The family under attack

The culture has targeted the traditional family, but now some are fighting back. . . 

Mike and Jackie Winn

When Mike and Jackie Winn married in 1959, the world was on the cusp of a cataclysmic cultural shift which is still sending aftershocks around the globe. That shift has had a significant effect on the American family.

Half a century later, abortion, contraception, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, gay “marriage,” confusion about gender roles, and a mass media that revels in images of moral decadence have severely damaged — and threatened to ultimately destroy— the traditional family.

Culture war

“The culture began to unravel in the late ’60s and it just continued from there,” said Mike Winn, a member of Legatus’ Chicago Chapter and retired CEO of Hollister, Inc. The father of eight and grandfather of 51 reflects on the challenges he faced as a young father and what his adult children now face as parents. He concludes that “the general culture” is the traditional family’s biggest enemy.

To be sure, those who cherish the family as the foundation of a healthy society need only read the headlines to discover yet another assault on their values — whether it’s an advance in pro-abortion initiatives, President Obama’s cabinet appointments, judges allowing gay “marriage” or schools scratching abstinence programs from their curriculums.

The family took yet another hit in April when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided to give 17-year-olds access to the “morning-after” birth control pill without a prescription.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said with so much happening so quickly, his group has had to narrow its focus to defending four key areas: human life, sexuality within marriage, traditional marriage and religious freedom.

After a flurry of activity that began in March with Obama’s reversal of the Mexico City policy allowing U.S. tax dollars to fund groups that “perform or actively promote abortion” in foreign countries, pro-family forces now expect to see hate-crimes legislation and employment nondiscrimination laws limiting what religious people can say and do about behaviors they consider immoral.

“That’s a threat to the family,” Perkins said.

In January, Mexico City was ground zero in the fight to preserve the traditional family. Pope Benedict XVI spoke via video link to delegates of the Sixth World Meeting of Families on Jan. 18. The traditional family is “an indispensable base for society and for peoples, as well as an irreplaceable good for children.

“The family, founded on the indissoluble matrimony between a man and a woman,” he continued, “is the realm where man can be born with dignity, grow and develop in an integral way.”

At a separate event held at Colegio Mexico, a United Nations Population Fund leader claimed that the disintegration of the traditional family is a triumph for “human rights.”

According to LifeSiteNews.com, Arie Hoekman said a high divorce rate and out-of-wedlock births represent “a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights.”

The home front

Advocates for the traditional family say the old adage is true — evil prevails when good people do nothing.

“It’s not enough simply to agree with the Church’s position on life and family issues,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), which monitors social policy debate at the U.N. and other international institutions. “In this day and age, you have to get involved.”

Ruse said that means offering time, treasure or both, whether it’s running for the local school board or contributing to groups doing pro-family work.

However, those who care about the family find it difficult to know just where to direct their attention. “It’s a target-rich environment,” Perkins said.

Ray Guarendi, Catholic family author, radio host and clinical psychologist, recommends zeroing in on one issue. But he cautioned against getting so absorbed in cultural battles that parents neglect their own families.

“It’s easy enough to be a crusader because it can fuel something within us,” he said, “but to toil away in obscurity in the family is a much harder perseverance day to day.”

Perkins concurs. “Something that is in the forefront of my mind every day is what does it gain a man if he wins the whole world, but loses his soul or the souls of his children?”

With that in mind, Perkins said that he limits activity outside the family to his church and his job. “I don’t golf. I’m not a hunter,” he said. “Unless I can do it with my family, I don’t do it.”

On the home front, Guarendi urges parents to pay attention to the popular culture’s effect on their children. “There are forces all around us shaping your kid — socially, morally and emotionally — and one day parents wake up and say, ‘What happened? I didn’t raise him that way.’ No, you didn’t, but all these subtle forces did.”

He advises parents to “go against the flow” when it comes to influences on their children. “You’ve got to assess everything that’s coming down the pike in our culture. Everything. Look at it and say, ‘Will this help me or hinder me in raising a God-seeking child?’”

To some extent, Guarendi said, this means becoming “quasi-Amish” by eliminating (to a great degree) certain forces, particularly technology. “You dramatically limit TV, the computer. You don’t give your kid a cell phone and an iPod when she’s 13. You slow down their childhood.”

The Winn family

Although Mike and Jackie Winn didn’t have to deal with as much invasive technology as their children are facing as parents, they did manage to pass their values on to their children, who are transmitting them to their grandchildren.

Jackie Winn says the couple began their marriage with an openness to life, which their children picked up on as the family became involved in the pro-life movement together.

“Our kids’ sex education was to be steeped in an understanding of human sexuality related to procreation,” Mike Winn said. “That obviously related to the sanctity and the sacredness of life. We never lectured. It was just lived in our house.”

As their children were growing up, Winn’s work required travel, but he said Jackie always kept their family meal time, even when he was away.

“Meal time was communication time,” he said. “We prayed at the beginning of the meal and would go around the table and talk about what happened, what was going on. Even when we had difficult times, the lines of communication were, I call it, forced open if they were shut.”

Today, he said, their children “are living family life heroically.” One is expecting her 14th child, three others have seven children and six are involved in homeschooling.

With their own children grown, the Winns have expanded their outreach since 1998 by running sewing and electronics camps for girls and boys at Wynncliff, their 24-acre family farm on Lake Michigan near Manitowoc, Wis. Their family, including grandchildren, works alongside them as counselors or kitchen helpers.

The family also gathers regularly for reunions at Wynncliff where they will celebrate the couple’s 50th wedding anniversary this summer.

Judy Roberts is a staff writer for Legatus Magazine.

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The changing family

Family life has changed radically in the past 40 years with an increase in the prevalence of divorce, cohabitation between unmarried couples, out-of-wedlock births and abortions. Here’s a snapshot:

• Between 1960 and 2007, the number of cohabiting couples increased from 430,000 to 6.4 million (www.marriagesavers.org).

• In 1970, there were 4.3 million divorced Americans, compared to 18.3 million in 1996 (U.S. Census Bureau).

• In 1950, 12% of children were born into a “broken family” — 4% from unwed mothers, 8% from divorced parents. By the mid-1990s, 58% were from broken homes (National Center for Health Statistics).

• In 1973, 16.3 per 1,000 women between the ages of 15-44 had an abortion, compared to 19.4 per 1,000 in 2005 (Guttmacher Institute).

• In 1960, out-of-wedlock births totaled 224,000, increasing to 2.65 million in 2006 when they comprised 38.5 % of all births (www.marriagesavers.org).

• In 1970, 4.6 % of American girls had had intercourse for the first time by the age of 15, compared to just over 22 % in 1995 (National Survey of Family Growth).

—Judy Roberts