What if there are not enough sword-bearers?

[ohio jones]

Whenever it was common for most children to have both undivorced parents in the home and whenever it was a shame to have sex outside of marriage and whenever church was a very important entity in communities.

My point is that human nature is human nature and I don't think people have changed as much as you think they have. We never actually lived in a Norman Rockwell world. That was always fiction.

I'm not sure how Norman Rockwell got drug into this. He was divorced and remarried, and rarely attended church. Not really an example of what GaryK was pointing to.

[Josh]

The rate of children born outside of wedlock is far higher than it used to be, which is at the core of these issues.

If you want a stable, “democratic” society then you’ve got to accept that children should only be born to stable, married parents, a father and a mother, who are together. The more things move away from that, the more social problems emerge.

[Falco Knotwise]

Romans 13 says that governments are appointed to carry swords.

What if a society cannot hire sufficient sword bearers? Is this a new problem in human history?

https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-depart ... d=98363458

Police shortages? No problem! AI technology can help alleviate problems due to police (and government worker) shortages.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fedwee ... tages/amp/

[Ken]

Whenever it was common for most children to have both undivorced parents in the home and whenever it was a shame to have sex outside of marriage and whenever church was a very important entity in communities.

My point is that human nature is human nature and I don't think people have changed as much as you think they have. We never actually lived in a Norman Rockwell world. That was always fiction.

I'm not sure how Norman Rockwell got drug into this. He was divorced and remarried, and rarely attended church. Not really an example of what GaryK was pointing to.

Only in that he is famous for painting a particular stereotype of life in mid-century America.

My point is that I don't think human nature has really changed whether you are talking about 2023, 1950, 1850, 1500 or ancient times. It is popular to wring one's hands at the state of America or the state of the world today. But I don't buy it. I think we all too often look at the past with rose colored glasses. Not that things are perfect today. Far from it. I just don't think there was really ever a golden age. We do some things better today and some things worse. Same as it ever was.

[Soloist]

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_21/sr21_024.pdf
This has the marriage vs divorce rates on the same graph in it. I can’t extract it to picture on my phone though.

[Ken]

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_21/sr21_024.pdf
This has the marriage vs divorce rates on the same graph in it. I can’t extract it to picture on my phone though.

There is very little data on family composition prior to the early 20th Century because the Census did not collect that information and neither did non-governmental researchers except perhaps in very limited locations.

But anecdotally from history and literature the picture of 19th Century America and before is not one populated exclusively with middle class nuclear families with both a mother and father at home.

Vast numbers of immigrants and poor families saw men disappear for years at a time working in mines, on whaling and fishing boats or at sea, prospecting, following gold rushes, in remote agricultural jobs, in the army and navy, etc. Women raising families alone while men worked away for months and years was quite common. And of course we wiped out a generation of men in the middle of the century with the Civil War which left vast numbers of families without fathers. And diseases were so much more deadly and left many families without a parent or with children orphaned.

Also in the 19th Century, while legal divorce was more difficult that didn't stop couples from splitting. Men and women often just walked away from families without ever filing for divorce. They just disappeared and moved on. In a pre-digital age and pre photo-ID age that was much more possible. You could just take a new name and start a new life somewhere else and usually get away with it.

All this is to say that I'm not convinced that there is some golden age we can point to that we can replicate today if we just copy what they did. Our problems are different and require different solutions.

But as for the question in the subject? I'm not convinced we will ever run out of violent or desperate people willing to take up arms. That has never been the case in past history and I'm not convinced it will be in the future either. And, in any event, war is becoming much more technological and less about mass mobilizations. We need fewer people to run massively expensive and deadly machines. Rather than millions of people to line up shoulder to shoulder in fields facing each other.

[joshuabgood]

I would say "married parents" or "lack of divorce" are possibly near necessary for social health (probably not quite), but they clearly aren't sufficient.

[Ken]

I would say "married parents" or "lack of divorce" are possibly near necessary for social health (probably not quite), but they clearly aren't sufficient.

We had a 3-page discussion about this woman in Oregon who was a single mother with 5 children who was rejected in her attempt to adopt two more children under the age of 9: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=5607

Are her 5 children and the two additional ones she wanted to adopt very unlikely to be "socially healthy"? due to the lack of a married father in the family?

Myself? I'm agnostic on the subject. But for those of you who insist that a married 2-parent family is a "near necessity" for social health, how do you reconcile these stories? For example, should we have a blanket policy that rejects all single parents or singles from adopting and/or serving as foster parents? That is certainly the logical end point of claiming that a 2-parent family is a "near necessity" for social health.

[Josh]

As a former adoptive and foster parent, I don’t think single parent homes are ideal adoptive or foster situations. I have seen some very bad situations arise, too.

There is a trio of 3 girls in our church who adopted some children. It was an unusual situation and I doubt will be repeated again.

[Ken]

As a former adoptive and foster parent, I don’t think single parent homes are ideal adoptive or foster situations. I have seen some very bad situations arise, too.

There is a trio of 3 girls in our church who adopted some children. It was an unusual situation and I doubt will be repeated again.

I've only ever been a married parent. But honestly, between my wife and me we have both sometimes been taxed to the max in raising 3 kids. I honestly don't know how single parents do it. Especially poor ones who don't have the resources to hire help. I think it is probably unhealthy for the parent to have no break from duties just as it may not be ideal for the children as well.

That said, I also think that humans are extremely resourceful and resilient and can come through a lot and still wind up OK. We can probably point to a whole lot of other criteria in modern society that are less than ideal as well. Car-centric suburban landscapes that separate us. Overabundance of cheap processed foods that are unhealthy and make us fat. Phones and social media. The list is endless.