Different Forms of the Family

By Tom Christensen

Where there is life, virtue, optimism, and progress, traditional families abound. As a wise leader has stated, "If we ask ourselves what has held our nation together, what has given it the strength to endure and the spirit to achieve, we find the answer in our families and those basic family values of work, hope, charity, faith, and love."

The traditional family is the oldest and most important social institution in human history. Article 16 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by unanimous consent by the nations of the world, proclaims the family to be the "natural and fundamental group unit of society entitled to protection by society and the State" and recognizes the prior rights of "men and women of full age...to marry and found a family."

The issue today is not whether the family will survive, but what type of family will survive. Unfortunately, single parent families are forming at five times the rate of two-parent families in the US. Although there will always be a mix of family forms and all are worthy of some respect, certain kinds of families are statistically more stable and beneficial to society than others. Like a business, some families, by virtue of the way they are staffed, managed and organized, perform at a higher level and produce better results.

Traditional families are the ideal. They are based upon time-tested natural formulas, and the benefits are obvious. No other form comes close in terms of producing responsible, resourceful, respectful offspring. The traditional family is the most self-reliant, requiring the least amount of governmental intervention and financial support.

What follows the breakdown of the natural family?

To help encourage citizens to form stable families conducive to a free society and the rearing of children, the traditional family historically enjoyed special status under the law. However, the current global trend is to adopt laws, contrary to natural law, that repudiate sexual norms, reward childbearing outside of marriage or legalize and pay for abortions, shift parental responsibilities to employees of the state, and grant the same legal status to all family forms. The result is social chaos and an unprecedented escalation of drug and physical abuse, divorce, suicide, delinquency, poverty, crime, illiteracy rates, etc.

Rather than supporting and encouraging family forms most beneficial to society, lawmakers at the United Nations lump all families together. Many UN delegates refuse to speak of the family in the singular but only the plural "families" encompassing every possible family deviation. Any attempt to meaningfully define the family and address the needs of the traditional family proves divisive. The European Union, for example, refuses to address family issues unless all parties agree to expand the definition of family and marriage to include all conjugal relationships and to make abortion a human right. UN political correctness and failed social engineering often trumps the basic needs of countries and desires of children and adults.

In essence, UN delegates from the Europe and other developed nations seek to make the rest of the world miserable like themselves. Religion is stone dead in many of the nations of Europe and Scandinavia. Without a moral foundation in law or society and with generous welfare benefits and high marginal tax rates, the younger generations shuns marriage and parental responsibility.

Sweden leads the world in the percentage of single-person households. Prominent married men in Europe often support mistresses and father "love children." The weekly German magazine Stern reports that "18 percent of all German males older than fifteen seek the services of prostitutes on a regular basis." The daily activities of men and women are virtually identical. Abortion and sterilization are mainstream practices as nations depopulate. Babies are carted off to child-care shortly after birth. Most children are "only children" who do not have or do not know their father, siblings, aunts and uncles, or grandparents. Euthanasia of the old or infirm is legal and commonplace, while most die alone in subsidized housing. The government is involved in virtually every aspect of life.

Whether gay or straight, married or single, religious or atheist, liberal or conservative; no honest and informed person would want to live in a world devoid of traditional families. Sometimes people do not appreciate what they have until they lose it.

A few years ago, I accepted the "Family and Peace Award" in behalf of United Families International from the World Association of NGOs in Budapest Hungary. In my acceptance speech, I spoke briefly of the need for capable fathers and mothers and child-rich families. I closed then, as I do now, by quoting a few lines from the English novelist, Storm Jameson, in her 1966 work, The Early Life of Stephen Hind:

Some withered nerve in her brain twitched slightly, she softened, smiled, and told him a story about her grandfather who had been a page at Queen Victoria's coronation.

"That was another world," he said.

"Another civilization," she corrected him, "the one I was born into. It has died. I say: died, not vanished, because it was a living organism. A civilization based on the family. What has taken its place is not alive; an atomized society, without security, without warmth, a chaos of fragmented mechanical relationships. O, I know as well as you do, that in my world all was not well, there was ignorance and poverty. But the right way was not to tear that world down and replace it by anarchy. The family base should have been extended, cherished, encouraged."

Tom Christensen, former CEO of United Families, is a successful father, attorney, and politician. He has written extensively on the natural family and has addressed UN delegations in behalf of UFI in Istanbul, New York, Nairobi, the Hague, Lisbon and Geneva.