By Stephen Smoot
According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, mental illness and behavior problems rose significantly between 2008 to 2019. The jump of those 18 and older reporting mental illness rose from 39.8 million to 51.5 million, an increase of approximately 30 percent.
Even worse, between 2009 and 2019 “the feelings of high school students experiencing persistent feelings of sadlessness or hopelessness increased 41 percent.
That has spilled over into relationship building, the key step toward creating families. Psychology Today reported last year that half of American young adults “are not interested in a committed romantic relationship and they are not even interested in a date.”
The term experts and others use is “atomization.” In the metaphor, “atoms” represent individual people and “molecules” the relationships formed. As in chemistry some “bonds” are more or less stable and physical world atoms, governed by the laws of nature seek out the most stable bonds and long-lasting relationships.
Human relationships are governed both by those who form them and also the conditions creating the surrounding environment. For centuries, conditions required that young men and women seek out the most stable bonds. Relationship seeking relied on finding a person who fit the attributes of stability, hard work, devotion to family, and in most cases, belief in God.
Benefits accrue from following “the old fashioned way” and forming a traditional family that stays together over time. The traditional family offers children and adults the safety that comes from the predictability that the media culture has relentlessly attacked and ridiculed for the past six decades. Predictability is certainly boring in some ways, but allows for more personal confidence, self-esteem, and growth.
Entertainment and media culture have also fostered the notion that children are always surly and rebellious, that traditional families always have secret sins to hide, and that the culture they live within is morally corrupt somewhere beneath the surface. While these things can and do happen, alternatives are usually much less helpful.
Parents for most of civilization had more or less power to direct the process; in many cultures arranged marriages were the tradition. Notably, long-term global statistics show that about half of both arranged and chosen marriages end in divorce, though the American results may be skewed by the abnormally high divorce rates of the Baby Boomer generation.
In Western Civilization, the environmental conditions of culture since at least the 1960s have worked to push young people away from choosing stable relationship bonds without providing any workable alternatives.
Influenced by social media, many young people are attracted to the notion of “generational wealth,” but see relationships and children as barriers to that. Older generations understood that “generational wealth” comes in part from bringing into existence the next generation. One never understands just how much they can love a child until they meet their own, whether through birth or adoption.
True “generational wealth” comes from the joy and love shared raising children and guiding them through the world, noting their accomplishments and teaching them when they fail. A child’s return of that love gives much more than a loaded bank account.
That said, the traditional family offers practical benefit as well. Children raised to be fully functioning contributors to the family in reasonable ways help save time and money. When they mow the grass as a chore, that saves parental time mowing or money spent to hire someone for the job. Parents and children with life and practical skills can help each other in cooking, providing child care while adults are at work, basic home or vehicle maintenance or more.
It just so happens that many of the family needs once often supported in part or whole by other family members, such as child care, have seen high price spikes and shortages in the past 20 to 30 years.
Our household saved at least a thousand dollars because one of our kids learned electrical work skills on the job and helped out with basic repairs. That happens because a traditional family is not just parents and children, but love and support provided to each other every day whether its helping with a chore or emotional support when tough times happen.
Like all things worthwhile and important, building a family takes work. One must first have the self-discipline to find the right spouse who shares similar values and ethics in life. Waiting until marriage to the right person to have a child locks in the benefits of family.
Traditional families also stick close to each other. Children make career choices that keep them in or near their home community where they can help siblings with young family needs or their own parents as they age.
Many will react angrily to this, assuming that celebrating and promoting the traditional family is an unstated attack on those who do not live in that fashion. That could not be further from the truth. Fathers or mothers who find themselves alone raising a child and doing it as properly as they can are performing a heroic task, but the very idea of heroism goes beyond the every day. If heroic efforts must be made daily by a large percentage of the population, something truly fundamental has broken down.
And when fundamental elements of society break down, they can sweep individuals right along the current just like a destructive flood. The huge increases in substance abuse addiction, children raised by those who are not their parents, and the declines in volunteerism, marriage, and even wanting to engage with the opposite sex are linked completely with the rise of mental health problems across the board.
And each generation that lives in this way will see more of its children lost as adults struggle on their own in a world where for thousands of years, society was built on the notion that people will be molecules and not atoms.
So this is not an admonition to people today playing as best as they can the cards life dealt them so much as advice for those working their way through childhood now.
Seek out and live the old ways. For those who need direction, that comes as close as one’s nearest church or service club. In both, people of all ages will find mentorship, purpose, support, and community when needed.
While nothing in life is truly guaranteed, making the effort to avoid decisions that are both potentially bad and permanent, to find the right person, to work to maintain that relationship, and to properly guide the children that come from that relationship, that is what has always, and will always, serve as the best path towards both the emotional and the material goals of “generational wealth.”
