Chapter IV. The crisis of the family in the West
Decay of the family – dropping birth rates
Table IV.1 shows that the marriage rate[1] dropped in all countries listed over the past 20 years. The divorce rate, however, does not show a uniform pattern: it grew in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden, but decreased slightly in the USA, Canada and the UK.
Table IV.2, based on European and Japanese sources, presents somewhat different values for the rates, yet it confirms the trend shown in Table IV.1.
However, when we look at the proportion of divorces to marriages, the situation appears more critical. For example, the National Health Statistics Center (USA) states that 43% of first-time marriages end in divorce in the first 15 years. On average, 30% to 50% of marriages fail in Western countries. In the United Kingdom this proportion grew to 50% in 1991 and to 55% in 2001. It is also noteworthy that in Catholic countries (Spain, Italy, France) the divorce rate is lower that in the Protestant and Anglican countries. It is believed that the stricter religion puts a brake on the process. Nonetheless, there is no big difference between those countries as far as the marriage rates are concerned.
The flip side of the fewer-marriages trend is the growing number of children born out of wedlock. According to European data, the proportion of children born out of wedlock in European Union countries grew from 6% in 1970 to 30% in 2002.
In Sweden, the number reached 56%. Let us examine this trend in a bit more detail, using data from the United Kingdom. English sources indicate a stable trend toward a lower proportion of marriages (including “cohabiting couples”) with children – from 92% in 1971 to 73% in 2002 – and a growing proportion of single parents – from 8% to 27% respectively. The proportion of single mothers who never married also grew dramatically – from 1% in 1971 to 12% in 2002. The proportion of divorced mothers grew in the same time period from 6% to 12%.[2]
The dynamics of the recent decades bear evidence of another negative factor: people’s reluctance to burden themselves with the bonds of marriage. Already in 1996 the share of bachelors among men aged 30 to 39 in European countries varied between 30% and 50%; for women, the figures were between 17% and 40%. Should we add the divorced men and women in that same age category (that would be 6% to 10%), it will turn out that on average about 40% of men and women are outside the family. In Sweden, this indicator reached extreme values: 57.4% for men and 48.6% for women.[3]
The danger of this state of affairs was pointed out way back when by Plato, who thought it necessary to compel men to marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five: “He who is disobedient, and does not marry, when he has arrived at the age of thirty-five, shall pay a yearly fine of a certain amount, in order that he may not imagine his celibacy to bring ease and profit to him.”[4] More than two thousand years later, Balzac wrote of the same: “The bachelor condition is anti-social. The Convent intended at one time to tax the bachelors double compared to family men. This project contained the single most just one of all ideas of fiscal policy.”[5] Curiously enough, there was a period in the history of the Soviet Union when a childlessness tax was levied on bachelors. This tax was later repealed, and that was a mistake.
The matter is, a person without family is not simply a phenomenon that leads to dropping birth rates. It is, first of all, a person not used to responsibility. He has no social obligations. He becomes asocial and more often than not turns into a menace to society itself. At the very least he is always inclined toward breaking the laws. This logical conclusion is supported by some empirical research conducted by American scientists. The results they obtained show that a single man between the ages of 24 and 35 is three times more likely to become a murderer than a married man of the same age. In the opinion of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, this difference is caused by “the pacifying effect of marriage.”[6] Research performed by some other American scientists (Randy and Nancy Thornhill, David Buss and F.A. Pederson) confirms also the fact that unmarried men, apart from murder, are also more inclined to other kinds of violent crime: robbery, rape, etc. (ibid.) Naturally, this all applies to women as well, albeit not to such extreme a degree. The same thing happens to children of single mothers, albeit for different reasons. It is precisely these children that comprise the majority of lawbreakers.[7]
Many in the West just don’t understand this. Currently a new model of family is taking shape full-tilt, one that is praised by proponents of equality for women. I will take as an example the version of the British family that is emerging in the bowels of the so-called middle class.
Firstly, there are more and more couples that never get married – these are the so-called “cohabiting couples,”[8] which are naturally less lasting that traditional couples. They account already for 25% of all children; single mothers – for 15%; traditional couples – for the other 60%.
Secondly, an ever greater proportion of children are born to couples older than 30. 63% of fathers are in this age category, and 53% of mothers. Professor Heather Joshi believes in this connection that the children of older mothers have certain advantages over those born to younger mothers, since the latter are more likely to be divorced, they have fewer education and training, they have more difficulty finding work[9].
This is correct in principle, yet there is another, more important side to this phenomenon. Medical research shows that babies born to older parents are more likely to have serious illnesses, Down syndrome in particular. Healthy children are born mostly to parents younger than 30, usually to those aged 20-25. Therefore the new model of family produces greater numbers of ill children; every statistical source on children’s medicine confirms this.
Thirdly, research has shown that although second marriages are a better option for living together than “partnering”, they, too, have many drawbacks. It turns out that “stepparents will tend to carry less profoundly for children than natural parents.”[10] According to the results from the research performed by the already-mentioned Daly and Wilson, a child who lives with a step-parent is a hundred times more likely to be killed by a “parent” than if he lived with his biological parents. That is an extreme case, of course, but still, on the whole children under age of 10 are subjected to various violence 40 times more often in families where one of the parents is not his own.
Moreover, lurking behind divorces is one more problem that has escaped sociologists’ attention until now, and has finally been noticed by Wright, namely: divorces not only mean termination of marriage for many men – they are an obstacle to marriage for many others, for they increase the numbers of “suitors.” Wright quotes these figures: back in 1960, when there was one divorce for every four marriages, the proportion of singles in the total population under age of 40 was the same for men and women; in 1990, when there was already one divorce for every two marriages, the proportion of single men was 20% higher than the proportion of single women (ibid., 35).
Fourthly, the decay of the family is helped along by the movement of the homosexuals who demand that their relations be sanctioned in the form of family marriage. This pressure should be considered a very serious factor, if only because of the unprecedented growth of the numbers of gays and lesbians in the Western world. Unfortunately, I don’t have at hand statistical materials on this topic, but I did come across some figures for Germany; those figures appear to indicate that in that country, up to 40% of women are lesbians and about 30% of men are gay. Be that as it may, this movement is widely advertised and supported through the personal “participation” of some personalities who are very popular with the hoi polloi, such as the singer Elton John or the Labor MP Ben Bradshaw. The ultimate in marasmus is the support shown to these perversions by some priests, some of whom are gay themselves and so champion the right of their brethren (“in joy”) and of lesbians to have their unions sanctified as marriage. In Great Britain this bunch is avidly expecting the confirmation of the Civil Partnership Act that will finally legitimize the “marriages” of some 70,000 gay and lesbian couples.[11] In some countries, as mentioned already, it is not a problem. The problem is this: the essence of the family is being emasculated; its main function is emasculated: continuation of the species. Same-sex marriage is ontological nonsense: there can be no forward progress in such a union except for self-decay; it has no “plus or minus,” no source of motion, no development of family and life. As a result all laws of nature are violated, as evidenced indirectly by the decline of the indigenous population in those countries where homosexuality is most widespread (Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom).
Fifthly, more and more fathers are taking part in the nursing of children. This is supposed to be a good thing, a triumph of equality of rights. The press reports with joy that 71% of all fathers change their infants’ diapers, they started spending more time at home babysitting, an ever greater percentage of them take so-called sick days off to tend to their kids.
One British newspaper reports that many schools are instituting all sorts of committees with the purpose of making fathers more actively involved in the children’s education in the schools. One school principal writes with delight: “They (fathers. – A.B.) now going camping with their children, doing cooking classes, making cards for Mother’s Day, woodwork, sewing and making weaving frames.”[12] What he’s talking about are elementary housekeeping lessons that should be taught in school by teachers (as it is still done in Japanese schools, and used to be done in Soviet schools), not by parents, especially not by fathers. One can imagine the degree of degradation to which the British school has sunk if its managers are overjoyed that “fathers read books with the teenagers twice per semester” (ibid.).
This is not all, however. Evidently the ultimate indicator, the pinnacle of “equal rights” between men and women is supposed to be the percentage of men who are present when their wives give birth. Well, you see, the number of these “participators” has reached 86,3%, and among the particularly “advanced” ones it is 95%.[13] Apparently, the next milestone in the triumph of rights-equality will be the ability to be developed by men in the near future to give birth themselves. As a result, everyone in the world will be a woman. The sole consolation here is that many women, on the contrary, aspire to turn into men, and quite a few of them succeed: they don’t bear children, they lift weights, play football, go to war. This would appear to help preserve the balance.
[1] The marriage rate is the average annual number of marriages per 1,000 of the general population. The divorce rate is the average annual number of divorces per 1,000 of the general population.
[2] Source: Living in Britain 2002, published 2004.
[3] Eurostat 1997.
[4] Plato. Laws. Book IV.
[5] Balzac. Collected Works, vol. 15, 517.
[6] See: Wright, 100.
[7] Detailed statistics on this problem are presented by a group of American scientists from the Heritage Foundation. See: The Positive Effects of Marriage: A Book of Charts.
[8] Some sociologists call such couples «consensual unions».
[9] The Sunday Times, April 18, 2004.
[10] Wright. Our Cheating Hearts, 35.
[11] See: The Times, February 19, 2005, 3.
[12] The Observer, 3 April, 2005, 10.
[13] The Sunday Times, April 18, 2004.
On Love, Family, and the State
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)