Culture of Death

[jenny_islander]

In my mom's generation, they rarely heard of anyone getting divorced. Couples stayed married until one of them died.

I am the late child of two of the Greatest Generation and so is my husband. We are both children of second marriages undertaken while the first spouses were definitely alive and kicking.

They didn't have to lock their doors or fear their children were going to be abducted and murdered.

People have always had to lock their doors in my little town. In the old days, because if you didn't you might find a drunk in your kitchen at 1:30 a.m. making a sandwich. Nowadays it's usually teenage thrill burglars. People didn't generally fear that their children were going to be abducted and murdered because there was no nationwide 24-hour news cycle, but it did happen.

The worst problems teachers faced in the classroom were chewing gum and talking too much.

Has she ever read the Little House books?!

Divorce breeds anger in children

Not IME, but I understand that it does sometimes happen. Marriages filled with anger, bitterness, deceit, disgust, disdain, despair, etc., also mess up children.

Few parents are raising disciplined adults. They no longer say "no" to their children, teach them boundaries, or discipline them

Strawman.

Homosexual marriage is death to procreation of children.

Er . . . yes . . . that's the "homosexual" part, Lori. Although nothing prevents a couple with enough money from hiring a surrogate unless the local law is against it.

[Emme]

Here's the NY Times article about the kidnapping and murder of my great-great-uncle, a 7 year old boy, in 1909. I just realized he went missing a week before my great grandfather's 12th birthday. :(

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.h ... 5B898CF1D3

That is so sad!

[Jana814]

That is so sad!

I agree so sad.

[Wolfie]

In my mom's generation, they rarely heard of anyone getting divorced. Couples stayed married until one of them died.

My grandpa was married twice- the first marriage didn't last long. And you know what? His GRANDMOTHER was married twice. My grandma's dad's parents divorced too.

The worst problems teachers faced in the classroom were chewing gum and talking too much.

So my grandpa's cousin being locked in the classroom with inner city kids in SF was so safe, right? (true story, happened in the 40's I think, one of the reasons why teachers' unions are powerful in CA.)

Divorce breeds anger in children

Hmmm, my great grandpa was one of the happiest men my mom remembers, my grandma remembered him as very happy too. I have a note written by his sister that makes reference to what a relief it was when their mom left their abusive father, even though they were very poor.

[DifferentGurl]

"Homosexual marriage is death to procreation of children."

Um...isn't that what turkey basters are for?

[Dysfundamental]

I have no children with my husband, but genetic children with a gay male couple, because I would have been the worst mum but my friends are the best dads.

[Patsy]

My great grandmother managed to get a divorce c. ...1920, 30? It was bad.

(Oh, and grandparents too, but that's less extreme.)

[Wolfie]

My great grandmother managed to get a divorce c. ...1920, 30? It was bad.

(Oh, and grandparents too, but that's less extreme.)

The ones in my family were earlier than that. Divorces weren't the hard thing to get, the issue was that often the husband got all the property, and even if the wife took the kids, she got no child support. One of my great grandmas was very lucky that her husband just took off and while it took going up to the top of the state supreme court, she got the property her parents left her back into her own name, so she was able to run the farm and raise her children on her own income. (I think that the court cases happened around 1900, so the divorce would have been late 1800's. The other great grandmother divorced some time around 1905)

[desertvixen]

Throwing out biblical principles is the most important one. With that comes divorce, abortion, and all kinds of evils. The breakdown of the family is destroying societies. Children need a father and mother. This is why God hates divorce. Divorce breeds anger in children.

If anything, I would think the children of divorced parents are trying to do better in marriage by getting to know our partners. My ex and I both come from divorced parents, and we must have talked about everything imaginable to see how we would handle it. The ones I know that are unhappy are the ones whose parents continued fighting after the divorce.

The way children are being raised is another problem. Few parents are raising disciplined adults. They no longer say "no" to their children, teach them boundaries, or discipline them. This has raised a generation of selfish adults. It is all about them.

Translation: Not enough of us are beating their kids in public and force feeding them.

I tell my daughter no and teach boundaries, but I don't hit and I am pretty proud of how she's turning out.

When people were depressed years ago, they would be unhappy and maybe end up killing themselves, not taking down 20 children with them.

That wasn't okay either.

[GeoBQn]

I know it's common for people to think things were better "back in the good old days", but the fact is human nature is human nature and there have always been people who have done terrible things to other people. The weapons have gotten much faster and we're saturated with news these days, but if one just scratches the veneer of the past a tiny bit, the notion that everyone was happy and lived in harmony in the past quickly becomes laughable.

I'm on a Twilight Zone kick, and it's interesting to see that even in the "good old days" of the 1950's, there were at least a dozen episodes about middle-class white men who were completely stressed out and wished they could back to the "good old days," either the 1930's of their youth or an idyllic imagined version of the 1880's.

[Dysfundamental]

I'm on a Twilight Zone kick, and it's interesting to see that even in the "good old days" of the 1950's, there were at least a dozen episodes about middle-class white men who were completely stressed out and wished they could back to the "good old days," either the 1930's of their youth or an idyllic imagined version of the 1880's.

The US writer Booth Tarkington (a huge best seller in his day, like 1900-1935) specialized in writing books about how great everything was in the 1870s and 1880s, most of which are now forgotten except for The Magnificent Ambersons.

[lilwriter85]

Divorce had such a high social stigma for women in her grandmother's generation that most people sucked it up if at all possible. Not to mention fewer women had the education or opportunities to be able to support themselves without a husband. Tool.

This. You brought up good points. Lori is too much of nitwit to realize that the differences back then and why divorces didn't happen frequently. Even today, I bet Lori knows couples who suck it up and look nice for appearances out in public.

[lilwriter85]

Television, movies, and video games trivialize death and destruction.

Yeah every single TV show, movie, and video game trivializes death and destruction.

[Dysfundamental]

My husband's grandparents weren't divorced, but they only lived together for five or six years out of their thirty-year marriage--two at the beginning, then three or four at the end when they were both disabled and broke and being supported by their daughter (my mother-in-law) who couldn't afford two apartments. They would apparently go for weeks without speaking to each other.

Lori would probably count that as a success!

[Pudicitia]

Clearly Lori has never read any Thomas Hardy...

There's a bit in, I think, Jude the Obscure, where he talks about how people get married really quickly because they want to have sex, then after about six months are miserable because they're totally incompatible.

And a lot more besides...

[Artemis]

Ah yes, the Good Old Days.

When children were always obedient and respectful because they were beaten regularly:

Theon to his father Theon, greeting. It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city! If you won't take me with you to Alexandria I won't write you a letter or speak to you or say goodbye to you; and if you go to Alexandria I won't take your hand nor ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you won't take me. Mother said to Archelaus, "It quite upsets him to be left behind." It was good of you to send me presents ... on the 12th, the day you sailed. Send me a lyre, I implore you. If you don't, I won't eat, I won't drink; there now!

From the Oxyrhyncus Papyrus 119, dated 2nd or 3rd century. As in about 1800 years ago. Written in a rough uncial (rounded) handwriting with some scribblings out, spelling and grammar mistakes.

Looks like there was at least one little boy it didn't work with!

[Aisling]

Or, if you're in certain families (like mine), there were those one or two uncles (or a grandfather) that got invited to family reunions but everyone knew not to leave alone with any of the children.

Definitely. My dad got pursued by the friendly local paedophile when he was about 7, this was in the 60s in a rural village.

Granny told him not to be so silly and to stop bothering the poor man, as he wasn't right in the head :?

[Katiebug]

OK, my husband's paternal grandparents divorced when my FIL was a young child - that would have been the late '40s. Both remarried.

My maternal grandmother had a brief first marriage before marrying my grandfather. My mother was raised in abject poverty by an abusive, alcoholic father and an enabler mother who had way more kids than they could even remotely afford. There were periods where the family lived in a condemned house with no running water, and where there wasn't enough food to feed the kids (but always enough for their abusive father) - yeah, that's the "Leave it To Beaver" suburban upbringing these nutjobs idealize. :roll:

Look at all of the Apollo astronauts who later divorced their wives - an awful lot of young couples married in haste in the '40s and early '50s only to split later on when divorce became less of a social stigma. Many people stayed together for sake of appearances or "for the kids" and were miserable.

[Conuly]

More humorously than some of these stories, when my great grandfather was a young man he ran into somebody on the street who stopped him and said, essentially, "Hi, you don't know me, but I'm your brother." It turned out that his father had gotten two girls pregnant at the same time, but one of them already had another boyfriend (who married her) so he married the other one. Premarital sex - it did exist back then. And getting married for an oops was about as dumb an idea then as it is now, it was just harder to get out of if it didn't work.

For that matter, I have an aunt who found out after her father died that all those years he'd had a whole second secret family. Which raises the question of how many families they might never have learned about. She was born sometime in the late 50s or early 60s. Did Leave it to Beaver ever discuss bigamy?

On the subject of child abductions and murders, stranger abductions and murders of children by strangers are still incredibly rare. If anybody is going to harm a child, nearly all the time it's going to be somebody known to the child, probably a family member. There really are only a very few stranger abductions every year in the US.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Man has always been capable of horrendous evil ever since sin entered the world

True.

However, I do believe behavior in America has gotten worse.

Your beliefs are a poor substitute for facts. Violent crime rates in the United States are much lower than they were 20 years ago.

In my mom's generation, they rarely heard of anyone getting divorced. Couples stayed married until one of them died.

Divorce laws were different, so in many cases they COULDN'T get divorced. That didn't mean that they always stayed together. If you take a look at writing from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, it's pretty clear that many wives were abandoned. I can also tell you a lovely heartwarming tale of how my great-grandmother had to climb out of a window while pregnant with my grandmother, because my great-grandfather had beaten her again and then locked her in a room. He then basically kidnapped their children, fled the country, coerced another woman into marrying him, and continued to act like a tyrant. My grandmother may have been raised by a poor mother working long hours in a factory, but her siblings were still jealous of her because she was raised with love instead of violence. Her sisters weren't reunited with their mother until they were older.

My grandparents also divorced. According to official stats, they divorced around 1980. Unofficially, they didn't separate until 1974, but made each others' lives a living hell since they couldn't stand each other and any real relationship had ended by 1948.

They didn't have to lock their doors or fear their children were going to be abducted and murdered

.

The actual danger of murder is less than it was back then. In 1960, the murder rate was 5.1 per 100,000. In 2011, it was 4.7 per 100,000 in the United States. The decision to lock a door is based on perception, not reality.

The worst problems teachers faced in the classroom were chewing gum and talking too much.

Bullying was often ignored.

Even in the book Farmer Boy, part of the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, describes wild older boys causing violence and chaos.

Sure people were depressed back then but not like today. Dr. Archibald Hart, a clinical psychologist for 45 years, said that 30 years ago the onset of depression was around 45 years old. Now, it is 14 years old! Something has gone terribly wrong in our society.

It's hard to do comparisons across time, since there is no way of measuring whether depression in teens would have been picked up and diagnosed. I know that my grandmother's bipolar disorder wasn't diagnosed until the 1990s.

I also don't believe that her mother's childhood era would have been a particularly happy time to be a Holocaust survivor, or a Native child in a residential school, or a Black child prior to civil rights reforms, or a child with learning disabilities who was constantly punished by teachers instead of being helped, or a child with developmental disabilities who was placed at birth in an institution instead of being raised by their family as part of the community....

I believe it is a combination of things. Throwing out biblical principles is the most important one. With that comes divorce, abortion, and all kinds of evils. The breakdown of the family is destroying societies. Children need a father and mother. This is why God hates divorce. Divorce breeds anger in children.

Again, your beliefs are irrelevant. I would agree that family problems do indeed cause other problems. Divorce is a symptom of family dysfunction, but we do not eliminate that dysfunction by just banning divorce.

The way children are being raised is another problem. Few parents are raising disciplined adults. They no longer say "no" to their children, teach them boundaries, or discipline them.

Over-generalization without proof. Let's also keep in mind that her mother's generation would have been part of the hippie era, so I'm doubting that they were all raised to be super-disciplined adults.

This has raised a generation of selfish adults. It is all about them. When people were depressed years ago, they would be unhappy and maybe end up killing themselves, not taking down 20 children with them.

I have no idea why the gunman did what he did at Sandy Hook, and neither do you.

I know some people, however, who would disagree with the notion that we treated kids better in the past.

My friend's mother was 6 when she saw the Nazis shoot her family. She managed to run off to the forest, where she spent the rest of the war with the Partisans.

Kim Phuc (http://digitaljournal.com/article/326206) lives in my city. In 1972, she was the 9 yr old girl caught in a photo running naked and screaming after a napalm bomb dropped by American troops had burned off her clothes.

We also have a culture of death. Abortion is death to millions of babies

.

As opposed to the "culture of death" that existed when unwed mothers would secretly give birth to babies that were then killed and secretly buried?

Homosexual marriage is death to procreation of children.

"Death" now describes "children" who were never conceived? Are we now mourning sperm?

In any event, without homosexual marriage, we had "life-long bachelors". We also had gays who did marry and have actual living children, who then had to deal with the consequences when their parents' marriages went sour. Lori, with all of your emphasis on how men need constant sex, you'd think you'd realize that it's bad for marriage when one partner goes into the marriage without realizing that the other partner is not sexually interested.

[lilwriter85]

Does anyone else ever get disturbed by Lori always emphasizing how men need constant sex? I have noticed that she is constantly trying to lump all men into one category when it comes to personality and attitude. I thought her "Don't make your husband into a woman" post was ridiculous for several reasons. Things about Lori's attitude on gender roles disturb me. Some of her attitudes are flat out ridiculous because she can't accept or see that not all men are the same. Asexual men and women exist Also Lori ignores the important fact that not all heterosexual married couples have children for various reasons.

[linnea27]

Does anyone else ever get disturbed by Lori always emphasizing how men need constant sex? I have noticed that she is constantly trying to lump all men into one category when it comes to personality and attitude. I thought her "Don't make your husband into a woman" post was ridiculous for several reasons. Things about Lori's attitude on gender roles disturb me. Some of her attitudes are flat out ridiculous because she can't accept or see that not all men are the same. Asexual men and women exist Also Lori ignores the important fact that not all heterosexual married couples have children for various reasons.

yes, totally. Lori acts like a wife in nothing more than a sex toy and any woman who doesnt put out doesnt deserve to be fed that day.

I posted a very polite response to one of her posts about how a wife has more value than just sex and we should be raising our sons to look for more than a sex partner (it was a direct response to her post- I forget exactly what she said but something to the effect that men deserved constant loving and she didnt want her sons married to women who didnt understand that? or something) and she deleted it. IShe cant handle even the discussion that women are good for something besides what is between their legs.

[lilwriter85]

yes, totally. Lori acts like a wife in nothing more than a sex toy and any woman who doesnt put out doesnt deserve to be fed that day.

I posted a very polite response to one of her posts about how a wife has more value than just sex and we should be raising our sons to look for more than a sex partner (it was a direct response to her post- I forget exactly what she said but something to the effect that men deserved constant loving and she didnt want her sons married to women who didnt understand that? or something) and she deleted it. IShe cant handle even the discussion that women are good for something besides what is between their legs.

I feel for any woman who may end up with Lori's other son. Based on a lot of things Lori and Ken say and believe about marriage, their kids likely have the same beliefs. I wouldn't be surprised if her son Ryan treats his wife like how Ken is with Lori. Lori posted several days back about how her married daughter got rid of clothes that her husband didn't like. I found that part to be disturbing because it reminded me a relative of mine who was emotionally abused her ex-husband. Lori has a lot of fucked up beliefs in regards to marriage and sex. It scares me that she and unabomber look-alike Ken mentor other couples.

[Bookworm]

The US writer Booth Tarkington (a huge best seller in his day, like 1900-1935) specialized in writing books about how great everything was in the 1870s and 1880s, most of which are now forgotten except for The Magnificent Ambersons.

One of the funniest books I have ever read was by Tarkington - Seventeen. Absolutely hysterical, with a character that reminds me a LOT of Miss Raquel. And yeah, people have always, always talked about the good old days. It's nice escapism for a while, but dangerous to really believe they were better.

[moodygirl86]

My younger brother and me don't even remember our father as he fucked off when we were babies, and we don't need him! Our mum had four kids, and did teach us right from wrong, but she never hit any of us, and not one of us has suffered for it. None of us owe anybody anything, we're law abiding citizens and can hold our heads up anywhere. Na-ha, hope Lori's good at dealing with failure!