To start, here is a cute pic of me and my hubby for attention.
Let's define 'Trend'. A trend is similar to a pattern, where an upwards or downwards shift in data during a certain amount of time. Some of the increasing trends for family relations are increased pre marital sex, more people living alone, increased amount of couples cohabiting, marriage at a higher age, more employed mothers, decline in birth rates, and women having children at an older age.
There is also an increase in age for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when getting married. Maybe the stereotype of getting married at 18 isn’t true after all, but hopefully not in a worldly way.
One trend that has tended to be constant even though we constantly are hearing about it increasing, is the divorce rate. One conclusion that I thought of for this was that if people are getting married later, cohabiting before marriage, then of course the divorce rate isn’t going to go up, because why would it go up without people getting married? It wouldn’t.
Speaking of divorce rate, here is a trend that was also found about it. In 1944-45 there was a spike in divorce after World War II. (This was also the baby boom that we always here about, which the birthrate was about 3.7 kids per women during that time). In 1970, there was also a spike. Those in 1970 that were getting divorced, were the children of the parents that got divorced just years before. This brings into question, the effect that divorce has on children. If this is a trend that has happened twice, would it happen again?
There was a book written by Bob Elrich in 1968 titled “The Population Bomb”. He was claiming that after the baby boom we would use up all of our resources and starve. He was obviously wrong because here we are! He was against any increase in population because of this. It is evident that when there are more people on the earth, there are more brains coming up with ideas and ways to increase our resources and not just stay alive but make life better. There is no country or location on earth that are starving because of limited resources. When we think of starvation in now a day, we tend to think of Africa. Areas in Africa are starving because of political corruption, not a lack of resources which shows the Bob Elrich is still wrong in his assumptions about the increase in population today.
We know the family is under attack by the adversary. We are constantly warned by our church leaders and our current prophet that we need to keep the family unit strong so we can survive and strive in the latter days. I love this first quote from The Family: A Proclamation to the World which says, “The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.” And “Being part of a family is a great blessing. Your family can provide you with companionship and happiness, help you learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and help you prepare for eternal life.” which is from The Church of Jesus Christ website on Family. These both show us how important our family units are to our Heavenly Father’s plan and that we have our own agency to decide what our current and future family units will be like. Satan is going to try to do it with whatever way he can, and that includes any of those trends that I mentioned above.
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