By Bob Caylor of the News Sentinel, Fort Wayne In., November 17, 1994
This is the continuation of the newspaper article explaining my research and theories on America’s decline.
The following is a reblog from 2013, VTM
Part Three
MORE CHILDREN AT RISK
At the same time, as the numbers of children younger than 6 are shrinking in proportion to the population as a whole, these youngest children–a critical population segment–are being subjected to increasing stresses.
Although the poverty rate has remained fairly steady in the population as a whole, it’s rising among the youngest children. A greater percentage of them than ever before live in poverty.
It is estimated that divorces and annulments per 1.000 children in the United States increased by 173 percent between 1950 and 1984. From 1920 to 1984, estimated divorces and annulments per 1,000 women increased 169 percent.
Among scientific researchers and laymen alike, there is growing certainty that children from broken homes suffer developmental and emotional problems that can affect them for decades.
More and more children are being born and raised in single-parent families , and, with rare exceptions, two parents have more time and energy for the demanding job of rearing children than does a single parent.
Even many two-parent homes aren’t what they used to be. As more mothers enter the work force, fewer and fewer children benefit from growing up with a full-time parent at home. The quality of day care varies dramatically, but few children with paid caretakers receive that same kind of intensive nurturing that families could provide.
The rate of premature births and percentage of babies with low birth weight has remained roughly steady since 1960. The difference today is that we’ve developed the means–at enormous cost to society–to save many more of these tiny babies than we used to.
But once we’ve saved these smaller, more fragile babies, they often compete with full-term infants at a physical and intellectual disadvantage that continues throughout their lives.
Teen-agers continue to harm themselves, both physically and intellectually, with high rates of drug and alcohol abuse.
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In the next part, learn how the mechanisms of Bad Behavioral Contagion damage the quality of our population’s behaviors.
V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 2/12/13
Cultural Survival Skills 