Posted on 11/14/2013 1:11:44 PM PST by IbJensen
Of all the nations on the entire planet, the United States is the most lonely place to be.
We have the highest percentage of one person households on the entire globe, and the average size of our households has been steadily decreasing. Studies have shown that the number of close friends that Americans have is falling, and we have the highest divorce rate in the world by a wide margin. So why is this happening? Does this have anything to do with the fact that America is abandoning the traditional family structure?
Back in the 1960s, the sexual revolution fundamentally changed the way that millions of Americans viewed sex and love. By throwing out all of the old boundaries, many Americans believed that they would ultimately be able to have more sex and more love.
Today, this manifests itself in a hookup culture that is constantly being promoted as healthy in our popular music, in our television shows and in our movies. But instead of this hookup culture resulting in more sex and more love, most Americans are discovering that it leads to just the opposite. We have become a nation of desperately lonely people that have very few real ties to others.
Never in the history of our nation have Americans been so isolated from one another. Most people get up in the morning, drive to work or school, perhaps do a little shopping afterwards, and then drive home again. The rest of the evening is typically spent in front of the television or on some sort of electronic device.
In addition, most Americans spend precious little time attending social gatherings of any sort these days. Church attendance is at historic lows, and most people dont take the time or the effort to get involved in other types of social groups.
And even when Americans do go out and try to meet people, the relationships that are formed are very much on the surface at best. The truth is that most Americans have very few close friends. Just take a moment and consider how many people outside your immediate family actually love you and would be there for you no matter what. For most Americans that number is depressingly low.
In a desperate attempt for human love and interaction, an increasing number of Americans have turned to social networking websites such as Facebook to fill that void. For the desperately lonely, some human contact is better than none. In fact, a growing number of people are so desperate for people to talk with them that they will pretend to be someone else online. Many will even use an attractive picture of someone else in an attempt to try to lure others. This has become so common that this phenomenon has even been given a name. It is known as catfishing, and it has grown to epidemic levels.
Other Americans deal with their loneliness by recklessly indulging in food, drugs, gambling, shopping or other addictions. We are a fundamentally unhappy nation, and this is reflected in the fact that we lead the world in antidepressant use. In fact, the total number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005.
Could a lot of this have been avoided if we would have just fully embraced the traditional family structure as a nation?
Wouldnt most of us be doing a lot better if we lived in homes that were filled with happy, healthy families?
Just consider what the consequences of free love and the hookup culture have been for America
*At 26 percent, America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.
*100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.
*Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple. Today, that number has declined to 48 percent.
*The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.
*Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are married.
*According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.
*In the United States today, more than half of all couples move in together before they get married.
*The divorce rate for couples that live together first is significantly higher than for those that do not.
*America has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
*In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old. Now the average woman has her first child when she is 25.6 years old.
*The birth rate for American women in the 20 to 24 year old age bracket has fallen to 85.3 births per 1,000 women. That is a new all-time record low.
*Approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.
*For women under the age of 30 living in the United States today, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
For most Americans, marriage has come to be viewed as a temporary agreement that can be abandoned the moment that it no longer makes them happy any longer. This me-centered approach to love and marriage has had a whole host of negative consequences for us as a nation.
As the National Marriage Project puts it, a marriage in America now depends for its survival on the happiness of both spouses
Over the last four decades, many Americans have moved away from identifying with an institutional model of marriage, which seeks to integrate sex, parenthood, economic cooperation, and emotional intimacy in a permanent union. This model has been overwritten by the soul mate model, which sees marriage as primarily a couple-centered vehicle for personal growth, emotional intimacy, and shared consumption that depends for its survival on the happiness of both spouses. Thus where marriage used to serve as the gateway to responsible adulthood, it has come to be increasingly seen as a capstone of sorts that signals couples have arrived, both financially and emotionallyor are on the cusp of arriving.
And our young people are no longer taught to value marriage. Instead, they are told to put off marriage and to go out and have some fun. This message is constantly being reinforced by popular culture. For example, posted below is an actual pro-Obamacare ad. Yes, I know that this ad is almost too bizarre to be true, but it is actually a real ad. And as you can see, the messages that it is sending to our young people are not very subtle at all
We have become a nation where anything goes, and most Americans seem to like it that way.
So what do you think?
Is America the loneliest country in the world because weve abandoned the traditional family structure?
Leftist loons and Obama have blasted the church out from under us and the liberal entertainment has contaminated everyones values and virtues, and without morals and principles
WE are imploding!!! Just that simple.
Stable heterosexual marriage is the lynchpin for entrance into and preservation of the middle class. The Democrat war on the middle class must necessarily include a war on traditional marriage.
And that number is still falling.
I have a coworker in 20s whose parents came from PRChina and joined a Christian church and he pointed out that Americans giving up church is what broke the community norms thar got us to respect marriage.
He said in China the tradition is that family is the # bound that holds society together, why they dont tolerate gay progression there. same sex families is unthinkable in that culture.
And ultimately, Government becomes the substitute for Family. Explains why most of them are Democrats.
Yeah, Liberalism has been so great for people and society. Liberals just couldn't wait to tear down the guard rails of society because Americans were too uptight and puritanical. They just had to show how modern and hip they were. As it started in earnest in the 60’s it continues with all the hip homosexuals who are “gay”.
The tragedy is that anyone listened to these hedonistic idiots who have done nothing but wreak destruction and misery all along their sizable wake.
The Black community is in an utter shambles, a complete wreck with out-of-wedlock births at a stunning 70+ percent or higher. The White culture is striving mightily to catch up to their urban hipster brethren and are gaining in misery.
How utterly sad that we as a society have allowed these liberal demagogues to take over in America. It is our fault for passively allowing this and for secretly wanting to participate in their miserable lifestyles.
So's having more than one kid.
Which now has Miley Cyrus, as its' poster child.
And of course, the number of close friends America has is dwindling. America is becoming a muslim carcass of a country.
That is just a result of abandoning God from our homes and institutions..... for all things are held together by Him ..... the natural progression is simply the breakdown of family and society....it's really that simple.
Meanwhile "something" will and always does fill the void.....name anyone of the many "issues" we face and the heart of the matter will always return to abandonment of God, personally and nationally.
This has esculated and been encouraged for the following reason:
So being well off enough to afford your own space is a bad thing?
Are you sure about that?
As I stated on another thread, it’s highly possible that America is irreparably ruined forever!
Thanks Democrats, Republicrats, Bushes, Obamas, homosexuals, lesbians, ACLU, abortionists and assorted evil contributors.
Dear God:
Please save our country.
Amen.
That's not the culture, that's the government started under Mao, and its forced.
Does your culture include abortions and birth control for total strangers just because Obama care covers it?
No one ever talks about the emotional damage that certainly comes with each and every sexual encounter. Take a piece of tape and apply it to a cardboard box and then rip it off. Do this a few times and what happens to that piece of tape? It loses it's purpose. An so it is every time one casually sleeps with someone else. Eventually, one’s heart becomes like the used up tape incapable of being sticky.
And people wonder why Democrats win elections. They promise the broken among us security and comfort all while telling them that they can have this “security” without ever having to change they bad choices — ever. Consequence free. It's a lie.
Just look at the Obamacare ad with the girl trying to get the guy between the sheets. It's all good as long as she has Obamacare.
Fools.
Insightful observations! Too bad there hasn’t been more of our kind of thinking.
Not actually true. But don't let that stop you.
America is on the way of becoming the new ‘Sodom and Gomarrah’.
Precisely the reason that you cannot separate Social Conservatism from Fiscal Conservatism, they are joined at the hip.
America has chucked away all the cultural and societal glue that held it together and made it strong. Everything that was once considered good and virtuous is now cursed and disparaged, and everything that was once considered vile and debased is now celebrated. There’s really not much of a country left to salvage, as it wallows in its depravity. Homo marriage is the end, as far as I’m concerned.
America has become a putrid sewer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.