Holy Humor Helps In Face of Dire Disintegration of the Family in America

At a meeting Sunday of concerned clergy, among other local leaders at a festive celebration of the Macomb County, Michigan Community Marriage Policy, an emergency room physician said that he had the penicillin to fix Detroit's, and, the nation's dire state of the child with single parent situations.

"I'm allergic to it," someone shot back at the good doctor.

To that, another humorous voice added: "Me, also!"

The physician laughed.

All kidding aside, however, is there a solution to Detroit's dismal single families who define the real state of the City currently?

"The battle front spread rapidly from California in 1969 to each of the American states, taking out 42 million families in the US before extending to every nation across the globe," notes Dr. Michael Ross of Troy, Michigan.

Family disintegration threatens the well-being of residents.

It does.

For example in 1997, of the 16,729 babies born in Detroit, 817 were Hispanic, 1,679 were white, and 13,574 were black with seventy-one percent of this total born to unmarried mothers.

The percentage of babies born to unwed mothers across the nation, furthermore, skyrocketed  to 32 percent in 1997 from 5.3 percent in 1960, government numbers show.

Another study by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University revealed that the marriage rate fell from about 73 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women 15 and older in 1960 to about 49 per 1,000 in 1996. 

Clearly, the institution of marriage is weakening over the decades.

A Washington Times story of December 6, 2007, for example, concludes that 4,493 children were born out of wedlock everyday in America, totaling 35.8% of all births.

"This is a war that pits fidelity against brokenness, infiltrating every institution," shouts Ross.

Dismantling of marriage is proved also by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago that found that the traditional nuclear family, a married couple with children, accounted for only 26 percent of households in 1998, a decline from 45 percent in 1972.

At the same meeting, Roseville, MI., Mayor John Churkin said that children need some kind of mentoring.

A culture of single parents cries out in every village for mentors of children from adults.

Children are at stake here in this epidemic of the breakdown of the family.