Please read Olivia Boyd’s article – The Future of our Nation Must Have Strong Families
Families are the building blocks of society. Family is where values are taught and reinforced, children are nurtured and raised, and where each person should experience love and a place to belong. There is no such thing as the perfect family. However family should be where children experience their first place of belonging, and where they know healthy socialisation.
When we look behind a lot of the social issues and violent crime, we find the breakdown of family. This is why parents, along with their extended family, ‘adopted’ aunts and uncles, and father and mother figures, are vital to creating connected and thriving communities.
Healthy marriages provide stability for children to grow up in. Marriage was not created by the government and is more than just a legal contract between two people. It’s existed for thousands of years, long before the existence of our governmental institutions. Marriage should continue to be upheld as a foundation for strong and healthy families, which in turn leads to a strong foundation for our nation. The research is overwhelmingly clear on the best environment for children to grow up in. Statistically, children who grow up in fatherless homes are more likely to commit crimes and have lower outcomes in life. It’s better to have Mum and Dad raising kids together. Of course it doesn’t mean that these things are inevitable for a young person who comes from a single parent home. But we can’t ignore the stats that say parents who are married and raising kids together simply have the best odds for those kids being more successful in life. This is why strengthening and supporting all families should be paramount.
Human life is valuable. There are those who believe we should be abstaining from having children because they don’t want to create more pressure on our natural resources, and that the human impact on the environment needs humans to stop having children. Some also don’t want to bring another human into an uncertain world. Some even believe that children should not be born to those that have financial struggles, so advocate for abortion solely for this reason alone. This constant messaging, sometimes in indirect ways, is affecting birth rates around the world, but also affects how people think towards children and family. It erodes the intrinsic value of human life and it makes people forget that children should be welcomed into the world and cherished.
The innocence of children should be protected. Some hold the belief that parents should not be primarily responsible for bringing up and teaching their own children and instead, the ‘experts’ or those more qualified should decide what children should learn and when. When this is put into practice it directly undermines the parent’s right to choose what their child is exposed to. The graphic nature of sex education today is destroying the innocence of children when they are not mature enough to understand what they’re being taught. As well as undermining parental authority, this is adversely affecting and confusing the innocent minds of children. Parents have a right to not only know what their children are being taught, but also to choose whether their children should be exposed to these ideologies. Parental authority should not be undermined by teachers and ‘experts’ because parents should decide what is best for their own children and should be trusted to make decisions surrounding what their children are taught.
I’d like to suggest that with all the talk in the media about social cohesion, and the many things that are dividing society at present, perhaps the spotlight should be on family and how best to support our communities from the inside out, starting with the family. Beyond the politics on how to deal with social issues of all kinds, the mental health crisis in our young people, and the onslaught of alternative value systems that confuse our young people about who they are, we may want to look at what works historically to hold our society together—and at the heart of it is strong, stable and safe families where children can be raised with hopes, dreams and aspirations for their futures. It’s up to every one of us to speak up and to uphold the value of family in our words and actions. Our future children and grandchildren are depending on us.
Olivia Boyd is our teenage guest writer who is very passionate about supporting the pro-life movement and ending human trafficking. Upon completion of her High School education, she intends to study law and psychology. She has an interest in human rights and social psychology, and is an active member of the PragerForce group for students and young professionals. Olivia will be contributing articles to Family First this year as part of her Duke of Edinburgh award.
