{"id":24590,"date":"2015-12-10T00:10:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T00:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/?p=24590"},"modified":"2025-07-25T13:29:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T18:29:54","slug":"importance-intact-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/importance-intact-families\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Intact Families"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"intactOf course we can\u2019t be complete models of truth if we aren\u2019t there as whole families for our kids. There is good reason Jesus said about marriage, \u201clet no one split apart what God has joined together\u201d (Mark 10:9). Broken homes have had such a devastating effect on everyone involved.
\nListen to American writer and social critic Caitlin Flanagan as she quotes sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin.<\/p>\n

What<\/em> is<\/em> significant <\/em>about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of \u201cfrequent marriage, frequent divorce\u201d and the high number of \u201cshort-term co-habiting relationships.\u201d Taken together, these forces \u201ccreate a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country.\u201d\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

How much<\/em> does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers\u2019 financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation\u2019s underclass.*<\/em><\/p>\n

Flanagan goes on to talk about the need of both a mother\u2019s love and <\/em>a father\u2019s love to mature in a healthy manner.<\/p>\n

Few things hamper<\/em> a child as much as not having a father at home. \u201cAs a feminist, I didn\u2019t want to believe it,\u201d says Maria Kefalas, a sociologist who studies marriage and family issues and co-authored a seminal book on low-income mothers called <\/em>Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage<\/span>. \u201cWomen\u00a0<\/em>always<\/em> tell me, \u2018I can be a mother and a father to a child,\u2019 but it\u2019s not true.\u201d Growing up without a father has a deep psychological effect on a child. **<\/em><\/p>\n

Columbia University did an extensive study on how a two-parent biological family and a single-parent family headed by a mother affects a teen\u2019s involvement in drugs, alcohol, and violence. They reported that a child raised by a single-parent mother is 30% more likely to get involved in drugs, alcohol and violence. Yet a child raised in a two-parent biological home where there is a fair to poor relationship with the father, that child is less than 6% likely to get into drugs, alcohol and violence.***
\nRelationships within the family with both mom and especially the dad makes all the difference in the world to how a child acts out.
\nAfter the tragic shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 a major study was done. Educators wanted to see if there was a way to detect a profile of potential shooters based on the previous 15 school shooters. The study released was called The Classroom Avenger Profile<\/em>. Three markers were identified:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Every single shooter was Caucasian;<\/li>\n
  2. They were middle class; and<\/li>\n
  3. All had fathers that were either absent, distant or uninvolved in the parenting****<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Many expected The Classroom Avenger Profile <\/em>to identify youth from the inner city\u2014\u201cthe hood\u201d who were steeped in poverty. But that wasn\u2019t the case. The profile of the \u201cavenger shooters\u201d was white, middle class, and without a healthy relationship with a father.<\/p>\n