The Family and the Future of America
[Dr. Voth was Senior Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst at the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, KS. He was a Rear Admiral in the U. S. Naval Reserve, author of many articles published in professional journals, and author of The Castrated Family. This article was a speech delivered at the National Defense Luncheon, Washington D. C., April 17, 1978. The article first appeared in the Alabama Journal of Medical Sciences, volume 15, number 3, 1978.]
This is a grave time in the history of our nation. Changes are taking place in our way of life and in our national character which have lowered, and will continue to lower, the vitality of our people, the quality of our institutions, and our basic values. The inevitable result is that we will undergo a progressive disintegration and possibly the eventual collapse of our democracy. When sufficiently disintegrated, forces either within our borders of a revolutionary nature or external forces will overwhelm what is left of America. The American Dream will be over.
People tend to believe that America, the invincible, will always be, that generous and stalwart Americans will always exist, that our way of life is forever safe. This is an illusion, a self-deception. An internal process is at work which poses a far greater danger to us than our dwindling natural resources, the energy crisis, our huge national debt, or the trade deficit.
While it is true that technological advances, abundance of natural resources—in short, environmental and sociological factors—have a great deal to do with how far a society advances, personal factors or forces within the individual, that is, the vitality of a people, really make the difference. Social values and traditions channel individual vitality in ways that cause a people to develop into a great society. In America we have had the resources, the technological developments, the way of life, and the individual vitality which made this the greatest nation of all time.
We are, however, all on a passing train. As we pass through this life, each individual supports certain values, traditions, and institutions and makes numerous contributions to society. Then suddenly death comes and our influence ends. New individuals take our place. But what will these new Americans be like? What values and patterns of living will they support? Will they advance our traditions to new and higher levels of excellence, or will they implement ways of life that lead to disintegration and decay? In my opinion, there is no question about the direction America is taking—we are deteriorating at an alarming rate. I will now explain why I think this is happening, provide evidence for my inferences, make some projects into the future, and conclude by suggesting what must be done.
Individual vitality is not a mysterious phenomenon; we know where it comes from. A newborn child contains great potential, but in order for that potential to be unlocked, evoked, developed, and expressed, certain fundamental events must take place early in its life. When these events occur imperfectly or do not occur at all, the developing child will become a social liability in one form or another rather than an asset, or if he becomes an asset, he may never achieve his full potential. I have worked as a psychiatrist for 30 years and as a psychoanalyst for nearly 20, and the evidence that I have seen, as have many of my colleagues, is overwhelming as regards what it takes to turn out healthy, mature men and women who can take hold of life, do something constructive with it, and embrace values, traditions, and institutions which advance the society.
The crucible from which all life springs is the family. The events within the family can make or break the individual and, collectively, civilization. This fundamental unit is the building block and was the building block of all social organizations from the tribe, village, and on to the most highly developed societies and civilizations. Will Durant said the family can survive without the state, but without the family all is lost. Therefore, not only must the family survive, but its internal workings must function in ways that turn out strong men and women—not weak ones who eventually become casualties of one form or another or who may work actively against the best values and traditions of our country.
The underpinnings of personality are biologic underpinnings. None are more fundamental than the biologic imperatives which lead to the psychologic qualities of maleness and femaleness. There are, of course, an array of other potentialities. One of the most fundamental functions of parenting is to evoke, develop, and reinforce gender identity and then proceed to shepherd the developing child in such a way as to bring his psychological side into harmony with his biological side, and thereby develop a solid sense of maleness or femaleness.
The quality of maleness or femaleness is intimately woven into the overall fabric of personality. Human beings are not biologically bisexual, despite what the gay liberationists would have us believe. The human spirit is greatly impaired when childhood development does not lead to fully developed masculinity or femininity. Fully masculine men and feminine women are by definition mature, and that term implies the ability to live out one’s abilities. These include the capacity to mate, live in harmony with a member of the opposite sex, and carry out the responsibilities of parenthood. Mature people are competent and masterful; not only can they make families, but they can take hold of life generally and advance it, and in particular they can replace themselves with healthy children who become healthy men and women. Mature individuals can, of course, elect to not have children and deploy all of their energies into their work. The fate of mankind depends on the durability of the heterosexual relationship, and the stability and integrity of the family.
The correct development of a child requires the commitment of mature parents who understand either consciously or intuitively that children do not grow up like Topsy. Good mothering from birth on provides the psychological core upon which all subsequent development takes place. Mothering is probably the most important function on earth. This is a full-time, demanding task. It requires a high order of gentleness, commitment, steadiness, capacity to give, and many other qualities, too. A woman needs a good man by her side so she will not be distracted and depleted, thus making it possible for her to provide rich humanness to her babies and children. Her needs must be met by the man. Above all, she must be made secure. A good man brings out the best in a woman, who can then do her best for the children. Similarly, a good woman brings out the best in a man, who can then do his best for his wife and children. Children bring out the best in their parents. All together they make a family, a place where people of great strength are shaped, who in turn make strong societies. Our nation was built by such people.
When the personalities of parents are crippled by psychological conflicts, in particular those which impair a clear sense of maleness or femaleness, or when children are deprived of the continuous commitment of mothers and fathers (the mother in particular) during the first few years of life, developmental disturbances occur in children of varying degrees of severity, depending on the time and duration of occurrence of parental absence or the degree of severity of the personality disturbances in the parents. The developmental disturbances in the children may show up in childhood, or they may go underground only to surface years later when life begins to make its demands on them, especially when they attempt to make families of their own.
Those pioneers who developed America possessed great inner strength. They came from strong families. There was no ambiguity about male or female. Their will prevailed because they had been given to generously by their mothers and fathers. Family ties were close and solid. America became the greatest, strongest, and most generous nation of all time.
Industrialization slowly broke up the close and continuous nature of family life. Inexorably fathers were seen less and less, mothers had to take over more of the husband’s responsibilities and as a consequence they had less time and energy to discharge the mother function. Cities grew, commuting distance increased, and families became uprooted. Then came wars—World War I, World War II, and Korea. Fathers were killed, millions were taken away for long periods of time, and others came back a shell of what they once were. More and more children were denied good family life because of these losses or absences. Not only were fathers away, but mothers had to devote time and energy to tasks other than the rearing of their children and homemaking. The children of these families suffered the consequences. They in turn could not do well as parents when their turn came, and on and on through each successive generation.
Economic pressures have added to the woes of the family. Millions more were and are disrupted by the mothers being forced to work. Even more babies and children were and are being deprived of good parenting. The number of babies and children who are now deprived of good family life is increasing geometrically. When a child is denied good parenting, he develops personal disturbances of one kind or another, he passes these psychological difficulties on to his children, and ultimately society loses its vitality as the number of disturbed people increases.
The most obvious consequence of disturbed childhood development is the inability to make lasting commitments. Especially fragile is the heterosexual commitment and the capacity to produce children and take good care of them so they will grow up to be healthy men and women. Look at what is happening in our country. The overall divorce rate is no 40%, and 59% of second marriages end in divorce. In California more young people are living together than are formally married. The number of unmarried couples in the Unite States has doubled between 1970 and 1975. Currently there are 1.3 million such couples. Those who are living together have answered Nature’s mating call, but they lack the psychological wherewithal to make the commitment stick. While there certainly are legitimate reasons for marriages to terminate, the vast majority end because of personality difficulties which prevent the couple from living out their love for each other in a committed marriage. Those personality difficulties are directly traceable to their childhood development. The progressively weakening heterosexual bond is an extremely ominous sign.
The children of these incomplete commitments or those from the millions of broken homes will rarely develop their full potential and many will become the social liabilities of tomorrow, to one degree or another. Furthermore, the suffering and psychiatric illnesses these individuals will endure defy estimation. Incidentally, the marriages of the young usually break up with the coming of children. The typical picture is for the children to range in ages from six months to six or seven years, exactly when the developing child needs human input of the highest quality. Think of the millions of children who are being denied good family life but who, nonetheless, will become the adult Americans of tomorrow. Will they be able to commit themselves to high values, high quality and become masterful? Many will not.
The 11 million children being reared by a single parent, usually a woman, provide another shocking perspective on the gravity of the situation. One million of these children are under three years old. One-half of the nation’s annual product of 13.5 million babies who will be born to mothers between 18 and 24 years old will be illegitimate. Unmarried black women of that same age range will bear two-thirds of all the babies, that is to say, 78% of the black babies of that 13.5 million will not have a father. I believe the nation’s overall rate of illegitimacy is around 20%. Thirty percent of the births in Chicago (200 thousand) each year are illegitimate, 33% in New York City, and 50% in Washington, D. C. It is estimated that 45% of the babies born in 1976 will be living with a single parent before they are 18 years old. These births go on year after year, after year. In 20 years, one-half the young Americans will not have grown up in a solid family.
These statistics reveal the obvious failures in family life in the sense of making an established heterosexual commitment durable. There is another form of failure in family life, the extent of which cannot be translated into a statistic. I am referring to those families which do not disintegrate, but within which there are severe strains between the husband and wife. These strains are nearly always caused by imperfections in the personalities of the man and woman, the most common of which are irresponsibility and weakness in the man and unfeminine qualities in the woman. In untold numbers of marriages there is either emotional distance or open warfare or the inability to cooperate with each other and live in harmony. Such patterns in parents always produce children who will have psychological difficulties of one kind or another. To give you an idea of how weak men have become, a recent poll of 10 thousand families revealed that, in 70% of the families, men do not attend to the family finances. As you may recall, CBS radio recently devoted an entire weekend to the question of what is happening to the American male. He is becoming emasculated just as more women are become “liberated” from their biologic and primary destiny which if not fulfilled will ensure the collapse and extinction of mankind. A recent issue of Newsweek provides a shocking description of role reversal in the home and between men and women generally. In addition, there are 2.2 million men who are “househusbands” whose wives are the breadwinners.
These changes have led to an ominous social movement which many women believe is the wave of the future that will at last provide the woman her long overdue and just rewards on this earth. I am referring to the mass exodus of women away from the home, when they still have small children and the associated belief that it is mo9re worthwhile to enter the labor force than to rear children. The leadership of the women’s liberation movement believes this exodus is constructive and encourages it. Some even applaud women who divorce their husbands.
As fewer and fewer families have been able to produce healthy children, these children, when they become adult, must find a way of life which is tolerable to them, and which does not include the dep and full commitment to the making of a family of their own. Men who cannot be good fathers have an easy out because traditionally and by necessity they have worked outside the home in order to provide for the needs of their families. While the women’s liberation movement undoubtedly grew because of some genuine social inequities, it is my belief that a large part of perhaps the major motivation behind that movement was and is the psychological need to create a way of life which excludes the making of a home and the creation of a family or removes them from these responsibilities. The roots of those psychological needs can be found in their own childhood development.
It is my impression that some of the more militant leaders of that movement are psychologically troubled and embittered because their efforts at making a happy and successful family failed—and this implicates the men in their lives who were in all probability responsible or tyrannical or who simply deserted them. Some of these women are admittedly homosexual. The negative impact of this movement on young women and on the family is enormous. Women who are making families are being told that they can find their true worth and ultimate fulfillment only by taking up a vocation or a profession. Many women heed this call and their children, especially preschoolers, are the losers, and eventually so will be society. Many young women who have not married, but who are struggling with unconscious conflicts having to do with feminine identity and heterosexual commitment, are lured away from the making of a family. Please understand. I do not advocate the making of a family for every woman. But many young women are being lured away from their highest destiny by the liberation movement, and when they discover their mistake, it may be too late to opt for a family career.
I am well aware that many women have to take jobs because of economic need. Inflation is profoundly destructive of family life. I am also aware that when children are well launched into life it makes good sense for a woman to resume working outside the home if she so desires. And, of course, unmarried women must support themselves. Listen to this alarming statistic. Fifty-four percent of women with children up to teen-age are working, and 39% of working women have preschool children. The absence of these women, particularly those with preschool children, will almost always have a negative impact of some degree on childhood development. Small babies need object constancy, that is, the continuous input of good mothering. Some of the most severe damage to human development can be done to the human spirit when the child-mother bond discontinuous or broken during the first three years of life. Volumes have been written about this. When children are small and the mother is away most of the day, the quality of life in the home changes dramatically; only her presence can fill the void. I wish I could adequately convey to you the enormous importance of good mothering. Only mature women can supply it.
It comes as no surprise to me that suicide is now the second highest cause of death of the young or that loneliness is a national symptom. These youngsters are lost, are filled with anguish, and finally so overcome by despair that they terminate the most precious gift of all—life itself. It is heartbreaking to listen to the outpourings of the young who see what life has to offer but who cannot grab hold and make their own lives go forward. The causes lie within them. Those disturbances were formed by imperfect family life. Loneliness is becoming a national illness. People are not just lonely because they are alone. They are lonely because they are empty inside, and that comes from not having had good family life as children.
Drug usage among the young is not just a passing fad; it is an expression of the inner condition of the user. The user is seeking escape from psychic pain., from loneliness, from life that fill shim with anxiety and despair. The excited state gives him courage. Other drugs lull consciousness. The end result is a poisoned human spirit which loses its effectiveness. A consistent finding in the drug user is the absent father during the formative childhood years. His absence overstresses the mother who cannot attend fully to her role as mother. Drug usage in America is completely out of hand and will be a key element in our self-destruction. At least 45 million Americans smoke pot regularly. We are being asked to liberalize the laws, and even the psychiatrist-adviser to the president would have us liberalize our laws on pot rather than eradicate this poison.
It is no surprise that the Presidential Commission on Mental Health estimates that 8 million American children need immediate help for psychiatric disorders. I have read estimates which reach 30 million. I believe the latter figure. In view of the disintegration in the durability of the male-female bond, the collapse of so many families, and the inability to make a complete bond by those who attempt it, that figure is or surely will be a mere drop in the bucket in the near future.
In view of the deterioration of family life, it is no wonder that, in one year, 70 thousand assaults were made on teachers, that 100 murders were committed in schools, and that a billion dollars worth of property damage was done to schools. Schools in large cities reflect decay. Students in big cities are four to five years behind the level of achievement of children from smaller cities. These children are full of rage as a result of emotional deprivations and lack of authority within the home; they lack the inner controls to abide by external rules, by simple codes of human conduct. How can they be expected to behave in a civilized manner when they were deprived of civilizing experiences at home?
Venereal disease has reached the epidemic level, there having been 10 million cases reported last year. Who knows how many cases were not reported! Realistic constraint on the sexual impulse is part of morality. You all know what is happening to morality in America. Give into your impulses anytime, anywhere, and with anyone has become the “do your own thing” ethic of today. Epidemic venereal disease is a part of the price—along with those millions of illegitimate babies—that we are paying. Does it surprise you that there are one million runaway children each year? Cultures which do not place appropriate restraint on sexuality eventually decline. The open display of pornography reflects this decline, as well as unrestrained sexual mores.
Do you know what adults are doing to these runaways? They are not being gathered into the arms of a compassionate society; rather, they are being exploited by evil adults for prostitution and pornography. Child pornography has become a multi-million-dollar business/ That means millions of Americans enjoy looking at child porno. In Los Angeles alone, 30 thousand boys and girls were exploited for child pornography and child prostitution. Do you see how these facts reflect what is happening to the American character, to the spirit of America?
The prevalence of child abuse is skyrocketing—1,600,000 instances last year. Small wonder, in light of the kind of family life which the abuser probably experienced as a child! You all know what patience, generosity, tolerance, self-control, and capacity-to-stand-frustration it takes to rear a child. Child abusers do not possess these qualities; they did not receive such fine humanness from their parents; they were often physically abused themselves. They are passing onto their young what was done to them when they were young and the consequences of what was not done for them.
Homosexuality is on the increase as could have been predicted. This condition is abnormal; the cause has been unequivocally traced to childhood experiences within the family and to the personalities of the parents and the nature of their relationship. One’s biology does not cause the condition. The increase in this form of psychopathology is directly related to the faulty psychological development of the child within his disturbed family. It is an ominous fact that the gay movement is having its way of life redefined as a simple variant of normal human sexuality and woven into the fabric of society. I know of three professional organizations—the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and a public health association—who have endorsed this change in viewpoint. Bills have been presented in Congress and in may state legislatures which would make it illegal to discriminate against anyone because of sexual preference. This means that homosexuals can “marry” and have access to any and all aspects of society, including the classrooms of our young. The young should be exposed to, guided and taught by the healthiest individuals possible. Homosexuality is an abnormality and there are many heterosexuals who should not be teachers. It does not surprise me that mental health professional organizations haven’t taken a stand, for many of these professions include in their ranks persons with personal difficulties of their own which make them sympathetic to gays.
A spokeswoman for the gays told Mrs. Jimmy Carter that there are 25 million gays in the United States. Dr. Abrahm Kardiner [1891-1981], a distinguished physician, psychoanalyst, and anthropologist, notes that homosexuality reaches an epidemic level in societies in crises or in a state of collapse. I have the same compassion for homosexuals as for all others who are bedeviled by psychopathology; they cannot help being homosexual. This condition is not freely chosen; it is imposed on in the individual by unconscious fears and guilt which are the result of faulty childhood development. I am however vehemently opposed to having this condition called normal. We are indebted to those persons who call a spade a spade on this issue.
Some of these social phenomena which I have just mentioned are symptomatic of the disintegration of America, that is, they are the glaringly abnormal outward face of an underlying process. In addition, there is a more subtle change taking place in the American character, although it is exceedingly important. Americans taken in the aggregate do not demonstrate the clarity in sexual identity differentiation as clearly as in the past. Reed Charles Winnick’s book, The New People: Desexualization in America, and you will be shocked by what he describes. This trend is obvious in clothing styles, hair styles, etc.
The very fine and democratic concept of equal opportunity (which is backed by the equal opportunity, equal pay, and civil rights acts) is being misinterpreted as meaning that everyone is equal. As a result, industry and the labor market in general are being forced to place women in positions which should be filled my men, and men are increasingly filling jobs which women have traditionally filled. The fires of this trend are, of course, being fanned by militant feminists and by many men who have become progressively passive and less responsible to their families and other commitments. Every9one should have an equal opportunity, but as people pass through life, differences in ability and capacity emerge and, as a consequence, some individuals do better in some positions than in others, and so on. The current trend is to consider men and women interchangeable in a vocational sense and even within the family. We are told that men can be mothers while women assume the role of breadwinner. The increasing component of psychopathology which has crept into the American character is causing our society to over-implement social legislation to such an extent that it is rapidly becoming a taboo if not an outright crime, to acknowledge the difference between male and female. While this phenomenon may seem ludicrous to you, the implications are in fact quite grim. A systematic search is being made in order to purge all “sexist” phraseology—that is, reference to male or female—from all governmental regulations and guidelines. Senator S. I> Hayakawa says the U. S. Civil Rights Commission is prying into the private business of book publishing in order to eliminate from all textbooks what it labels “sexist bias,” that is, words on pictures that assume differences between males and females or show them in traditional roles such as mothering. He believes that the next step will be pressure from HEW to use only federally sanctioned books. Dr. Benjamin Spock has already deleted references to boy and girl in his revised book on child rearing. What utter nonsense!
You are aware, no doubt, that employers at all levels hesitate not hiring a woman for a particular job when they could easily fill the spot with a man who could do the task better. Our service academies now are forced to take women. These academies produce the officer corps for our armed forces and should turn out the most competent, masterful, and versatile officers possible, who are adaptable to any or most circumstances. Women officers are not as widely usable as men in the military, especially during wartime. Serious consideration is being given to placing women in combat, aboard ship and in fighter-type aircraft. Gym classes are now filled with both sexes. Some zealous HEW officials tried to prevent father-son and mother-daughter school activities but to our former president’s credit he intervened. But think of the implications. It took the intervention of the president of the United States followed by a congressional amendment to Title IX, in order for fathers and sons and mothers and daughters to be able to experience these basic and good activities. When laws are passed which prevent individuals from having a sufficient freedom to find their best fit in the environment, we are in serious trouble. Our way of life is based on individuality, personal freedom, and the freedom to find expression for one’s abilities. Personal abilities are related to sex identity; there are fundamental differences between men and women. When the process of selectivity between the individual and society is seriously interfered with by law, an eventual decline is the result, simply because people will be forced to fill positions which would be better filled by others.
Now we come to the Equal Rights Amendment. We have already seen how persons faced with the letter of the law, be it hiring of personnel or enforcement of the law, have overinterpreted and overreacted to the law. This overreaction is based on misreading the concept of equal opportunity for the sexes as meaning the sexes are equal. They are equal in value buy they are qualitatively different. The United States Constitution has a far broader and more profound impact on the affairs within our society than specific laws. The constitution provides guidelines which are subject to very wide interpretation by the Supreme Court. Even carefully worded laws and regulations are subject to widely divergent interpretations. It is my deep concern and firm prediction that if the Equal Rights Amendment is ratified, within a short time every aspect of our way of life which is structured on sexual differences, be it physical or psychological, would be held to be unconstitutional. The common-sense preferences given to women, some of which are now backed by law, and to men will simply be wiped out as the resourceful and well-financed lawyers for the women’s liberation movement litigate their cases up to the Supreme Court. Furthermore, as more and more individuals with psychological disturbances, sex role blurring in particular, become lawyers, judges, legislators, and government and business executives, laws will be stretched by extremist regulations to propel us into a “gender-free” society. Our lives will change enormously as those elements in life which are based on the differences between people and men and women are erased and as the heterosexual bond progressively weakens. A weak nation never lasts long. A stronger power will take us over, or forces within our own society will rise up and change our way of life forever. In either case, America as we have known it will be finished.
Individuals must fight back immediately and vigorously. The key link in the whole chain is the pivotal point around which all societies turn, namely, the family. Everyone must turn attention to the task of making it flourish. Then you must make your voice heard as individuals and as organizations or as coalitions of organizations. We must fight back against the social movements which are destructive to our way of life. We must preserve the vitality of our people and provide these vital and vigorous people a context, that is, a society in which it is possible to find the freedom to express their individuality. This means, above all, preventing the passage of laws which ignore the differences between people, in particular the difference between a male and a female, and which undermine the security and stability of the family and the nation. Strong pioneer families created this country; strong families and strong leaders will save it.