Good News for the Family!

                                                                                                                                                                        Vol. VI, No. 6, August 1993

[Condensed from Dr. James Dobson's June 1993 Focus on the Family letter.]

Maybe our secular society is beginning to realize what it has wrought. The 12 April 1993 U.S. News and World Report published an editorial titled "The Crisis of the Kids" which included the following.

"This selfish rationalization substitutes the happiness of the adult in our moral codes for the well-being of the children. Career and self-fulfillment have got ahead of caring responsibility. The results on children have been devastating. The developing child needs love, stability, constancy, harmony and permanency in family life. These needs have been casuistically sacrificed in the adult's quest for freedom, independence and choice."

Another syndicated editorial, "Parental Changes Cause Demise of the Family," appeared in newspapers across the U.S. in March. In part it stated:

"The American family worked better when there was a parent in the home during the day. In past generations that parent was almost always female, but gender is irrelevant to the purpose of our discussion. That all-but-constant adult presence provided for greater family stability, smoother internal transitions, more effective overall time management, better supervision and care of children, and more efficient delegation of responsibilities, not to mention a lower level of stress."

And Time magazine, 24 May 1993, devoted its cover story to an article titled "Kids, Sex and Values." It focussed on the confusion teenagers experience today and the mixed messages that bombard them in school and within the culture.

In New York City concerned parents banded together to fire school chancellor Joseph Fernandez and then to elect more conservative members to school boards. Here are the results:

– Of 130 candidates who took pro-family stance on the issues, 66 were elected. 12 of 14 pro-family candidates in Bronx districts 8 and 9 were elected. In Manhattan three of the five pro-family candidates in three ultra-liberal districts were elected.

– 12.5% of the eligible voters participated in the election – the most for a school board election in two decades.

– The top vote-getter in her district was Mary Cummins, grandmother and head of Queens district 24. She led the battle against the infamous "Children of the Rainbow" curriculum. Cummins received three times more votes than any other candidate.

– Of the 32 community school boards citywide, 12 now have pro-family majorities, up from 10 before the election. And about two-thirds of the boards now have solid pro-family minorities on them, up from about one-third before the election.

On another front the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board has launched a campaign for sexual abstinence among its teenagers.

Their goal is to recruit 100,000 adolescents who will make a promise to God that they will remain moral until they marry. This commitment will be made at home with their parents, and then they'll sign a covenant to be shared with church leaders.

[Editorial Comment. These are indeed encouraging straws in the wind, and they demonstrate (1) a growing dissatisfaction with the direction our society has been heading and (2) the fact that Christian parents can make a difference if they are willing to make the effort. There may also be the lesson that nationally we can make a critical difference if we determine to work and to vote by biblical criteria rather than narrow self-interest.]