Is that Progressive? Or regressive?

I recently listened to a programme on the CBC about the killing of twins in some Nigerian tribes. This has been going on for some time. I found references from the early 1990s “In Abuja, it is believed that the birth of a set of twins is a sacrilege which brings misfortune both to the family and the village, they see twins as children formed by the devil and therefore are evil. They are poisoned or strangled after they are forcefully taken from their mothers by masquerades that the women are not allowed to see. The ritual continues by building altars on the walls of their huts to the spirits of the slain babies and sacrifices are made to ward them off from returning.”

This practice can only be called barbaric. Yet, in the West it is called Progressive when women abort because they don’t like the sex of the child or they have twins and only want one. It’s barbaric to kill a newborn but not to kill a fetus. Those who question this attitude are treated like Neanderthals. Progressives have made great inroads in Western society. We have the buying and selling of gametes-sperm here, ovum there, rented wombs. Designer children, like furniture. Euthanasia. Why not? Life isn’t all that precious. We have gay marriage and single parents (not because of divorce, but choice). And the Progressives are thrilled. It isn’t that gay marriage and single parenting is terrible, I just want to know how these actions came to be called “Progressive”? And feminists, the leaders in the Progressive movement, are filled with glee now that mothers leave the job of raising their children with others, day care workers or nannies from other cultures, while they go out and …do what? Something more important than raising the next generation of people to carry on with our values? Oh, wait. Not the values of the parents, the values of the nannies. Progressives were appalled that the Conservative government in Canada wanted to encourage families who wanted one parent to stay home and raise their own children by permitting income splitting. Income splitting? How dare the government make it easier for a family to raise their own children when single mothers don’t income split? Where’s their assistance? I’ll tell you; the father of the child if he is around; and if the woman chose single parenting, responsibilities come with the right to be a single mother. And where are all these happy mothers who work outside the home and then come home to work, cook and clean and care for their children? Yes, fathers are there, too. So you have two parents too tired to care for their kids. Who’s going to take the kids to the park to play after dinner, or to soccer practice or ballet? Who’s got time to meet the teacher? Who’s on the street during the day as an authority figure keeping an eye on the neighbourhood?

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Why is it Progressive when we go out of our way to take parents away from children and the neighbourhood all day? Why is it Progressive to have latch-key children? Do Progressives really think that the vast majority of two working parent households is voluntary? Have you asked any of these families if they’d like to have income tax laws that support the opportunity to have one parent stay home, or does that go against your Progressive motto? This might be hard for you hard-line Progressives to accept, but marriage protects children and family. But for Progressives “traditional” families, mother, father and genetic children are passé. So yesterday. So regressive. In nature it takes a male and a female to produce offspring. Often the brunt of care falls on the female. For millennia nature has shown us the importance of a genetic connection between parents and offspring. Now that we are busy redesigning families many children are no longer genetically connected to their parents. We know this is a problem. We have seen that in the angst in adopted children who search for the biological parents. A genetic pull perhaps? And now we have sperm bank children also searching for the owner of that anonymous sperm. A genetic pull perhaps? It will take generations to learn how breaking the genetic bonds between parent and child will affect society. Yet, already these actions are called Progressive. Yet all this progress doesn’t seem to be making life better, certainly not for families and children. Our families are disintegrating. In the article Creating a Strong Family: Why Are Families So Important? from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, “Families are the basic, foundational social units in all human communities around the world, and healthy individuals within healthy families are at the core of a healthy society.” When families break down there is a ripple effect. We are living it. Less than half of American children live in a traditional family. According to the USA Census of 2013 “34% of children today are living with an unmarried parent—up from just 9% in 1960, and 19% in 1980. In most cases, these unmarried parents are single. However, a small share of all children—4%–are living with two cohabiting parents.” This is progress?

Fractured Family-- Fractured Society

The Centre for Social Justice Studies in Britain confirms the need to support strong families. “One in two children born today will not grow up with both their parents and every year an additional 20,000 people, mainly women, join the throngs of those raising children more or less singlehandedly. One million children have no meaningful contact at all with their fathers, and that’s a conservative estimate. “Children with separated, single or step-parents are 50 per cent more likely to fail at school, have low self-esteem, struggle to make friends and with their behaviour they often battle with anxiety or depression throughout the rest of their lives. Saying that family form is irrelevant is inaccurate and ultimately counter-productive.” And we spend money and time pondering the rise in gang, delinquency, and murder? And then there is that last nail the Progressives wish to put in the coffin, religion. Alexis de Tocqueville discovered in his travels in America in the 1830s that religious leaders in America were heavily involved in strengthening families, building communities, and starting charities. They inspired people to a sense of the common good, educating them in “habits of the heart,” and giving them what he called “their apprenticeship in liberty.” He wrote, “In the United States religion exercises but little influence on the laws and the details of public opinion but it directs the customs of the community and by regulating domestic life it regulates the state.” I write this more often that I care to remember. Deaf ears. Blind eyes. Old fashioned religion with its eye on the ethics of responsibilities as well as rights helps keep our society strong by teaching family values, the value of family. The family supports an inverted pyramid. When the family fragments, cracks slowly creep up to the top where society sits and it too starts to crumble. I suggest the Progressives are a tad too premature in their celebrating.