Dr. John Young 3/8/09
Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville
Family Values
French existentialist author, Antoine de St.-Exupery: [#649 in our hymnal] wrote wisely about family values:
“In a house which becomes a home, one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds. Love, like a carefully loaded ship crosses the gulf between the generations. Therefore we do not neglect the ceremonies of our passage: when we wed, when we die, and when we are blessed with a child….Let us bring up our children. It is not the place of some official to hand to them their heritage. If others impart to our children our knowledge and ideals; they will lose all of us that is wordless and full of wonder. Let us build memories in our children, lest they drag out joyless lives, lest they allow treasures to be lost because they have not been given the keys. We live, not by things, but by the meanings of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.”
Unitarian Universalists respect the worth and dignity of every person and the human rainbow of family arrangements: people living alone, heterosexual couples with or without children, gay or lesbian couples with or without children, single parents with children, and couples living together with love who are not officially married. Our family values are not bound by past prejudices or present opinion polls. Our family values are liberated, but very strong. We expect each person to live up to their responsibilities.
We agree with St. Exupery. We are committed to transforming our houses into homes, handing along the heritages of mind and heart. We dedicate our lives to helping love cross all boundaries, including the generations. Our first tradition is sharing our mystery and wonder. We embrace shared lives of joy that help others to find the keys to their lives and cherish their treasures and ours as our shared human heritage. We do not live by things, but by the meanings of things. We actively transmit the passwords from generation to generation, beyond every boundary that has divided the human family.
Family is defined first as a group of people living under one roof, then by ancestry [genetic], then by race, and finally by common convictions or affiliations. By this last definition, we, as members together of this religious congregation could be considered a family because we share convictions and an affiliation. We mourn the dead and joyfully celebrate new births and chosen marriages.
In the 21st century, with its sperm and egg donors, surrogate mothers, adopted children, blended and separated families, the traditional family is no longer the norm in America. Most of us believe that the relevant race is the human race, and we embrace the entire human family as fully human, worthy of reverence and respect, and as our own human family. Although some of us are blest to live close to and intimate with our birth families, or in regular multi-generational interaction with relatives, many of us have families that are spread all across the US or even the world.
Today, in the United States, the most common household is a person living alone. People living alone represent ¼ of all households; 27 million households as compared to 25 million households with a husband, wife, and one or more children. There are 10 million Americans living unmarried with a heterosexual partner and more than a million Americans living with a same-sex partner. 40% of these unmarried households have at least one child living with them. Most couples marrying today have lived together first; many live with several partners before marrying. The average American now spends most of their life not married, and as of 2006, the majority of Americans were not married. Almost 1/3 of American men and ¼ of American women have never married. The median age of first marriage has been increasing since 1960; presently, it is age 27 for men and 25 for women. 40% of current marriages are second or third marriages and one third of all American children are living in a blended family.
Although a great many of us who are not in our first marriage feel very fortunate to have made the life choices that we have made, it is clear from the data that this transformation in American family life has not been without consequences for the children. 1 of every 2 American children now lives in a single parent family at some point in childhood; 1 in 3 is born to unmarried parents, 1 in 4 lives with only one parent; 1 in 8 is born to a teenage mother; and 1 in 25 lives with neither parent. 2/3s of all American youth are living in a non-traditional family, ¼ only with their biological mother, 5% only with their biological father, 6% with grandparents, 30% in stepfamilies, 4% with non-relatives, and 1% with foster families. Fathers without visitation or joint custody pay less than ½ of the child support owed; these statistics increase to 80% with visitation, and over 90% with joint custody. Violent criminals in America are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers, more than half of all incarcerated Americans were in one parent families, as are 75% of the chemically dependent, 75% of the teenage pregnancies, and 63% of the suicides. The fall-out from choosing to not enter a marriage or to leave it has created a social catastrophe for our children.
Almost every Unitarian Universalist supports a woman’s right to choose whether or not to conceive a child. Relatively few Unitarian Universalists need to ever have an abortion because we so fully support other birth control options and systematically provide our youth with appropriate sex education so that they understand how to be responsibly loving and how to make wise life choices. You would think, given present birth control technology and education, that there would be very few abortions; that is not the case. There were 1.4 million in 2005; one abortion for every three live births that year. 45% of all American women have at least one abortion in their life. Most abortions are to women under 25, almost 2/3s are unmarried, 95% of abortions are before the 16th week of pregnancy, and only 1% of abortions are for women who are 20 or more weeks pregnant.
Media accounts would make one believe that older Americans mostly live in nursing homes. In fact, less than 2% of Americans under 75 and only 6% of Americans under 85 reside in nursing homes. For those who live to be 85 or older, the proportion does increase to almost ¼ of that age group, twice as many women as men, probably primarily because women statistically live several years longer. 75% of Americans between 65 and 74 live with their spouse, a child or with another companion and most of the rest live alone. Among those who are 75-84, 60% live with a spouse, child, or other companion, and 1/3 live alone. For 85 and above, 40% live alone, 38% live with a spouse, child, or other companion, and almost ¼ in a nursing home. Health and cognitive functioning are generally improved for older people who live with people who love and cherish them.
Values are defined by Webster’s Dictionary first as a “fair return, some kind of equivalence,” and it is only the 7th definition that is the “intrinsically valuable or desirable” usually implied by the term family values. For our purposes today, I would suggest that the values in ‘family values’ are the ideas that count, the concepts on which you base your life and your life’s decisions. I want to argue that a person’s families are the people whom they live with and who nurture them.
I grew up in a traditional two parent family with my extended family 35 miles away that we visited often. I have lived alone for less than two years of my life, once during my last year of political science graduate school when I was courting my first wife, and once when I was newly separated after 28 years of marriage, had my teenage daughter with me for half of each week and when Kathleen and I began courting. I readily choose to live with other people. My wife Kathleen is more typical of Americans today. She, too, grew up in a traditional family and extended family, lived with parents or roommates until she was married to her first husband, but after her divorce, she lived contentedly alone for 18 years. Kathleen proposed that living alone or living with some one probably depends a good deal about whether you simply feel the need to not be alone, or whether you are willing to wait for a person who offsets the advantages of living alone.
As I consider America’s future, I believe that economic, social and political realities will reinforce the psychological and emotional advantages of living with other people. We can create policies that reinforce shared housing, multi-generational homes, and people who love one another being supported and helped to live together. We can learn to do these things in ways that preserve legitimate needs for privacy and separateness while outgrowing our egotistical obsessions with private property and separate space. The Earth cannot sustain our present degree of separate spaces, and our humanity cannot sustain our present degree of aloneness.
I would propose that any two adults who want to establish a long-term emotional and sexual relationship become eligible for a civil union, and that national laws be established for these relationships with clear basic rights and responsibilities. I would also propose that any person or couple that hopes to have children would need to establish a different kind of societal benchmark, in effect, laws for parental rights and responsibilities. Right now, American policies are actually reinforcing children having children, fathers not being responsible for their creations, and mothers being compensated for irresponsible choices. These irresponsible policies are creating millions of children with relatively joyless lives and producing social consequences that are destroying our social fabric. I would eliminate any economic or social advantages for parents who not adults, or who are not fully able and willing to accept all of the complex responsibilities of raising a human infant to adulthood. I believe every father should be held fully responsible for his creations. I don’t think there is any excuse for parental abuse or neglect. I don’t see why anyone should more than reproduce themselves in the 21st century. I believe that parenthood needs to become the central societal treasure and responsibility that it is, instead of being perceived as the ultimate form of bling, a possessed thing, a source or income or in order to fill voids in a joyless existence. Parenthood is not a right; it is an awesome and sacred responsibility.
If we provided every human being with the sexual education and birth control technology they deserve, there would be very few abortions. If we exacted justice for every rape and sexual abuse, there would be even fewer. The right to abortion under 16 weeks needs to remain a universally available last resort.
So, in summary, I would advocate that the family values of the future be both more liberated and more exacting for us all. Everyone deserves needed privacy and separateness, but people generally are healthier, happier, and less selfish when they live with others. The good Earth’s and society’s future requirements demand that we generally live together. We need to do all that we can to help people make these relationships fair, nurturing, and as loving as possible. I think that we need to legally, economically and socially make civil unions and parenting separate, adult choices. Not everyone will want to be in a couple, and not everyone is capable of the responsibilities of parenthood. I do not think that society can ever replace adequate parenting; so, I think that society needs to stop making either pair bonding or parenting economically or socially tempting. Our emotional, psychological and sexual needs provide enough reinforcement. I also believe that society will need in a myriad of ways to make living together and taking good care of the people we love ever more desirable. These proposed 21st century family values could help to fulfill the treasures in our loaded ships of love.