Western societies are witnessing a rapid drop in the “Family” concept. With the increase of divorce rates in the United States and European Union countries, there is an increase in the ratio of affairs outside marriage and there is a drop in birth rates. One of every two children is the result of a love affair away from matrimony. Besides, several westerners tend to possess pets such as cats and dogs and call them “children” instead of real ones.
The drop-in family structure couldn’t have happened overnight. It is not the corollary of one reason, either. One of the main reasons for this drop is the upbringing that is based on individual freedom that has no boundaries or limits. Another reason is the isolation from religion and the loss of holiness of the family concept. One more reason is considering homosexuality as a natural matter.
At present, young people prefer living together without marriage. Matrimony is quite often carried out as a formal event after pregnancy.
In addition to young people dodging marriage, divorce rates are also increasing day after day. According to European Union data published by Statistical Office (Euor Stat), in 1964, marriages in the European Union were 3.3 million. This number decreased to 2.1 million in 2014 whereas divorces rocketed in the same period from 330 thousand cases to a million cases. This means that the ratio of divorces was ten to every hundred marriages in the sixties. At present, the ratio has become 50 divorces to every hundred marriages.
This occurs simultaneously with the increase in having love children. In the sixties, children whose mothers are unmarried were five children to every one hundred children in the United States of America. The ratio has rocketed now to forty percent. Some European countries such as Iceland, Bulgaria and Estonia have the highest ratio of loved children whereas Greece, Cyprus and Switzerland come at the bottom of the list.[1].
According to data published by the organization of economic cooperation and development, birth rates outside marriage in the seventies were fewer than 10%. This ratio rocketed to 24% in 1995. With the advent of 2014, it became 40.5%. According to these data, Chile, Costa Rica and Iceland have successively recorded the highest ratio of loved children whereas Korea, Japan and Turkey have recorded the fewest rates.[2]
The situation is not much different in America. In 1975 cases of love children were 14.3%. They increased in 2015 to 40.3% and 90% of the cases were among the youths. Meanwhile, we notice a drop in this average and the rise of the mother’s age, side by side.[3]
According to data revealed by research in Europe, children deprived of a family environment are the least successful ones at school. They are more liable to psychological problems and drug addiction. The increase in the number of children suffering from such problems in society will turn this individual problem into a community one later on and that threatens the future of society. Western institutions that are aware of this danger have tried to find solutions to stop the disappearance of the family bond and enact laws that encourage the family, however, they have not been successful so far. Regardless of this failure, laws that approved of homosexuals’ marriage and the legitimacy of drug addiction will also accelerate the collapse of society structure.
Although Turkey records a very low average of love children compared with other countries’, precautions should be taken to stop the increase in this average in the future and to lower the present ratio. In this context, measures should be taken against television episodes that work on the transformation of society indirectly and show the scenes of living together without being married or having children before marriage as ordinary ones. We have also got to exert a substantial effort to teach our children the values of Islamic civilization in lieu of the ones of western civilization.
* The essay is issued by the Center of Humane and Social Researches INSAMER. It is published in Turkish on its electronic website on August 24th, 2018 under the title of Yozlasan Avrupa Ailesi and it is available on the link https://bit.ly/2vjOISM.
[1] (Eurostat veritabani, https://ec.europa.eu/Eurostat/data/database, 22.08.2016).
[2] (OECD. Family Database, “Share on births outside of marriage”, https://bit.ly/2QIgR9D, 22.08.2017).
[3] (9CDC/National Center for Health Statistic, https://bit.ly/2RSaqRF, 21.08.2017).
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