The Future of the Family

January 2000

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you from everyone here at Focus on the Family! I trust you and your loved ones were able to spend some quality time together ringing in the new year, and that you successfully avoided any Y2K-related glitches that were anticipated a year or two ago. As I write, there is still some uncertainty about the implications of widespread computer problems and terrorism in the United States and around the world, but most experts have been predicting only minor disruptions and inconvenience. By the time you receive this letter, you will know considerably more about the outcome than I do now.

Whether or not Y2K turns out to be a serious problem, the year 2000 certainly is a significant milestone in human history. When I was 12, I remember talking to a an “older friend” — he was 13 — about the year 2000 and speculating about whether we would live to see it. Well, the new millennium is here and so are we. But the question on many minds today is “Quo Vadis?” (“Where are we heading now?”)

Attempting to foretell the future has always been risky business. For example, people living in Western nations at the turn of the last century tended to be very optimistic about the road ahead, and with good reason. The human family appeared to be entering a utopian world where medical science promised to conquer disease once and for all, and where technology was poised to solve most of the social problems of the day. How wrong many of those expectations were. The past century turned out to be the bloodiest in history.1 Two world wars and numerous regional conflicts took the lives of approximately 110 million people2 and left countless numbers wounded or emotionally devastated. Worldwide epidemics also plagued mankind throughout this century, including the deadly Spanish flu of 1918, the scourge of tuberculosis, polio, AIDS and more than two dozen other sexually transmitted diseases. Despite the wonderful new inventions and medical discoveries of recent years, the twentieth century brought great suffering to the people of the world. So much for the optimism that characterized our ancestors in 1900!

This leads us to ask: Will humanity fare any better in the next 100 years? Specifically, how will the institution of the family cope with the pressures and threats it now faces? Let’s look at those questions from the vantage point of a brand-new millennium, first considering some distressing predictions from futurologists and then reviewing several encouraging trends.

Those who claim to know the future of society have been predicting the demise of marriage for many years. For example, Dr. David Cooper, a British psychotherapist, authored a book in 1971 entitled The Death of the Family, in which he emphasized the need to abolish the traditional family unit and to substitute new forms of human relationships.3 About the same time, actress and self-appointed guru Shirley MacLaine added her two bits in an infamous interview with Look magazine. She said:

All of this goes back as far as Christian culture, to what Mary and Joseph started.... You know it’s just a million things that have been handed down with the Christian ethic, so when you begin to question the family, you have to question all those things.

I don’t think it’s desirable to conform to having one mate, and for those two people to raise children. But everyone believes that’s the ideal. They go around frustrated most of their lives because they can’t find one mate. But who said that’s the natural basic personality of man? To whom does monogamy make sense? . . . Why should they then adhere to this state of monogamy? In a democratic family, individuals understand their natural tendencies, bring them out in the open, discuss them and very likely follow them. And these tendencies are definitely not monogamous.4

Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book, Future Shock, made similar predictions about the institution of the family. Among other things, he claimed that “the family will lose what little remains of its power to transmit values to the younger generation.”5 He also went on to say that temporary marriages would become widely accepted, with young adults entering into “trial marriages” or “recognized pre-marriage.”6

Toffler also predicted that homosexuals would eventually be allowed to marry, perhaps with the blessing of the church.7 The progress already made by activists toward that goal has exceeded all expectations. Several states appear to be flirting with a redefinition of the family — including Vermont, where the liberal Supreme Court may be about to sanction same-sex marriage.8 Californians will go to the polls on March 7 to decide, up or down, the legality of these fourteen words: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Believe it or not, current polling indicates that this referendum is too close to call!9 If Californians fail to affirm traditional marriage, Toffler’s prediction will be ever so close to fulfillment, not only in the Golden State, but in the rest of the nation. Indeed, the dominos appear ready to topple.

There are other changes in the wind. An article in the November 8, 1999, edition of Time magazine asked this question about the future of male-female relationships: “Will We Still Need to Have Sex?” It stated:

Having sex is too much fun for us to stop, but religious convictions aside, it will be more for recreation than for procreation. Many human beings, especially those who are rich, vain and ambitious, will be using test tubes — not just to get around infertility and the lack of suitable partners, but to clone themselves and tinker with their genes.10

A Reuters article almost gleefully chimes, “Sex will be just for lust—babies will come from reproductive bank accounts.”11 Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics, is quoted as saying: “Absolutely, somewhere in the next millennium, making babies sexually will be rare.”12

Further tampering with God’s reproductive design appears certain. Perhaps you’ve read recently about a fashion photographer named Ron Harris who began offering eggs from models for a fee of up to $150,000. Apparently, would-be parents hope to fertilize the eggs with sperm from handsome males to produce gorgeous children. As justification for his wacky business venture, Mr. Harris claims that his egg sale is an outgrowth of humans’ natural urge to mate with genetically superior people and produce babies with “evolutionary advantages.”13 The article states that “Mr. Harris’s melding of Darwin-based eugenics, Playboy-style sensibilities and eBay-type commerce struck some infertility specialists as the most worrisome sign yet of where the partly unregulated field of assisted reproduction may be going.”14

The British Broadcasting Corporation recently published an online study of life in the twenty-first century, featuring a mythological character supposedly born on January 1, 2000, whom they affectionately named “Millennium Milly.” According to the BBC, in the next 10 to 20 years Milly will be riding around in a car that drives itself using a system of laser tracking devices that tells it where to go, controls its speed and keeps it a safe distance from other vehicles (teenagers may hate this invention!).

Advances in genetics will make it possible for Milly’s doctors to analyze her entire genetic makeup and create medicines that are uniquely her own. By the time she is 35, brain implants will make it possible for her to “think” herself online, eliminating the need for a computer. Later in life, Milly’s day-to-day experience clearly becomes the stuff of science fiction, as she will be able to receive replacements for her vital organs and reverse the effects of aging. “Towards the end of the first century of the new millennium,” the BBC concludes, “Milly is still going strong.”15

Sandy Burchsted, an unmarried “futurist” from Houston, estimates that one hundred years from now, the average American will marry at least four times and routinely engage in extramarital affairs with no fear of public humiliation.16 Miss Burchsted, who is writing a book on marriage in the year 2100, identified what she believes will be four different types of marriage at a World Future Society conference in July 1999. The first union is called the “icebreaker marriage” (usually lasting about five years) in which couples will learn how to live together and gain sexual experience. Once disillusionment sets in, claims Burchsted, it will be perfectly acceptable for the couple to divorce. If one of the partners decides to marry again, he or she will enter a “parenting marriage,” which lasts between 15 and 20 years. According to a Washington Times article on Burchsted, “these couples will view raising children as their primary purpose, although child-rearing in the future will be in communal settings, not nuclear families.”17

After the second marriage is terminated, couples might enter a third union, which Burchsted calls the “self-marriage.” This relationship will be focused on self-discovery and personal awareness. “We see marriage as a conscious, evolutionary process,” says Burchsted, “so this marriage will be about consciously evolving yourself.”18 Finally, there is a fourth category of marriage, which will emerge as a result of the theory that people in the twenty-first century will be living until at least the age of 120 (remember Millennium Milly?). Burchsted calls this late-in-life marriage the “soul mate connection,” characterized by “marital bliss, shared spirituality, physical monogamy and equal partnership.” The Washington Times says that Burchsted’s theories are based on “trends showing women becoming more financially independent, marriage and childbearing becoming more ‘delinked,’ ‘serial monogamy’ becoming more acceptable and extramarital sexual affairs occurring more frequently and with less public outcry.”19 May God help us if Miss Burchsted’s predictions turn out to be accurate!

Well, how about it? Is the traditional family destined for the scrap heap of history? I’m not ready to concede that it is, but we must acknowledge that some countries, notably Canada, appear to be drifting in that direction. Dr. Darrell Reid, the president of our sister ministry, Focus on the Family Canada, recently discussed those marital trends in a presentation to our board of directors. He said a full 50 percent of children in Canada conceived in out-of-wedlock relationships will have no father living at home by the time they are born.20 Reid also referred to the province of Quebec, where marriage as an institution has all but disappeared. It is almost never assumed in this province that a man and woman walking together on the street are husband and wife. Indeed, it is now illegal in Quebec for a woman to take her husband’s name,21 apparently because it is too expensive for the state to be changing official records repeatedly!22 We are seeing, said Reid, what can happen when the biblical view of families and committed relationships is taken out of the equation.

It is also important to note that the government and court system in Canada have continued their assault on the family. The Supreme Court of Canada recently struck down the opposite-sex definition of “spouse,”23 and this month, the Canadian Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments over whether or not individuals can possess child pornography as a form of “freedom of expression” (two lower courts in British Columbia have already ruled in the affirmative).24

I wish it were not necessary to share these discouraging trends and predictions about the family in North America, but this is a reality. If traditional marriage and parenthood continue to lose ground year by year, marriage and parenthood as we have known them will soon die. That would mean absolute chaos for mankind. Societies can be no more stable than the social foundation on which they sit. That foundation is the traditional family, defined as one man and one woman living together in a committed, loving marriage. If that institution crumbles, the entire superstructure of ordered society is destined to collapse.

But let me give you two reasons why I am cautiously optimistic about the future, despite all the evidence to the contrary. First, because the anti-family biases of the media elite and liberal governments are not shared by the population at large. A recent study from Wirthlin Worldwide polling indicates that support for the traditional family is still strongly rooted in diverse cultures. The findings, which were presented at the World Congress of Families in Geneva, Switzerland, last November, indicate that not only are people around the globe concerned about family-related issues, but a surprising number are in relative agreement over what makes a family. For example, 84 percent agreed that marriage is defined as “one man and one woman,” and 78 percent believed that families are the “fundamental unit of society.”25 Eighty-six percent of non-U.S respondents said that children should be raised by a married mother and father. While support for that concept was as high as 92 percent for Asian respondents, only 66 percent of Europeans agreed.26

Mary Ellen Jensen of Wirthlin Worldwide summarized their findings this way: “We’re told by international bodies that there is no way to come to common conclusions about what’s good for the family, because our views are mediated by different cultures, religions and economic statuses. What we found in this study contradicts those assertions.”27 Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society and general secretary of the World Congress of Families, agreed. He said, “These findings clearly and emphatically reveal that, despite efforts to undermine the natural family in the United Nations ... the people of the world [agree] ... that the natural family is the fundamental social unit.”28

Isn’t it interesting that in many countries where Christian influence is minimal, the family continues to be supported overwhelmingly? Despite the lack of knowledge of the truth, the design for marriage and parenthood described in Scripture is understood and appreciated. The apostle Paul explained this phenomenon when he wrote, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them” (Rom 2:14-15). As I understand this Scripture, it tells us that human beings are “hard-wired” with a conscience that speaks to them about right and wrong. That inner voice is not a perfect instrument, as we know. It can be muffled and confused by social and cultural influences that contradict basic principles of morality. The people described by Paul in the first chapter of Romans were among those who refused to acknowledge the law written on their hearts.

Many of our countrymen have done the same. That is why we must continue to pray that the Holy Spirit will bring to life that which is seemingly dead and to bless us with a sweeping spiritual renewal in the years ahead. That petition, in fact, represents the second reason for optimism in the future. Scripture teaches that believers in Jesus Christ can influence human events through the power of prayer. The familiar passage in 2 Chronicles 7:14 promises, “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” By praying for a spiritual awakening and for a return to biblical morality, we can secure the “blessings of liberty” for ourselves and our children.

No matter how far our world drifts from biblical principles, the truths to which we cling will endure. The scientists, futurists and others who have no spiritual foundation from which to base their research will always have a new study or body of research that supposedly debunks the Christian worldview and replaces it with a humanistic, relativistic approach. Nevertheless, we have the assurance that the faith and values we hold so dear will not die. We know that the blueprint for the family was laid down in God’s Holy Word — and that His definition will not change despite man’s best efforts to rewrite it. We can stand on the promise of Isaiah, echoed by Peter: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:24b-25a).

It is at this point that our efforts to foresee the future come into clear focus. There is only one certainty about the road ahead, and it can be found in the Personhood of Jesus Christ. He has promised to return at the time when we least expect His arrival and to take His believers to be with Him forever. Perhaps that glorious moment is near “even at the gate.” The New Testament concludes with these hopeful words: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

With that, I’ll close. This new year is certain to bring many new challenges for all of us here at Focus, and we covet your prayers. I hope you’ll also remember our Canadian affiliate before the Lord. As you have read, they will be facing some tough battles in the coming days. If you are able to help us financially here in January, we would appreciate your partnership.

May the Lord’s richest blessings surround you and your loved ones throughout the year 2000! Let me say it one more time: Happy New Year!

Sincerely,

James C. Dobson, Ph.D.
President

*(Note: Referrals to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family are for informational purposes only and do not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)