WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Fact of Life: The Building Blocks: A Serious on the Nuclear Family Part 3

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Join Chloe Noller and Mattingly Watson as they discuss the major consequences of a society without the nuclear family in the most recent episode of their nuclear family series.

Hey, Chloe, are children's futures at a greater risk if they grow up in a home without a father? You know what? They absolutely are. Let's talk about it. Culture, faith, and so much more. This is Fact of Life with Chloe Nuller and Maddie Lee Watson on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. Welcome back to the Fact of Life. Thank you so much for joining us today. We have a lot of great content in store for you, and I hope that you will enjoy it and find it informative. today we're talking about the consequences of the lack of a nuclear family when you have either one mother or one father in the family or no father or no mother or two mothers and two fathers we're going to talk about it all today for those of you who are just now tuning in we have done a wonderful series so far on the nuclear family this is our third episode so for those of you have been with us

the whole time we talked about kind of the origin of the family how that has progressed over time the attack on it. And like Chloe said, today we are going to be getting into those negative effects on it. Because believe it or not, the statistics prove that it is awful, bad, totally, totally awful for children to grow up in a fatherless home or, you know, just all of these mixed up kind of homes. It really does dramatically put them at a greater risk for so many negative things. Yeah. And we do want to clarify at the beginning of this episode, like, obviously we realize there are a lot of factors that play into these things and also, you know, there are wonderful godly families who, due to tragedy, you know, that these kids are growing up without a mother or a father.

And we totally want to respect that and, you know, not make light of that in any way. But when you have the opportunity to provide for your family in a two-parent household with a mom and a dad, that's what we're speaking to here today, not families that have been struck by tragedy. Absolutely. You know, those are families that we need to come alongside of and support as the church, as a community. But we're going to talk about these families here today that are really struggling due to the high divorce rates, the high, these high rates of just these marital problems and this, you know, increasing individualization and focus on you and what you want. And so there are a lot of reasons for single parent families that are not the mothers or the father's fault or the kids' fault, for that matter.

and we want to make sure that we are clarifying that. Absolutely. Just to start off quick, I just want to say there's a lot of, you know, there's a huge biblical argument for this, and we've talked about it a lot. But today we're really going to dive into some hard facts, some hard statistics about, you know, the effects of children growing up without a mother or a father or both. And I just want to say there's a good quote from an article called The Making the case for traditional parenting from heritage.org. And in this article, he cites Brad Wilcox,

who's a sociologist at the University of Virginia. And this guy finds that men and women bring different gifts to parenting enterprise, that children benefit from having parents with distinct parenting styles, and that family breakdown poses a serious threat to children and the societies in which they live. So mothers and fathers are both bringing different gifts to the table when parenting and raising a child and both of those gifts, a set of gifts are very, very important to the development and the growing up

of a child. The important thing to note here too is that even in these very sad situations where it's not necessarily the fault of the parents that is a split home, if we have a better mindset about it, if we have this mindset and this understanding of what Chloe just read too,

is you have the community, you have the church stepping in to provide those father or mother-like figures to the children. which is the important part here. But when you're lacking that, which is what our society is dramatically lacking today, the children are just at such a higher risk of getting in to so much, so many different forms of drug and alcohol abuse, poor health, things like that. A statistic from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says,

it says this is from 1993. So it's been a few years past, but it just even goes to show because there's even, the statistic has grown since then. But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse. And then John P. Hoffman says that there is significantly more drug use among children who did not live with their mother and father. And these sources, you know, they, especially the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, they, they, alongside, with these claims, they have the sources, the statistics all right alongside them there. And even just when it goes down to, you know, your physical and emotional health, a study of 1,97 children aged 3 and older living with a residential father or a father figure,

like we were saying, you know, these special circumstances, but where we have this positive mindset, so a father figure found that children living with married biological parents had significantly fewer externalizing and internalizing behavioral problems than children living with at least one non-biological parent. Another sad statistic done by the Lancet just 20 years ago says that children of single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to commit suicide, which is that's just awful. Absolutely awful. Yeah, a guy named David Popano of Rutgers University he says that the burden of social science evidence supports the idea that gender differentiating parenting is important for human development, and that the contribution of fathers to child

bearing is unique and irreplaceable. He says that fathers tend to be the ones who engage in what sociologists call rough and tumble play, teaching their boys that it's all right to put people in headlocks, but not to bite, pull hair or to gouge eyes. Fathers help their boys channel their distinctively masculine tendencies into productive activities. When this doesn't, happen, social costs run high. Wilcox writes, criminals come from broken homes at a disproportionate rate, 70% of juveniles in state reform schools, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 60% of rapists grew up in fatherless homes. Fathers matter for their boys. And not even just for their boys. Fathers also matter for their daughters because they're likely to, this article says they're likely

to be better at scaring away bad boyfriends. And also, because dads were boys themselves they know guys and honestly like this is something that's huge to me like for my own dad like i i have been so blessed to grow up in an incredible family and my parents are godly and and you know have just done an incredible job and i love them dearly but i just like look to my dad so much because i i really value what he has to say because i know that at one time he was a young man and i know that he knows better than i do you know guys genuinely and so like if my dad ever has a comment about something that I'm wearing or or has a comment about one of the guy friends that I have or or anything related to relationships like I trust him

I know that he knows that I I do not have the mind of a boy and I can't will never and so I need to be able to trust him that he's telling me the truth about this kind of thing and so married fathers and mothers are good models of good male female relationships for their daughter and their son. Exactly. Because, and this is truly a beautiful thing, but a mother and father, man and woman bring completely different things to the table, both in emotional stances, you know, how they interact. And it fits together well. It fits together like a puzzle piece. That's how it was created. But when it comes into it, it is very different, which is a good thing. And both equally deserving of so much respect, but also both very different. And once again, you know,

the stats prove it. But a study by Jay Teachman called the childhood living arrangements of children and the characteristics of their marriages actually says, it says that being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy, marrying with less than a high school degree, and forming a marriage where both partners have less than a high school degree. Yeah, no, absolutely. this article here says that it's still on the heritage dot work here Wilcox reports it's 35% of girls in the United States

35% of women in the United States whose fathers left before age six became pregnant as teenagers and only 5% of girls whose fathers stayed with him throughout childhood became pregnant that's a 30% differentiation between daughters growing up with a dad or without a dad becoming pregnant as teenagers like that's huge, huge, 30%. Yeah. I think it's also important to point out. Obviously, I think fatherless homes are a lot more common than motherless homes,

just because of the nature of how people get in those circumstances, you know, taking out, well, you know, even including, you know, special circumstances, there are, there are more men in the military than women. They're definitely women in the military that are doing wonderful job. But I'm just saying like there are more men in the military so there's more likely that a man will get killed overseas. And men are usually like in the in the tougher jobs. Yeah. And also firefighting or logging that kind of thing. The baby is literally, you know, grown in the woman. So if the something happens and the couple is split up and the father leaves, you know, I mean, he can't the mom. Yeah. You can't really avoid that. But even in the scenarios where

the mother does leave or something happens. Children without mothers are also still suffering, because like we said, mothers and fathers bring two different things to the table, but two wonderful things. A Beth Azar with the American Psychological Association says that children without mothers in the household can have damaging effect, including, but not limited to insecurities, angst, doubt, and hesitance about the world around them. And I think it's interesting looking at these. These are all very emotional effects. You know, everything does have a bit of an emotional, emotional toll in the end, even with a fatherless home.

But I think it's interesting because it's harder for children without mothers to form, you know, close interpersonal relationships. And they suffer from the emotional pain because of isolation because in that, role as a family you know your mother is the one nurturing you the one right right showing you how to care for others and that's the first really close you know emotional interconnected relationship that you have as a human being it's it's with your mother i mean partially because you you did come out of her but you know right right well and i i think there's you know there's these really surface level and they're they're grave but these these consequences like you know they're they're more likely to engage in and violent behavior, criminal behavior, have poor school performance, be expelled from school, drop out of high school.

All of these negative outcomes are associated with higher poverty rates of single mothers. And so, like, this is all very, very, very sad. But on a deeply serious note, I did some research into school shootings and that the typical behaviors exhibited and, like, taken from school shooters. And it's just so disturbing. and I know there are so many circumstances surrounding this. And so I'm not just saying that people who grow up in single family homes are more likely to do this. This is, I mean, to an extent that that is true. There's so many factors. Unfortunately, this is one of them.

Right. But a factor is a relationship thing. And so I looked at this table from get this, the government accountability office. Did you know that there was such a thing called the government accountability office? Why is the government accountability office not doing more these days? Good grief. So true. I just think that was an oxymoron. Government accountability office.

Okay, anyways, moving on. They did this huge study on risk factors for potential shooters for schools. And so there's like individual relationship and community risk factors. With individual factors, we have like substance abuse or antisocial aggressive beliefs and attitudes, weak school achievement, prior history of violence. unsupervised access to a firearm, things like that. But in the relationship category, three out of the four bullet points deal with parental things, parental guidance,

and the parents' relationship to them. The first bullet point is association with peers engaging in violent or delinquent behavior, so peer pressure, that kind of thing. But the second one is parental conflict and violence. The second bullet point under risk factors for relationships is poor parental attachment and lack of appropriate supervision.

And the fourth one is use of harsh or inconsistent discipline. And so, like, these are some of the factors exhibited by school shooters, and this has been something that's been a fact in their life that, like, they have dealt with parents that are dealing with a ton of conflict and violence, that they don't have good attachment to their parents, or they don't have appropriate supervision. And so, like, on the other side of this table, it says there's risk factors, and then there's protective factors. And the protective factors they list are strong parent-child attachment, consistent developmentally

appropriate limits at home, stable connections to school and school personnel, and feelings of connectedness to pro-social nonviolent peers. So, I mean, those seem like really basic things, but when you take a look at just the scary statistics and the scary reality behind this stuff, one of the greatest factors of this rise in school shootings and violence is because of this horrible reality that so many kids are growing up without fathers in their homes. Like mothers are doing an incredible job trying to raise all these kids by themselves, but there is something grave missing from a family when the father is not present.

And the same for a mom, but there's something about the protection and the example and the guidance from a strong father, especially for men, that when they don't have that or they don't have a strong father figure, it is such a detriment to them. And so when you have parents in conflict and violence in the home and they are not parenting well and not giving proper supervision and there's no good attachment with the parents and things like that, like this is such an aggravating factor for violence, you know.

And so that's just, that's all the statistics everywhere. Everywhere. They're more likely to be arrested for a crime or expelled from school or, you know, be treated for emotional or behavioral problems. It's just so sad. The evidence is overwhelming. No, absolutely. And, you know, Chloe, looking at some of that evidence with school shootings is, he's really

sad. Like she said obviously a lot of factors. But, I mean, whether you want to admit it or not, that is one of the factors. And even just looking at, like, crime on a larger scale. It all, I mean, a study, a study from, this comes from the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, but a study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure, like, you know, the broken aspect of it, significantly predicts delinquency, and that also on that coming from the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, it says that adolescents living in intact families are less likely to engage in,

in delinquency than their peers living in non-intact families. And it goes on saying that the relationship it appeared to be operating through differences in family processes, parental involvement, supervision, monitoring, parent-child closeness, all of these things. It had to do with it. And I think what it comes down to is it's this attitude that our culture has around it. you know, we're trying to tear down the nuclear family without looking at the very obvious repercussions of it.

Or they are looking at the obvious repercussions of it. It's true. It just makes you, you know, planning the demise of America. Which I'm not saying that out of spite at all. I think it's a little bit of both. I think there are something who do realize what they're doing and something who don't. But if you look at it, like the negative effects of poverty, because you've got more poverty now, well, more people have to rely on the government with that.

Exactly. with governments becoming your sole provider, physical and emotional health. I mean, that comes back to politics, too. I mean, you're going to get, you know, your physical emotional health is depleting, and then you get that progressive, the progressive movement like we were talking about, you know, it starts giving you your identity. You know, you're struggling. You're depressed and anxious, and the progressive movement,

and now these modern day liberals are saying, you know, this is your identity. This is your LGBTQ plus identity. This is that. This is what race you find. all of your identity in your race and they give you that and it comes reliant on it you know um even with education and go crime um everything it comes back to also a reliance on the government but really if we just rely on our community and our churches to help those who can't help but be in these situations and help discourage those who are choosing a free will to put others in these situations

then even though like we will never be able to eradicate. We will never be able to create a society where every single perfect, where every single family is in the perfect form that it should be. But if we strive to create a culture that encourages that, then we have these really sad instances where people can't help be in these families that aren't quite like the put together nuclear family, you know, they're missing a parent or something like that, then you have a community that,

respects and realizes how how grave that is and how they need to support these families. And you have a whole community. You have, you know, the church and the community as a whole supporting them and providing these father-like figures or providing these mother-like figures. And I think even then these stats would go down. This wouldn't even be something that was worth having a statistic about because even when you have these families that are suffering, you have a community that realizes that it is suffering and wants to provide in a way that's not just like taxes. Yeah. I don't know. I just think all of this is such strong evidence for the fact that when God designs something, the best way for it to run is in the design he made it in. You don't design a car

and then not give it gas. Like it needs gas to run. It needs oil. It needs coolant as I just, my car just went through um you know like when when all of the things are not working right it will crash and burn thankfully my car did not crash and burn that's a miracle um but like god designed marriage to have one man and one woman and he designed those that married couple to have children that's a command in the bible and and then they grow together as a family unit and and i was just studying the Puritans. And like they, I mean, for a lot of the crazy things they believed, like they had strong families. The mother and the father were unified and worked together in the field and in in the work and their kids helped them with that and grew to be strong,

moral and respectful individuals. And like obviously we are fallen human beings and there are so many exceptions to that. And like, and not exceptions, but, but things that that will go wrong because we're fallen and sinful human beings. But God's design for the family and God's design for marriage is always going to be best. And I think just looking at these statistics, it's so sad to just see that people are not following in that design.

But we're going to talk about that more. We're going to wrap up this series next week and just kind of finish off talking about both these consequences and the repercussions and just truly what that biblical model for family is with our final episode in the New York Family series. As always, I'm Chloe Norne, and I'm Manningley Watson. And this is Fact of Life. The Fact of Life podcast can be found at

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