Belonging and Rejection

This report by the Family Research Council of Washington DC has developed a measure of our current Social Health that it calls the Index of Belonging and Rejection. The Index of Belonging (45%) and Rejection (55%) gives an instant read on the social health of America by measuring the proportion of American children who have grown up in an intact married family and the rate by which family's disintegrate.

• Only 45% of U.S. teenagers have spent their childhood with an intact family, with both their birth mother and their biological father legally married to one another since before or around the time of the teenager s birth.
• 55% of teenagers live in families where their biological parents have rejected each other. The families with a history of rejection include single-parent families, stepfamilies, and children who no longer live with either birth parent but with adoptive or foster parents.

When one thinks of the negative impacts of family breakdown on children's development - I was struck by the stunning simplicity of this interpretation using facts readily available to us for some time.  I recommend it.