The Family vs. Social Problems... Correlation? or Causation?

     Hey everyone! As a new writer, you guys don’t know much about me, so let me first introduce myself and explain where my passion for family began. My name’s Sophie Venema. I’m a small town girl through and through. I’ve spent the majority of my life in Idaho, minus a few short years in Florida and Georgia. I come from a family of seven kids and two parents who have been happily married for almost 29 years. I guess you could say my love for the family began at birth haha, but I promise it’s deeper than that. If I’m being honest, much of my life was spent in a sheltered community. Most everyone was the same religion, the same race, came from the same background. Growing up, I wasn’t too concerned about social issues, I just minded my own business. But one day, something clicked in me. I was all the sudden more aware of what was going on in the world. Watching the news became regular, and I was saddened at the state of the world we’re living in. Naturally, I started to ask “Why?”. There had to be some reason we were facing so many challenges. After that, I spent a lot of time studying, debating, and researching the problems I saw so prevalent in our society; poverty, crime, abuse, etc. Sometime later, I concluded that most issues could be traced back to the break down of the family unit. So, that’s where my journey began and now my passion lies in educating others about the importance of families and in making an effort to keep families at the center of our society.

              Before diving into things, take a moment to imagine what a typical newsfeed might look like, even for just the past week. Here’s just a few titles from the CNN’s report: “Man shot several times inside Thai restaurant”, “400 students without rides to school”, “Catholic school teacher fired; charged”. Here’s a few from Fox News: “Professor put on leave for cop hate”, “University student urges peers to make life hell for cops”. You get the gist. There’s a lot of negativity and the world is getting increasingly more wicked. It’s almost impossible to turn on the TV or open a social media app without being exposed to hate. At the same time all of this is happening, the family is falling apart. For example, in the year 2019, 23% of children were being raised in a single-parent home. In 2020, 746,971 couples were divorced. Birth rates have significantly decreased, and cohabitation has hit an all time high. Clearly marriage and family are becoming less sacred.

              Now, my intention is not to say that correlation equals causation. The relationship between the break down of families and increased social problems could be purely coincidental, but I’m confident it is not. Aside from the evidence presented (which I will spend more time talking about in the future), I have a personal testimony of the importance of a strong, supportive family. Part of that can be attributed to my religious beliefs. At the center of everything I know to be true is Jesus Christ, and the divinity of families. The Family: A Proclamation to the World, a document written by modern day prophets and inspired by God, states, “that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.” As my belief in this has increased, my confidence in the fact that challenges are not merely correlated with the degradation of families, but more like directly related has grown. In my eyes, if we fix the family, we fix SO many more problems. The harmful trends being observed in families everywhere have no place in a successful and happy society.

 

Resources:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-children-more-likely-than-children-in-other-countries-to-live-with-just-one-parent/

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage- divorce.htm#:~:text=Number%20of%20divorces%3A%20746%2C971%20(45,45%20reporting%20States%20and%20D.C.)