Brain Trust - Pat Fagan

Patrick F. Fagan is Senior Fellow and Director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute with the Family Research Council.

He joined The Matt Friedeman Show's Brain Trust segment to discuss FRC's "Index of Belonging". Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

What is this "Index of Belonging" all about?

When children grow up, they need to belong to their family. And when they do, they thrive.

The biggest rejection in the family happens between mom and dad, when they split, or when they have a baby and don't get married.

What proportion of our kids have grown up in a family where everyone belongs? The good news is that almost 45% of our kids grow up in a family like that.

The bad news is that 55% grew up in a family where mom and dad rejected one another.

What is the difference in the social health of the family between now and 1950?

This is a guesstimate, but I would say that in 1950 about 88% of our kids reached 17 with mom and dad belonging.

The depression-era parents raised their kids well. The baby boomers and their kids are much, much different. 

Is there a difference as far as ethnicity goes?

Actually, the black family is in real bad shape. Only in in 16.7 black children reach age 17 with mom and dad belonging. 88% do not.

What can we do about it?

Three things: restore chastity among teenagers. It's a Christian way of relating to the opposite sex.

The second thing is to restore marriage. They go hand in hand.

The third thing is to attend weekly worship of God, and prayer.

Brain Trust - Patrick Fagan

Patrick F. Fagan is Senior Fellow and Director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute with the Family Research Council. He joined The Matt Friedeman Show's Brain Trust segment to discuss the impact of the breakdown of the family. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

We've seen the national SAT scores falling. Talk to us about that.

Well, it's a gradual decline. Yes, they're continuing to fall.

We can see that the human capital is falling as well.

It's all related to the family breakdown.

When kids are raised in a family other than their mother and father, the majority of them are weaker adults.

Some would say that it's not nice, lacking compassion, and even bigoted to say that.

Anyone who denies reality is not being very nice, is being bigoted, and lacks compassion.

The work I've been doing seems to some people to be inflammatory.

But it's very dull, basic work. I'm gathering data and showing people what's out there.

By now, the breakdown of the family has been ignored so long that it's having long-term effects.

You can see it in the decline of the SAT scores and the human capital.

Public schools get a lot of blame; is it their fault?

God bless the public school teachers. They're doing very tough work.

They have to play the hand that's dealt them.

What can the teachers do to help?

There's two things we have to look at: long-term and near-term.

Long-term, what teachers have to start pushing for is parents taking responsibility for their children.

Pull that off, and the kids are going to thrive.

Near-term, they do the best they can.