The Value of a Good Family

george grombacher 0:15
Merry Christmas. If you were to ask me, how do I, how do I find financial success? Long term financial success and happiness? I have the answer. If you were to ask, How can I have an raise? Healthy, happy, productive kids? I have the answer. If you were to ask, How can me How can I let a little me have the greatest impact on the world? I have the answer to that as well. Good news is same answer for all three questions. Be ready to get married, and you stay married? That’s the answer to all three of those questions. I bet you know, I bet you know how important two parents are in the life of a child. Do you know that? I guess I shouldn’t be making assumptions. It’s really, really important thing to have two parents raising a child. But you also know sort of anecdotally kind of offhand that a lot of the problems that we’re experiencing as a as a culture as a society are because of the breakdown in and families. And if you didn’t know that, well, now you know that. And I’m going to go through some numbers and statistics here in just a minute, that are nothing short of really shocking. And I have known for a good while. And the impact that not having two parents raising a child has on that child. But actually digging in and looking at the statistics, it was shocking to me. It’s like Oh, my goodness, profound. So what, what got me thinking about this was there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that was talking about how married couples living together, are four times wealthier than unmarried couples living together. Interesting. It’s like, Well, duh, it’s kind of an obvious thing, if you think about it. So what you’re doing is you’re telling me that people that are more serious about something are more successful? Then some level, the answer to that question is yes. Now I’m not talking about you. We’re not talking about any other individual person. What I’m talking about is the statistics. And the numbers. Kind of in as a whole. Because there are plenty of people out there, myself included, that was raised by a single parent, and is still a happy and healthy and successful person. That’s me. My folks split up when I was five years old, my mom raised me. Dad’s been part of my life, certainly. But I was raised by a single mother. And I also want you to know where I’m coming from on all this. Because I think that there are a lot of compelling reasons why it is that people are not getting married a car, I’m just not ready. It’s, I don’t want to commit to that. I want flexibility. What if it doesn’t work out? I totally get it. I totally get it. So I did not get married until I was 28 years old, not 33. I met my wife when I was 28 years old. It’s important to know when it is that you got married, okay, for all those folks who aren’t married, should know when it is that you got married. So, um, I met my wife when I was 28 years old, and we got married. When I was 33 years old. And I had my first child, she had our first child when I was 38 years old. Okay, today I’m 44 years old, got two children and God willing, we’ll have more children in the future. So that’s, that’s, that’s where I’m coming from. Again, raised by single mom, all of that and I know plenty of people who have wild success, raising children. as a single parent, I know people that have had wild success and are having wild success in non traditional family units. So again, I’m not making a comment on any of this stuff, other than to, again, I was shocked by the statistics that that I read, and I want to share them with you. Because I am somebody who wants to answer those three questions, I want to position myself for long term success and happiness. I want to raise happy, healthy, successful, independent, autonomous, hopefully one day, married and happily, family lead children, I want to do my part, to help the world. And I’m able to do that, we’ll see. I am able to do that by staying married to my wife. And by doing the best that I can, so talk about heavy thought that yesterday’s podcast was heavy, today is even heavier. So wherever you are at, I totally get it. I’m not making a judgement. I’m not sharing this statistics to cast judgment. And I’m not going to qualify my statements anymore. I’m just going to go through these statistics. Because I think that they’re probably going to ruffle some people’s feathers. But I think it is a fairly sobering thing. And it’s important that we know these things. So I’m going to just go through and read them to you. So bear with me, and I will, in the notes of the show, you will have the in click and find where I found all of these. So do with that what you will see in 1979 600,000 out of wedlock birth 600,000 babies were born out of wedlock in 1979. And 2003 1.5 million was the number 1%, less than 1% of those were put up for adoption. Essentially the same statistics in 1980 18% of all women in the United States gave birth were not married in 2020. That number was 48.5%. So it essentially doubled over the course of my lifetime, which is pretty staggering right there that alone 8% I’m sorry, 37% of single, single mothers are divorced 41% were never married. 6.5% are widows. strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that they were raised by a single parent. In 1986 70% of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long sentences were raised by single mothers. The proportion of single parent households in a community predicts its rate of violent crime and burglary. But the community’s poverty level does not. 72% of juvenile murderers and 60% of rapists came from single mother homes. This is an important statistic, or fact, after controlling for single motherhood, difference between black and white crime rates disappeared. I’ll read that again. After controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared. So that is a that is powerful. Growing up without a father could permanently alter the structure of the brain and produce more children who are more aggressive and angry. Children brought up by a single mother have a higher risk of developing defiant behavior deviant behavior, including drug abuse. 70% of teen births occur to girls in single mother homes. America has more than twice as many teenage births as other developed nations. There are more than 400,000 teen births annually in the United States, most of them to unmarried mothers on welfare. The public cost of births to teens 17 and younger is estimated at $7.6 billion a year. The children are more likely to be in foster care, less likely to graduate from high school daughters are more likely to have teen births themselves and sons are more likely to be incarcerated. 70% of dropouts 70% of teen suicides come from single mother homes. Some of the effects of fatherlessness 63% of all youth suicides come from fatherless homes. 70% of all teen pregnancies come from fatherless homes. 71% of all adolescent chemical substance abusers come from fatherless homes. by 80% of prison inmates and 90% of all homeless and runaway children came from single mother homes.

Children bought up in single mother homes are five times more likely to commit suicide. Nine times more likely to drop out of high school 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances. 14 times more likely to commit rape 20 times more likely to end up in prison 32 times more likely to run away from home. 50% of single mothers are below the poverty line. Their children are six times more likely to be in poverty than children with married parents. 85% of homeless families are single mothers. 90% of welfare recipients are single mothers. There are 3 million single mothers in 1970 and 10,002,003. The long term effects of broken family the long term health effects of broken families were often devastating. Parental divorce during childhood emerged as the single strongest predictor of early death and adulthood. The grown children of divorced parents died almost five years earlier on average, and children from intact families. The causes of death range from accidents and violence to cancer, heart attacks, strokes, parental breakups remain among the most traumatic and harmful effects or events for children. So it’s, it’s even, it’s difficult to read those. And I imagined shocking to hear them. It was shocking. It was shocking when I read them, then it was disturbing and shocking to read them again. So

there’s so much there. And I know from personal experience that divorce is oftentimes unavoidable. And I am, I’ve said it numerous times that divorce is neither a good thing or a bad thing. It just kind of is sort of a very Buddhist approach to things. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It just kind of is. And certainly there are plenty of circumstances where it’s essential. There’s violence, drug abuse, mental illness, and certain circumstances divorce is without question a better, a far better option than remaining married. But if you can avoid it, it’s seems to me that that’s better for everybody. It is a predictor of your long term financial success certainly creates for an environment and sets the table for your children’s success. And from a community standpoint, I don’t think that there’s any question that the more intact families, whatever they look like, whatever the family looks like, so long as there are two parents is far superior to situations where there’s only one parent. And I’m 100% confident and comfortable saying that if if it was if you just flip flopped, and it was single dads, that were more commonly raising kids, that the numbers would be the same. So I’m not I’m not making any commentary on a man’s ability or a woman’s ability to raise a child better than then than that than the other. These just these are the statistics. This is what’s been studied. This is the evidence that that that we have to work with. So as we are as we are struggling as a society, as we’re struggling as, as cities, states, cities, towns, neighborhoods, communities, households, solve big problems in the world. There’s an easy place to start. But it’s not easy. Relationships are hard. Being a parent is hard. Being a husband is hard being a wife, it’s hard. Being a mom is hard. Being a dad is hard. All really hard. And we can do hard things. And the more thoughtful we can be and make good does decisions on the front end. And that tough decisions as we’re going through, and when we made a commitment to be in a relationship, or we made a commitment to be in a relationship to be married, we’ve made the even greater commitment to bring a child into the world. It’s incumbent on us to do everything that we can to position those young people, our kids for success. And if you’re not somebody that has kids, but you have people in your family or in your community that have kids, recognize the importance of people around that child, that the parents have the support, they need to be successful. When you see parents that are struggling, find a way to help, obviously, without inserting yourself in a negative way, or to be a pest or a burden, but provide the support that that that you can, it’s the more that we can strengthen our households strengthen our communities. That’s the way out of this problem from my perspective. And these, these, these statistics and these numbers, support that 100% that the stronger we can make our households and our communities, the better it’s going to be for everybody. So some light except not late at all Christmas wishes. I hope that you if you are celebrating Christmas, Merry Christmas to you. If you are not somebody who’s celebrating Christmas, you could still have a Merry Christmas also, just just just enjoy your day and recognize the extremely, extremely important commitment, extremely important responsibility and role that being a parent in today’s world right now, has and will have in the future. And remember, you do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai