The American family is dead, according to conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, and it didn't die a natural death – it was killed.
And in Schlafly’s view, too many people either don't know who killed the family or are too afraid to blame the culprits. That's why the legendary activist wrote a book titled "Who Killed the American Family?"
"You've got to know who the enemy is if you're going to fight it," Schlafly said during a recent appearance on Family Talk with Dr. James Dobson. "I'm hoping that [my book] will play that role, because while everybody's commented on the decline in the number of intact families, I think a lot of people were fearful of telling who's to blame for it."
In "Who Killed the American Family?" Schlafly fearlessly names all the entities she believes have contributed to the slow demise of the traditional nuclear family. She shared some of her insights while on Dobson's radio program.
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First, according to Schlafly, proponents of big government are gunning for the family because they see it as a competitor in providing for Americans' welfare.
"The traditional family is an economic unit," she said. "They earn their own money; they spend their own money the way they want to… When you break up the family, when you encourage illegitimacy, then you find that the mother who's trying to support her babies is going to turn to Big Brother government."
Order "Who Killed the American Family?" by Phyllis Schlafly now so you're prepared for battle.
Schlafly lamented that governments have taken too many divorced fathers out of their children's lives by granting sole custody to the mother. Under such an arrangement, the mother only needs the father to make child support payments, not to raise his children and serve as a role model, as in a traditional nuclear family.
"Men have to have a purpose," Schlafly said. "They have to have a mission in life. And if you take away their mission of being the provider and protector of the ones they love, they're going to sashay on down the street and have fun somewhere else."
Among the greatest enemies of the family, according to Schlafly, are the feminists, who wish to liberate women from what they see as the patriarchal structure of American society. Schlafly believes feminists want to get men out of women's lives, except as sources of child support income. She thinks they wish to erase all distinctions between men and women.
"The feminists really are not for equality," Schlafly claimed. "They're for interchangeability."
But Schlafly, a mother of six, knows men and women are not interchangeable. She gave birth to three sons followed by a daughter, and early on, she noticed one major difference in how the girl behaved.
"All she did was lie there in the cradle," she remembered. "She didn't thrash around like all the boys did. [Boys and girls] are different from the beginning."
Schlafly also pointed to certain laws that have attacked the institution of marriage. Laws that funnel welfare money through the mother make fathers irrelevant, in her view. But even more insidious is "no-fault divorce," which allows either spouse to petition for divorce without proving that the other spouse breached the marriage contract.
"They call it 'no-fault,' but that really isn't the right name," Schlafly opined. "It should be called 'unilateral divorce.' Any spouse can just say, 'I'm outta here,' and no reason."
The conservative legend believes family courts are complicit in the destruction of marriage as well. She said the concept of "the best interest of the child" has been turned on its head; English common law regarded the parents as having the best interests of their children at heart, but present-day America makes a judge the sole arbiter of what is best for a child.
"[The judge] can second-guess any decision made by the parents, even a decision that both parents have agreed to," Schlafly said. "We pride ourselves on being a government that believes in law, but there is no law that says what is in the best interest [of a child], so the judge is just doing it by the seat of his pants, whatever his inclination is."
Schlafly also identified the perverse incentives that undermined the family. For example, poor mothers lose many of their welfare benefits if they get married.
"That's what welfare so-called 'reform' has done: it has provided financial incentives to have babies without getting married," she said.
So what can be done?
Schlafly believes churches have a role to play in combating the decline of marriage and the family, but she fears they have remained too silent so far.
"I hope that the pastors of all denominations are going to wake up to this problem," she proclaimed. "The thing that has been so disappointing to me is with the collapse of traditional marriage, where are the churches?"
"I think the pastors are afraid of the feminists attacking them," she continued. "When the feminists come and attack them for criticizing any of the feminist doctrines, the pastor doesn't know what to do. I urge them all to set up a committee of three or four women to run interference for them."
Schlafly also believes Congress lacks the moral courage to stand up to the feminists, homosexuals, and others who oppose a traditional lifestyle.
"I think they're intimidated by the aggressiveness of the feminists and the gays, and we've got to give them a little backbone to stand up against them," she said.
Schlafly thinks congressmen know traditional marriage and nuclear families are best for society, but don't want to be perceived as anti-woman.
"If you don't do what the feminists say, you're waging a war on women," she said. "They have control of the media, and they have been able to put over their propaganda in so many ways."
So in the end, Schlafly believes it's up to all to society to remember what worked in the past, back when she was a girl in the 1930s.
"During the Depression, the family was intact; it stayed together, and we survived," Schlafly asserted. "We grew up to be what they called the 'greatest generation,' and we need to restore the family and put down all the propaganda that’s spread against it."