Family is Future!

First, let me just explain where I'm coming from. I am the third oldest of seven children. I was raised in a very tradition home and family setting. My mom raised all of us crazy kids and my Dad brought in the lion share of financial support from his fulltime job. Both of my parents are very conservative and somehow managed to raise a handful of liberal children. I found myself somewhere in the middle. I believe the traditional family to be the best set up for raising a future generation, but I also totally respect that family is what you make it.

No matter what we do, we cannot be part of this life without also being part of a family. We are designed to come into this world without ever having to be alone. No man is an island, right? It's mind boggling then how we find so many ways to tune out and turn away from those around us. Back in the day homes use to be one room. One room! Can you imagine? It would be like a road trip where your younger siblings are constantly breathing your air, only you live in it and there is no cool national park destination at the end of it all.  I feel like opening a window just thinking about it. Not only are families becoming more divided physically, they are dividing in other ways as well. Think of the definition of a family. If you were to start asking people on the streets their definition of a family, do you think you would get the same definition that you thought of? Probably not. A traditional family, like the one I grew up in, consists of a Father, Mother, and children that live in one household and support one another. Today it is not uncommon for families to span from traditional, to mixed, to single parents, to homosexual etc. This makes defining a family a lot more challenging.

I am a firm believer that families are our future. Literally. Families help to bring the next generation. BYUtv put out a lengthy but powerful documentary titled A Demographic Winter that focused on the controversial topics of overpopulation and the affects our decisions now will have on the next generation. In this documentary several interviews were done. In one of these people on the street were asked if they thought a big traditional family was important. It was shocking how many people did not see the value or need for strong families. Most of the people interviewed, or at least the ones the film chose to use, came across almost shallow as they explained their reasoning for not seeing the need for families. A few people brought up the concern of being able to financially support a lot of kids. Others didn't see how there would be enough love to go around, or worried that they wouldn't have any time to spend with their spouse if they had kids. What these interviewees didn't seem to acknowledge was that without families, without kids, there is no future.

In 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote a book called The Population Bomb, in which he predicted the world's solution to starvation. Basically, he predicted that with the amount of people on the Earth, and more coming every day, we won't have to worry about feeding everyone because there will be such a mass starvation that needing to keep everyone's tummies full won't even be a concern anymore. Everyone will be dead. His publication caused such a mass scare, along with other reasons, that fertility rates dropped dramatically. He claimed that the world could only sustain 2 billion people. Yet here we are in 2018 with over 7 billion people. We need to be cautious as a people that we don't let fear stop the family.

We are not meant to be alone. We are social beings on purpose. Girls can't even seem to manage a restroom trip alone, for goodness sake. The more we hold onto the understanding that families are our future, the better off be will be. true story.

Stay Strong,

-Emma