I’ve spent enough time working in areas with large populations of various types of families to see the radical difference in general outcome for their children – so I really dislike it when I hear people at church making blanket statements about children in single-parent households, especially when there often are multiple (and sometimes many) such children listening to those comments. The people mean well, but those words can cut like a knife.
Let’s just say I have a little personal experience of this matter. Single parents are NOT good for a variety of reasons. Not for themselves, not for their children and not for society.
I’ll expand on why if anyone’s interested.
I agree that single-parenthood is not a good model – as a general model. I understand the difficulties and pressures and negatives. I’m just saying that there are cases where divorce, for example, is better than staying with a particular parent or when a loving, serving community can mitigate to a degree the loss of a parent – and that beating that drum continually in a congregation that includes sincere, single parents and their children constitutes a stick more than an appropriate lesson. Referencing an ideal is fine; soapboxing to the point of real pain is quite another matter.
My comment was not pointed at anything you said, necessarily. It simply was a point I wanted to make.
Single parenthood reduces potential income, and increases work and time burden on the parent, especially if there’s more than one child, It’s not a good start. It also creates massive problems if that parent falls ill and/or dies. I agree, Sam – completely. So why do I even care about this? One reason is that I just don’t believe the Brethren are making crap up about the last days. They are not just trying to scare us into submission. They are not the first to teach such things: 1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
(2 Tim. 3)
3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
(2 Peter 3)
There can be a lot of explanations for statistics, but it’s quite clear the many more children are growing up without a father in the home nowadays and that can’t be good. I have more stuff to bring up. A study published in 2005 found that:
-The number of sexual scenes on television has nearly doubled since 1998
-Among the top 20 most watched shows by teens, 70% include sexual content, and nearly half (45%) include sexual behavior.
-These shows average 5.0 sexual scenes per hour, compared to 56% and 3.2 scenes per hour respectively in 1998, and 64% and 4.4 scenes per hour in 2002
-About half of all scenes with intercourse (53%) involve characters who have an established relationship with one another. Fifteen percent of scenes present characters having sex when they have just met – up from 7% in 2002.
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia110905nr.cfm A study published in 2008 reported:
-Sex in the context of marriage is either non-existent on prime-time broadcast television, or is depicted as a burdensome rather than as an expression of love and commitment. By contrast, extra-marital or adulterous sexual relationships are depicted with greater frequency and overwhelmingly, as a positive experience
-Scenes depicting or implying sex between nonmarried partners outnumbered scenes depicting or implying sex between married partners by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1
-Today more than ever teens are exposed to a host of once-taboo sexual behaviors including threesomes, partner swapping, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, and sex with prostitutes
http://w2.parentstv.org/main/MediaFiles/PDF/Studies/Marriagestudy-PDF-4.pdf I understand there is a question about how much television really reflects society, but these things concern me. I don’t know how to quantify it, but it seems to me that our society is going insane over sex. I will post more later.
I agree, Shawn, that they aren’t making up crap and that there are areas where the world absolutely is in bad shape right now – but I also believe there are lots of ways that it is in better shape now than in the past. I also believe we hear much more about the bad all over the world due simply to the proliferation of media, when people throughout history weren’t aware of all the bad stuff happening outside their limited worlds. More than anything else, I think we tend to see what we believe – as opposed to believing what we see. That is the real answer to the title question, imo – that it depends on what we see and emphasize.
TV’s obsessed with sex. I often wonder if a lot of action films/TV are not the modern equivalent of gladiatorial combat.
Marriage is presented as bad/unhappy in many films/TV. This saddens me. One of the few fair representations of family life is The Simpsons. Alright, Homer is a bad husband/father, but at least he loves his family.
Old-Timer wrote:I agree, Shawn, that they aren’t making up crap and that there are areas where the world absolutely is in bad shape right now – but I also believe there are lots of ways that it is in better shape now than in the past. I also believe we hear much more about the bad all over the world due simply to the proliferation of media, when people throughout history weren’t aware of all the bad stuff happening outside their limited worlds.
More than anything else, I think we tend to see what we believe – as opposed to believing what we see. That is the real answer to the title question, imo – that it depends on what we see and emphasize.
Yes, there are many ways in which the world is better today. I confess I am pessimistic most of the time. I really like indoor plumbing. I like Pres. Hinckleys quote “The future is as bright as your faith.”I have heard many of the brethren say there is much good in the world and many good people, and that is true. I also believe there is a massive wave of disgusting, deplorable wickedness sweeping across the earth and it is going to get worse.
As to whether good or evil prevails, I think that society doesn’t create it. Each of us has great capacity within us for both good and evil. There are numerous psychological experiments that show this. I was also impressed in Victor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning when he shared two examples of people from the concentration camps. One had been a guard and committed unspeakable acts of cruelty, yet spent the years after the holocaust helping others in a hospital with no hope for remuneration. The other was a victim of the camps who had helped others in the camp and had lived to tell the tale. She was callous toward others after her release, senselessly trampling down a farmer’s crop because it was in her way, and excusing her behaviour with a “life’s not fair” attitude. We can always choose good or evil at any time. I think the past century has been one of unspeakable wickedness, murder and genocide. Wars have run into the hundreds and killed millions. Some of these wars you’ll never have heard of. Did you know for example that the war in West New Guinea has killed a hundred thousand people? When did you last hear anything about that? We’ve also obtained the potential to wipe all life off this world. We never had that before.
If you think it’s a long time ago, it’s not. The horrors and genocide in former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tibet etc are all within the current generation. Pol Pot and Mao’s cultural revolution, the overthrow of the Shah, Iran-Iraq war, the disappearances of thousands in South America were within the previous one. For each year since 1945, at least a million people have died in wars. It’s not over. Compared to this, a school shooting is a drop in the ocean.
Shawn wrote:So why do I even care about this? One reason is that I just don’t believe the Brethren are making crap up about the last days.
They are not just trying to scare us into submission.They are not the first to teach such things… I don’t believe Church leaders are just trying to scare people into submission; it looks to me like they are mostly just repeating what they have heard from others in the Church and they probably honestly believe the world really is going to pot. It sort of makes sense why they would think that because news programs like to focus on the negative and sensational so you will hear about drugs, gangs, crime, terrorism, etc. and it sounds pretty bleak sometimes. But my point is that there have always been less-than-ideal things going on but if you weren’t aware of them and/or focus mostly on fond memories from the past then more recent calamities will seem especially terrible by comparison. On top of that, there is a fairly common tendency to resist accepting change not because the specific changes are always entirely bad but simply because they are different from what you are already used to and expect.
Quote:1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
(2 Tim. 3)
3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
(2 Peter 3)
It sounds like the early Christians already thought the Second Coming and/or the end of the world was imminent and one reason why was because the Romans had fairly recently destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. However, here we are almost 2000 years later and still going strong. I see these scriptures as a classic example of self-fulfilling prophecies. I’m sure there have always been men like these scriptures describe and there probably always will be. So to see some people acting in a shameless and contemptible way or doubting what they don’t see happening and think that this is some magic sign that the end is nigh sounds a little hard to believe at this point. In the Church we have already been living and dying in the “latter days” for more than 180 years and as every recent disaster or upheaval fades into the background I feel increasingly confident that the main things there are to fear within the next 50 years are heart disease, cancer, and maybe an unexpected car crash.
I’ve been trying to think of this rationally… Basically the past century (okay, I might backdate it to 1900/01, for the sake of convenience), a hundred and thirteen years, has been full of man made disaster, i.e. war, violent crime, massacres (if there has ever been a point in history when these didn’t occur), pollution, massive famine etc etc. But the same period has actually been fairly free of disease – the last really big killer was the Spanish Flu, which is at the beginning of this period, natural disasters (earthquakes and volcanoes are milder than other points in history) etc.
So… I think a lot of our problems, including the Greenhouse Effect are our own fault.
[img]http://bcclimate.com/images/richter_sm.gif [/img] Interesting but essentially we have the same problem as climate records i.e. reliable seismic records don’t really go back far. Physical evidence exists though to suggest that modern times (i.e. two to threee hundred years) are seismically quiet compared to the remote past. The trouble is that higher population creates bigger death tolls. We haven’t had anything as horrific as Pompeii in our time, Krakatoa seems to have been the last massive eruption. Book of Mormon type earthquakes where entire cities slide under the sea may have really happened at some point. We’re actually remarkably lucky.
As for the weather, decent data doesn’t really exist.
Mass species extinction? That’s definitely skyrocketed and we’re responsible. That counts as worse. Look at fish stocks.
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