Childhood is a Powerful Lever for culture reform
The Sacred Bond Between Children and Parents
The term “ACE” is an acronym for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). It originated in a groundbreaking study conducted in 1995 by the Centers for Disease Control and the Kaiser Permanente health care organization in California. The test itself asks a series of 10 questions about common traumatic experiences that may have occurred before the age of 18. As your ACE score increases, so does the risk of disease, emotional or social problems.
Because we are all equipped, or saddled with, what we did, or did not receive in our childhood, how we grow up has an enormous financial and cultural impact on our country.
According to Aces Too High, a website that disseminates ongoing research about positive and adverse childhood experiences:
Childhood trauma is very common, even in employed white middle-class, college-educated people with great health insurance.
There is a direct link between childhood trauma and adult onset of chronic disease, as well as depression, suicide, being violent and a victim of violence.
More types of trauma increases the risk of health, social and emotional problems.
People usually experience more than one type of trauma – rarely is it only sex abuse or only verbal abuse.
See this four minute video:
The emotional detachment produced by broken and dysfunctional families is the common denominator of mass shootings, the high cost of public education, crime and incarceration, abortion and gender confusion.
Tonight, forty percent (40%) of children in America will go to sleep with only one parent in the home. That is an alarming statistic. But perhaps more alarming is that zero percent (0%) of the 537 elected federal officials in Washington DC fully comprehend the relationship between the broken home and government costs. Committed parenting early in life is essential to the pursuit of happiness and its absence is the cause of the runaway cost of government.
Recent presidents have a least acknowledged the plight of the fatherless child. In a 2008 speech on the subject of fatherhood, President Obama stated the following, "Children who grow up without a father (an ACE) are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. All of this burdens our economy and governments by increased costs of education, law enforcement and prison incarceration."
Thankfully, no government program was introduced to solve this problem. A recent Rothenburg report found that sixty nine percent (69%) of Americans believe that no matter how bad things are, Washington will always find a way to make them worse. Perhaps the miserable failure of the “Great Society” can explain why Americans, tired of social programming, feel this way.
The reality is, the growth of government and the degradation of our culture are intertwined and conservative governance of America is out of reach until we reduce the welfare state. Additionally, we cannot reduce the welfare state without strengthening the bond between children and their biological or adoptive parents.
History has proven that governments are utterly incapable of solving this problem. Any attempt at change must come from the persuasive power of the common man and the bully pulpit of national leaders in every sector of our society. Together we can propose something other than myopic legislative fixes, a far-sighted proposal to shift the focus out of the beltway and state capitols and into each and every community to:
Strengthen the bond between children and their parents in nuclear, single family and custodial families, thereby reducing fatherlessness, unwed pregnancy and divorce, each by 30% within ten years.
Increase donations to organizations that do the research and help meet these goals and block grant federal welfare, not to states, but to individuals, dollar for dollar, who participate in this effort.
Achieve nationwide awareness of this goal.
Encourage the pursuit of these goals with the same fervor of a liberal activist college student of the ‘60s.
Aligning Nation with Kingdom means strengthening the bond between children and their parents in nuclear, single parent and custodial families.
Thank you for your informative expose on ACEs.
I will share this far and wide.
Best,
JPB