There are consequences to the disorder that our culture and families have encountered. Children are majorly affected by the downward spiral in morals and relationships. Let’s review seven of these consequences.
Consequences for Children
1. Impaired development and lowered well-being
2. Depression
3. Ambivalence about family and love
4. Moral and spiritual difficulties
5. Violence and crime
6. Miseducation about sexuality
7. Abuse and exploitation
1. Impaired Development and Lowered Well-Being
Children are raised in a single-parent home have less of an advantage than those in a no abusive, two-parent home.
They are affected spiritually, financially, psychologically, more likely to drop out of high school, become delinquents, and become single parents themselves.
A high percentage of adolescent patients at substance abuse centers came from a single parent home.
Children from such homes tend to have less self-confidence or self-discipline, have more difficultly to be dependable and have a hard time setting and keeping goals.
Many adult children of divorce commonly say “when my parents broke up, my childhood died.”
The absence of a father in the home makes the children become the ‘junior partner’ to their mother’s emotional needs and help take care of the family in place of their father.
This stops the child’s normal development and places a heavy burden on his or her shoulders.
2. Depression
Divorce is the greatest cause of depression in a young person.
A study of 34 countries showed that suicide rates were associated with the increased divorce rates. This was especially true for the boys.
Yet, children from a secured home that succumbed to constant conflict and destructive arguments between the parents were angry and depressed.
In addition, the parent’s disunity caused their children to bear the brunt as one parent takes their anger against the other out on the children.
For instance, an angry mother may tell a child in her disappointment, “You’re lazy, just like your father.
3. Ambivalence about Family and Love
Brothers and sisters may mimic the serious tension between their parents and act more aggressive towards one another or their peers.
When parents reduce their involvement in their children after a divorce whether financially, emotionally or in disciplining them, the children may feel less love from their parents.
Sons and daughters of divorce frequently report feeling less affection for their parents.
Many children of divorce may see the emotional closeness they have with their parents as a burden.
Divorce can also place a pall over the brothers and sister’s relationship. When adults experience the break up of their family, they may view their childhood with negativity and report a less fond memory for it and their siblings.
A child of divorce or a single parent can lose the sweet image of having an intact family of their own.
Divorce can leave the children believing that stable relationships are not possible.
A bad relationship between parents will cause the children to have a bad image of their own gender or the other that haunts them throughout their lives.
These feelings intensifies when they reach the marrying age.
Dr. Judith Wallerstein says that they may experience anxiety about relationships which may become part of their personalities.
Children who do not have good role models, especially children of divorce, are afraid of confrontations, loss, loneliness and abandonment.
A child who over bonded with one particular parent which was broken up after the divorce may have a fear of closeness later in life due to the prospect they may lose them.
This anxiety over commitment issues will immobilize many, especially men even though they have a natural desire to have a secure marriage.
4. Moral and Spiritual Difficulties
Parents who separate can also divide their children in other ways.
In a strong family, parents work hard to create one consistent moral code and create a home culture where the child can feel comfortable and comforted.
This is not the case for children who come from a divorced home.
Because a child will go from one house to the next, he or she may live between two worlds or more if there are stepparents. When the child is too much like one parent, this may seem like disloyalty to the other parent or offend and hurt them.
This is related to a child losing family traditions, neighbors, and friends due to having to relocate or others not being able to relate the same way to the now fractured family.
A parent’s absence after divorce can be a stumbling block to a child understanding God’s nature and His love and truth as our Heavenly Father.
God is viewed as a loving and faithful Father by Christians in the parable the Prodigal Son which rest on the premise of having a positive experience through a parents’ constant presence and their unity.
“I’ve made progress,” reports a young man in his mid-30s whose parents split up when he was small and who barely knew his father. “At first I just got angry and cynical when I heard about ‘God the Father’ in church. Then I gave up the anger and just went blank, especially when it was time to pray.
“Now I am starting to understand who Heavenly Father is through my experiences with my own baby boy.”
5. Violence and Crime
Abel killing his brother Cain in the Biblical account foreshadows the family breakdown we experience today and the rise in crime.
Children from single-parent homes are more likely to have anti-social behavior.
Children of divorce are more likely to exhibit destructive behavior such as crimes, drug use which motivate the crimes and become prison inmates.
6. Miseducation about Sexuality
Our society with loose sexually licentious standards harms the youth and society at large.
Many societies are concerned about unwed teenagers because the young are less equipped to cope with the fallout of physical relations with the opposite sex than adults are.
Three out of four adults disapprove of teenagers engaging in sex before marriage, but they may have a standard for adults.
Majority believe that it is acceptable for adults to engage in such behavior before marriage themselves. This contradictory standard of adults accepting sex outside marriage makes it hard to enforce a different standard for teenagers.
Is it better to set a guideline for sex outside of marriage according to age if waiting for marriage a holy union is not strong enough?
Age being the only reason to make a teenager wait for sex leaves negative ramifications that happen for older sexually active adults is no different, such as heart break, teenagers will surpass this standard when tempted.
Of course, children do not follow rules so much as they follow the example of those older than they are.
Younger children will pick up the teenagers’ seductive moves when they watch their elders’ favorite rap artist or actress.
Young boys may mimic the older brothers’ exploitation of women and sexually harass their classmates without a second thought.
When children see the celebration of adults having sex outside of marriage or the beautification of it, this diverts the youth from choosing to marry and receive the benefits of waiting for their spouse.
When young people no longer view sex as a part of a marital relationship, then the whole institution of marriage loses its uniqueness and value.
Many have heard their aunts or grandmothers protest, “Why buy the cow when the milk is free?”
When sex is easily available, it may partly explain why most hate the idea of marriage in a sexually permissive society.
When sex is easily available without the responsibilities a relationship or marriage brings, it is easy to see why people would want to go the easier route.
When a society no longer honors marriage and chastity, it does not have any basis to guide children to wait for a lasting, successful love and protect them from the hurt of no marital sexual relationships.
There is a natural urge for physical union to be part of a marital companionship which is a need that can be fulfilled only in a marriage.
Despite this, we have become a society that has forgotten this principle when it is easy to come by.
7. Abuse and Exploitation
A permissive sexual attitude and the combination of single parent homes can spell disaster for children.
When children are raised by mothers who have live-in boyfriends or stepfathers not related to them, they are twenty times more likely to be physically or sexually abused than those who are raised by their fathers within an intact marriage.
During the launch of the sexual revolution, child abuse skyrocketed.
This all began when Lucifer exploited his position as Eve’s teacher and protector.
It is wrongly believed that allowing men to have free access to sex to release any sexual frustrations does not have any evidence in the present world.
One factor is that teenage pregnancy and sexual disease as the fruit of encounters not between boys and girls, but girls and older men.
The majority of pregnant girls in the United States began their sexual activity as a result of being raped or seduced by men 27 years old on average.
Even worse, when it is acceptable for people to satisfy their sexual appetites freely even in educated levels through the world becoming one community through social media and transportation, child pornography and child prostitution has exploded.
This is the darkest part of the satanic underside of “sexual freedom” outside of God.
Over a half million impoverished pre-teen and teen girls in Brazil alone have been victims of wealthy adult clients.
Virgins are chosen by adult men to protect themselves from sexually transmitted disease and are then discarded once they become infected.
Thousands of social media feed these perverse appetites.
The most innocent and vulnerable are cast into the mouths of their elders who are the very ones who are to cherish and protect them.
Return for Tomorrow's Post: Facets of Marriage Education
This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook "Educating for True Love" written by a team of writers to explain Reverend Sun Myung Moon's philosophy on sex and marriage.
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