All You Need is Love?: The Real vs. Ideal Family Debate

In the textbook I use for my class, the book begins by addressing "the great debate" of American families: are they getting worse, or are they simply changing? The issue stems from a common disagreement among social scientists.

The problem is that we all want to promote happy and functional families, but we have virtually opposite views on how to do it. Do we best promote happiness and functionality by promoting specific family structures? Or should we focus on helping people love and see strengths in whatever family they're in? In other words - should our motto be "strive for the ideal", or "love what is real"? Let's look at an example...

"Family is important, but who's in a family? Why, the people who love you the most!" 

-Robert Skutch, Who's in a Family?

Who's in a Family?, a children's book published in 1997 and the subject of a lawsuit in Massachusetts, "shows the various combinations of individuals that can make up a family, emphasizing the positive aspects of different family structures, including grand-parent headed, single-parent, adopted, gay-headed, and mother-father families. Uses examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate how family groupings can differ."

Why is that important? Well, as the traditional family of two-heterosexual-married-parents-plus-their-kids continues to diminish, an increasing number of children find themselves in alternative family arrangements that may be stigmatized and devalued by the rest of society. As such, we should stop worrying about family form and instead focus on helping children be proud of whatever family they're in, stressing that family is just any group of people who love each other. 

Right?

Well, on the surface that sounds good, because it is inclusive. But here's the problem: When we stress inclusiveness, the term "family" gradually expands until it loses any specific meaning and eventually comes to embrace everyone we love, even pets and aliens, such as the following clip from Disney's Lilo and Stitch (just the first 40 seconds or so):

When "family" means anything, "family" means nothing. If we want to promote the family, we need to have some agreement on what it is, and "people that we love" is practically speaking not enough to guide discussions of welfare or tax policy or child custody arrangements.

Similarly, while the all-encompassing definition of family may sound good, significant evidence contradicts the idea that family form is irrelevant, and that "All you need is love" . Countless studies have shown that family form itself has a significant impact on outcomes for children and society. Children do better with two parents who are married and love each other. Children do better when they're reared with love and consistency. Children do better when they're born to adults rather than teenagers. And by "do better", I refer to outcomes in academics, mental health, drug use, teen pregnancy, future marriages and overall self esteem. If we agree that these outcomes are important and desirable, then we certainly have empirical evidence that an ideal family form does exist.

As social workers, we already create programs and legislation and policies to promote this kind of family. We encourage couples to stay together for the good of the child. We try to prevent divorce and teen pregnancies and infidelity. But while we push for this kind of behavior, we are still extremely hesitant to openly admit that some forms of families are simply better than others. 

This topic scares social workers because we don't want to make value judgments. We want to be client-centered, and as such we are sometimes quick to chastise others for "forcing their values" on clients. But what we fail to recognize is that the choice to not make people feel bad IS a value judgment. We can respect people who make that choice, but they should recognize that it is a choice, and one with consequences for society. 

For example - one of the most effective AIDS-prevention strategies in Uganda was been the "Zero Grazing" campaign - people were encouraged to "tie" themselves to one partner and only have sex with that person, permanently. There was no mention of abstinence, or condom use, there were no allowances made for culturally-accepted polygamy or divorce; it was a value-laden campaign, proscribing a specific family form, but it was extremely effective at reducing the spread of AIDS. If Ugandans can do that with AIDS, isn't it worth it for us to promote certain family forms in order to prevent so many other types of individual and social sicknesses?

This book wants us to believe that all types of family arrangements are equal in love and happiness and functionality. And we certainly want them to be! But we shouldn't mistake compensating for the ideal as achieving it. Adoption, for example, is a wonderful and needed thing. But there should almost never be a need for adoption in a society where all parents are physically, financially, emotionally, and mentally capable of rearing the children they create. Being raised by a grandparent may be the preferred method in some cultures, but in America it usually occurs when parents are not able to raise their own offspring. Similarly, there are single parents who do amazing things - like raise the future President Barack Obama - but almost no parent would choose to take on such a daunting task alone or wish it on their children. 

Adoption, kinship care and single parents - All three of these family forms result in severing or straining ties between a child and the individuals who gave them life, who are, biologically-speaking, the individuals most likely to love and care about that child. Cutting the bonds of biological parents creates emotional and mental difficulties for children in all three groups that reflect in poorer social, financial, and academic performance as well as physical and mental health outcomes, sometimes for the rest of their lives.

Are there unique strengths that children possess in each of these family forms? Absolutely. Children of adoption can claim to have two sets of parents, sometimes have both present in their life. Children raised by grandparents have the benefit of their maturity and wisdom and experience. Children from single parents learn to be more responsible, grow closer to their parent, and children from all three groups can learn resiliency in the face of difficulty.

So are these strengths meaningful alternatives? Or are we just handing out pity points? As always, let's focus on outcomes. Instead of talking about what feels good, or what sounds good, or what makes us comfortable, let's compare actual results (see the Moneyball example of avoiding biases). If it's true that children of single parents are more resilient but also more likely to do drugs and drop out of school, then we need compare the two outcomes and decide what is more important to us.

Ultimately, the decision is ours - either we openly promote some family forms above others, and as a result some kids may feel stigmatized, or we abandon the ideal and risk having kids face a host of other consequences.

Even more seriously, by abandoning any notion of an ideal, we deprive children of an incredibly useful template when forming their own families some day. The children I knew in Detroit never learned that abstinence before marriage was even a thing people did, or that waiting until marriage to have kids was even possible or desirable. They would come to my house and watch me and my husband interact, some of them seeing a functional marriage for the first time, and they'd always ask questions as though they knew there was something good here that they wanted, but they weren't quite sure how to achieve it. Even if we choose not to teach children the best ways to create and maintain a family, children will still formulating their own ideas. They will simply use their own observations and experiences to create a mental picture of an ideal family. Would we rather those mental pictures be shaped by good examples or bad ones?

Like a copy machine, families tend to reproduce themselves - functional families create children that create more functional families, and dysfunctional families create children that create more dysfunctional families. By not making any attempt to teach these ideals - to wait until marriage to have children, to wait until adulthood to get married, to be permanently and lovingly committed to their spouses, etc. - we virtually condemn children to replicate negative family patterns that they grow up believing are normal and good, which is why children of single parents are far more likely to become single parents themselves one day. Furthermore, those incorrect beliefs may never be challenged, even by those of us who know the data, which may avoid hurt feelings now but fail to prevent tragic decisions later on.

The other danger of abandoning ideal family form is that we eliminate any expectations for individuals to make responsible decisions regarding family creation and function. Creating and maintaining the ideal family form is not easy - it requires forethought, sexual control, perseverance, patience, and love - and we cheat people by implying that you can have a happy family and positive outcomes without doing those things. When people can do whatever they want without any negative push back from society, their choices are likely to be focused on their own happiness and well-being, and not that of children or the greater community.

In conclusion, this reminds me of another seemingly unattainable "ideal" preached by Jesus: "Be ye perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." Well, that is certainly a nice idea that we are nowhere CLOSE to! How can we continue to function from day to day, striving for something quite unattainable, without wallowing in misery about our continual lack of success?

Maybe, like getting a shot, some children will have to experience some emotional pain in the short term in order to experience greater happiness in the long term. Maybe, when comparing the outcomes of both family types, we decide that it's worth it for children to see the flaws in their own family situation if it results in them creating something better when they grow up. Maybe instead of focusing on being happy with their current situation, we need to show them the data, and teach them how to form and maintain a family in a way that is most likely to help them achieve their goals. We can help children best as we allow them to learn from the good and bad that they experienced in their family and continue to teach the ideal as something to aspire to, knowing that the closer they get to that ideal, the more happiness and success they are likely to experience. Weighing the alternatives - I think it's worth it.

The Secret Weapon of Social Change

In our new home in Detroit, there is an awful lot of work to do. Yesterday, while using Google maps to get to an interview, I found myself driving a solid two and a half miles down a main city road, lined with restaurants and barber shops and boutiques that were all completely deserted, boarded up or surrounded with broken windows and graffiti. A few stoned old men stumbled across alleys. 

People like me drive through places like this and think, what is to be done? I'm sure you have had that thought as well. And the list of answers we come up with is long indeed.

Perhaps you think that we need to boost industry by creating local investment opportunities.

Perhaps you think, Guiliani-style, that we need to focus on reducing crime, by spending money cleaning the graffiti and broken glass and increasing the police presence.

Maybe your answer is drug prevention - improving D.A.R.E. programs, building better rehab centers, and instituting better regulations on alcohol and drugs.

Maybe your inclination is education - let's learn from Teach for America and focus on better teachers, and more money in the schools. Then kids would achieve more and improve their own communities.

Maybe you gravitate toward community building through better public facilities and extra-curricular activities. In this spirit, Detroit boasts an abundance of YMCAs, after-school programs, corporate-sponsored sport facilities and dance camps and jazz festivals.

Maybe your answer is to address the race problem. Maybe it's gun control. Maybe it's healthcare.
Maybe it's better government assistance to the poor. We could probably keep going down this road for quite awhile - many people have. Whatever you see as the root of the problem is likely to be where you put your efforts to solving it. However, like a fire out of control, we won't solve the problem if we end up shooting water at the ominous, billowing smoke. We need to identify the causes within causes - the rootiest of the roots - in order to aim our efforts at the fire destroying society.

There are many examples of well-intentioned, smoke-drenched attempts to solve social problems. A friend from Uganda came to visit us a few weeks ago. He commented that, while half of the world's NGOs are in Africa (by one count there are 1,902 separate NGOs in Uganda alone), it is hard for the Africans to see that things are getting much better. That was discouraging to hear, as a former volunteer with such an organization, but I saw his point. Even while we were there, the problems seemed so overwhelming and so daunting. As happens in Detroit, each charitable organization in Africa picks a specific problem to attack - AIDS prevention, digging wells, teaching business skills, working in orphanages - but after all the money spent and interventions made, there seems to be so little of a dent made in the overall poverty and well-being of the African people. This may be, as the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala argues, because so many NGOs are "fragmented, project‑oriented, donor‑driven, urban‑based and sometimes, poorly managed."

So again...what is to be done? How can we get to the root of social problems, so that our interventions can be effective? The solution surprised me....

In recent years, Mormon women have been encouraged to study the history of the Relief Society (the women's organization in the church), and that led to the publication of a book called Daughters in My Kingdom, a history of the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In it, prophets and former Relief Society presidents teach the sisters of the church that their duty is to relieve the suffering of the poor and strengthen families. All of a sudden, reading that I had a revelation. Our duty is to relieve the suffering of the poor by strengthening families. That is our solution!

Why is that such a revelation? Families are as much a part of our lives as the air we breathe, so we may take it for granted that such a universal institution could be a powerful tool for social change. Church leaders have made it clear that families are not just a nice thing to have. Families are in fact God's secret weapon. What I realized in that moment was that families ARE the solution to social change. It is not only the most best way to raise children, it is the best way to save societies.

Instead of focusing on helping individuals, our focus should be on fixing the machine that creates happy and healthy individuals, which are happy and healthy families. When individual spouses and parents are able to do their job well - in a healthy, loving environment - they teach their children to do the same. They create a rock of support for the community around them. They create interconnected relationships of support with other families. Recall a time before health insurance - when your entire family and community WAS your insurance policy, and you were theirs. When we support families, families will do their job for individuals. So, in every aspect of individual and social struggles, whether solving poverty, or crime, or illiteracy, or health crises -- our question should always be, what can we do to help families?

As Elder Eyring said in 2012, "Bishops and Relief Society presidents always invite family members to help each other when there is a need. There are many reasons for that principle. Foremost is to provide to more people the blessing of increased love that comes from serving each other...That is why the Lord has created societies of caregivers."

There are many ways to help build our struggling communities, including many of the approaches listed above. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is involved with a number of initiatives including clean water projects, neonatal resuscitation training, vision care, wheelchairs, immunizations and food production. In my husband's discipline, lobbyists and politicians create legislation that changes aid programs, zoning laws, access to public transportation and more. I'm proud of the accomplishments that we've made in helping the poor.

But like Africa, Detroit will likely continue to struggle if the interventions are aimed at individuals and not done in the context of helping families. How can we help family members spend more quality time together? How can we help families understand and teach the importance of literacy and good citizenship? How can we reduce divorce and out-of-wedlock births? How can we encourage fidelity and commitment to family relationships? How can we make pro-marriage welfare policies? How can we help fathers be better role models? How can we provide relief for working mothers? How can we strengthen ties to extended family? How can we improve communication and cooperation and commitment within the home? Like a jammed printer, if we focus on removing the obstacles in their way, families are a machine that will naturally support healthy and happy families. And healthy families, automatically, do most of the things that are needed to strengthen individuals internally, and communities externally.

Family processes are already understood as an effective and efficient social machine - we gradually migrated from orphanages to foster homes in the 1950's as we discovered that not only is a family setting cheaper, but children tend to do better when they are raised in a family instead of an institution, especially if the family is at least distantly related to them.

Our church focuses on the family so much, not only because it is in the family that we can find the greatest individual happiness, but also because it is the key to our success in the world today.
Neal A. Maxwell said:

Isn't it ironical that in an age when we are learning almost feverishly about what is most ecologically sound, what are the most efficient and economic ways to produce energy or protein in order to help other human beings, that we should be so incredibly blind--because like ancient Judah, we are "looking beyond the mark"--when it comes to pursuing those processes which are best for the production of good human beings? [As with the relative inefficiency of the amount of grain needed to raise cattle versus chickens,] The social and spiritual sum of our political, educational, ad economic institutions is usually not sufficient to offset the deficits in the home. 

Analogously, we have far too many lonely humans foraging on deficient "homesteads" and too many governmental programs which attempt abortively to substitute a less efficient system of helping humans than the home; it is the home that we must rescue, repair, and sustain. Only when homes are full of truth, warmth, and trust, can our other institutions perform their tasks...If we are really concerned about the most economical way of achieving happiness for ourselves and/or our fellowmen and about those skills that are needed in successful human enterprises, then we should seek these gains through the family. (The Inexhaustible Gospel, pg 3)

Perhaps we have gone "beyond the mark" with regards to the family because of our almost unconscious culture of individualism. Perhaps we look past the family because our own personal experiences with family have been negative (if 60% of the baby boomers are divorced, then that means approximately 60% of their children--adults my age--are victims of divorce and either terrified or apathetic toward the idea of finding happiness in a family setting). Perhaps we undervalue the family as an institution because we don't really agree what a functional family looks like, or whether we should even define it.

While the argument about the defining a functional family may be full of controversy and potential stigma, what is the alternative? We can either use the overwhelming statistics to define what healthy looks like (including factors such as having a father and mother who are married and committed to each other), and strive for it, knowing that we may fail in our endeavor, or we can say nothing out of fear and allow society to risk duplicating negative family patterns that children grow up believing to be normal and good.

We can and should still love and support those whose lives do not turn out ideally. Most lives don't. Divorce, unwanted pregnancy, infidelity, and single parenthood are realities for many many people. But while avoiding generalizations may soothe feelings, it may destroy futures. After struggling with the decision personally, I have decided that I care more about helping the child of a single mother see the importance of fatherhood and encourage the desire to have a loyal partner in raising children than to coddle their upbringing as "good enough" and thereby risk them becoming a single mother as well. We admire the strong, courageous women who parent alone, but those single mothers would never wish such a life on their children and neither should we.

So that aside, assuming that I have already offended whoever is going to be offended by the idea of defining what makes a strong, functional family.... what should that definition be?

Unlike many others, I have a few advantages in this field. First and most importantly, because I belong to a church with modern day prophets, I have clear and specific guidance about what a strong family should look like. Second, I know the research, and third, my childhood in a family community in Saudi Arabia afforded me a unique vantage point to view strong, functional families from around the world. With these in mind, I have distilled the following characteristics:

#1 - Marriage. That is, a family is headed by a couple that is permanently, legally, spiritually, physically, emotionally committed to each other.
#2 - Gender (of parents and children) is acknowledged and respected and honored as an asset.
#3 - Fidelity. Couples keep sexual relations only with each other, and in the protective bonds of marriage. "Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity"
#4 - Mothers and fathers both take responsibility to rear, protect, and teach their children to become good members of society.
#5 - Positive principles are observed in the home, including faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and positive recreation.
#6 - Division of labor occurs according to the situation and strengths and preferences of each parent, ensuring that top priorities are providing for and protecting the home, and nurturing children.
#7 - Equality. However specific tasks are divided, couples should be committed to helping each other as equals (without keeping track).
#8 - Relationships with extended family are maintained and strengthened.

These eight points allow for a wide variety of adaptations for personal and cultural differences. Positive recreation may be mountain biking or karaoke. Honoring gender may be recognizing the beauty of one's artistic talents or one's dedicated service in the community. Marriage may happen in a chapel or on a beach. Division of labor may translate to one person doing the dishes, taking turns, or making the kids do them. A relationship with extended family may be grandma living with you, or remembering to send your cousins birthday cards.

Note that none of these eight points put any kind of requirement on children. That's because they're children! Any resilience or competence we observe in children should be applauded but not expected; A strong society can never be built on such an unstable foundation. And yet - how often are governmental programs and resources directed toward building this resilience in children, as though their parents were already a lost cause?

As a final thought - I volunteered at a youth detention facility years ago and spent time talking with the delinquents who managed to put themselves behind bars before getting to their 18th birthday. The overwhelming number of those children from distressed families was too obvious to think their behavior was unrelated. Interventions include detention, mentorship programs, medication, therapy, boot camps, behaviorists (like me). I've seen just about everything. And while I don't have the solution for most of these problems, I do know this - fixing a bad kid and then putting him back in a bad family is just as ineffective as the efforts of the NGOs my Ugandan friend lamented. Fix the family. It doesn't matter that it's more complex or expensive. Fix the family and the kids will follow. Fix the family and society will follow too.

The Evolution of Ridiculous

Statement 1: One study showed that children without fathers in the home, and in neighborhoods with a high percentage of single moms, are more likely to engage in crime.

Statement 2: Oh, so you're saying single moms are to blame for high rates of teen crime.

...
WHaaATttT?!!

How did we get there?

I call this the evolution of ridiculous. Here's another one.

Statement 1: Hobby Lobby doesn't want to be forced to pay for drugs that they disagree with morally

Statement 2: Hobby Lobby is preventing their employees from accessing birth control.

Also ridiculous. That's not what's happening at all. But the tweet version of the story is shorter, simpler, and... more inflammatory, which makes for more clicks. All kinds of assumptions are baked into this, but the impatience of society refuses to wait for them to be identified and then challenged or refuted:

1. Why do companies have to pay for birth control to begin with? 
2. How did private companies get forced to be involved with paying for health care? 
3. If women do have a right to birth control, couldn't we make it someone else's duty to provide that, like the government? 
4. If we just decided that women have a right to birth control in 2008 via Obamacare, shouldn't someone's right to freedom of religion supercede that, since that was codified in the Constitution in 1791? 
5. Couldn't disgruntled employees petition for a change of policy, or change their job? 
6. Is Hobby Lobby really preventing their employees from accessing birth control if it costs $10 to buy themselves? Couldn't we say that Hobby Lobby is also preventing their employees from accessing free day care, or subsidized college tuition? 
7. Isn't forcing a company to pay for something they morally disagree with kind of like forcing a gay baker to make a "faggots suck" cake for a hate group party?

Every evolution of ridiculous requires someone to take an action, a study, a comment, and then swallow huge amounts of unquestioned assumptions in order to spit out a completely unfounded and absurd conclusion.

It reminds me of a fourth grader realizing that your name "Daisy" rhymes with "crazy" and then extrapolates: "You're crazy Daisy! Ha ha - (add sing-songy voice here) You're a cra-zy Dai-sy, you're a cra-zy Dai-sy..."

Why do we put up with this?

I think we're scared. We've been in fourth grade, and we know that it doesn't matter which side logic favors. What matters is who says it louder.

Statement 1: I think marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman.

Statement 2: You hate gay people.

What, what? No! Of course not! It has nothing to do with that...
It doesn't matter. Everyone has already stopped listening and are now plugging their ears and singing. "You are a bi-got, you are a bi-got..."

But, but, if you keep acting like fourth graders, how can we possibly learn anything from each other! You're stifling civil discourse! You're creating a straw man! You are completely misrepresenting science! You're misrepresenting me!

"I can't heeeear you....la la la la...."

Pioneers In Petticoats: What the Church REALLY Teaches Girls

In our house growing up, we had a "Sunday shelf" which contained all the videos we were allowed to watch on the Sabbath (in case you're interested, these included big hits like the Living Scriptures videos, The Ten Commandments and Fiddler on the Roof). One tape was a VHS collection of Johnny Lingo and another short film from the 70's called Pioneers in Petticoats. Recently, I found this film on Youtube and insisted that my husband watch it with me - complete with horrible film quality and acting. As we watched the depiction of the early Young Women's organization of the church (aka Mutual Improvement Society, aka Young Women's Retrenchment Society), we were both surprised by what we noticed.

First of all....okay, it's dated. Got that. And the specific policies and procedures of the organization were different back then. But for all of the arguing about modesty and family roles in today's society, we realized that many people (including members of the church) have totally missed the point of the church's program for girls as it was and is envisioned.

Modesty in 1869 was not about not showing skin, but about teaching girls to stop being so vain and materialistic. It was about focusing less on your bows and bustles and trains and focusing more on education, self-improvement, and community building. Girls were taught to "retrench" (or cut back) on frivolity - stupid, unimportant things that distract us and weaken our ability to have an impact for good. And who can say that that's not still an issue for us today?

The Young Women's society, like the Relief Society, was inspired by male prophets who believed that women were better than they gave themselves credit for, who believed women had untapped power that could be better harnessed through an organization designed to do so. The organization was inspired by God through prophets, and then given to women to organize and run according to their own inspiration.

I found it rather symbolic that, while the story of Abigail Harper and her "scandalous" dress (you can see her collarbone! Gasp!) runs as a theme throughout the movie, it wasn't until I watched it as an adult that I realized how much more there was to the movie, much like my perspective on the Young Women's organization. The message is not about Abigail's clothes, but about her learning to be humble and teachable, reaching out to others who struggle, repentance and forgiveness. The story teaches girls to avoid gossiping, to take responsibility, to help those in need, to recognize the divine worth in every soul no matter what their behavior, and to stand up for what's right no matter where you are. Near the end, the Rentrenchment Society marches in a parade with a banner between them that says "The Glory of God is intelligence" This is in 1869! This is what the Lord saw that we as women could become, even when we may not have seen it in ourselves.

Feminism, as an offshoot of conflict theory, makes womanhood into a comparison game with manhood. Who's getting paid more, who is treated better, who is better represented, whether things are fair and equal - it's always a competition. God does not compare us, and neither does the church, which this movie makes very clear. Womanhood is about what we can become, period. It's about us living up to the best within us, just as men are encouraged to do.

I'm so proud to belong to a church that teaches these values to girls and women. I'm so proud of a church that not only encouraged voting rights for women decades before most other states (Utah in 1870 was preceded only by Wyoming in 1869), but understood and promoted the sacred nature of womanhood from the church's very onset. I know that God sees the greatness in us, and I know that He is continuing to teach us how to harness that greatness through the teachings and organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Here's the link to the film (43 min.)

How to Prevent Mass Shootings, Step One

I can see why President Obama is angry about the lack of action in the wake of school shootings. As a country, we haven't done almost anything legislatively. But while his anger is real, the president (and everyone else) is jumping to conclusions. we can't argue about the merits of a particular solutions until we agree on the nature of the problem.  We are skipping a step in good social research. We don't know if the problem is increased access to guns, or mental illness, or the media, or bad families, or how society treats men, or video games, or a critical combination of these, or something entirely different. Instead of jumping to conclusions ("gun control!") or shrugging our shoulders ("we can't predict it-- gee I guess we can't do anything"), let's use good science!

The terrible silver lining of increased school/public shootings is that they continue to provide us with additional case studies. We may never agree on gun control, but what I think everyone could agree on is this: let's encourage Congress to fund the most comprehensive research study in history to identify and study every imaginable factor that may be contributing to mass shootings.

Many studies of school violence have focused on one or two potential factors, but clearly that's not enough. Here are a couple of things we have learned: First of all, while mass shootings continue to increase, individual shootings in schools are the lowest in 23 years. It just seems like they're increasing because of the clustered nature of the killings, and the media coverage. As one researcher commented, "I sit here in Philadelphia with 400 homicides a year. It's not just mass murders. It's just everyday slaughter." Maybe the studies need to start by identifying whether the problem is more about violence or notoriety. Second, there are several "profiles" of school shooters - some come from typical traumatized homes, others suffer from mental illness, but some shooters have no history of either. Clearly there are factors here we haven't explored. Third, while there are a few simple factors that shooters virtually all have in common - current or former students, 18-30 years old, male, carrying multiple weapons - other factors are not universal, and certainly not predictive. In a 2001 study of 34 mass killers, 70% were described as "a loner", 61.5% had issues with substance abuse, 48% had preoccupations with weapons, 43.5% had been victims of bullying. Only 23% percent had a documented psychiatric history of any kind―which means three out of four did not. About half have a history of animal cruelty. School shooters have been mostly white but not all. As most scientists wisely point out, since the overwhelming majority of young male loners  are NOT shooting anyone, even if these characteristics were 100% correlated, they would still give us a pattern but not a prediction.

Here's one obvious problem - all of these studies are done independently, piecemeal. Most of them are looking at fairly obvious factors. Where is the push from politicians for us to be smart, and multi-disciplinary, in identifying more predictive factors or combinations of factors that contribute to mass shootings? Has anyone bothered to consider whether it's relevant that all of these guys were single? That all of these schools have been coed? Is there a correlation between gun laws and shootings in individual states? Were these shooters rejected from sports teams in middle school? Did they have positive male role models? Did they eat their vegetables as kids? Is any of that important? I don't know... but more information gives us a greater chance of identifying factors that are truly relevant and can be changed.

Unless we expand and correlate our search for related factors in mass shootings, we are stuck with the same old theories and may overlook data that doesn't seem relevant. It is like trying to predict which national anthem will be played by studying the heights of the athletes standing on the Olympic podium. We may find a correlation, and we may even publish a paper about it, but we don't actually get any closer to understanding the real issue. It's the nationality, not the height, that really matters. Could the same phenomenon be occurring with school shootings? We need to ask the right questions. As we all learned in 8th grade science, before you can form a theory and then a hypothesis about why something is happening, you have to begin with good observation, and in this case, good observation means gathering EXTENSIVE data about school shootings in MANY disciplines, and not settling for a handful of studies that "prove" that we're "right" about guns and mental illness.

Perhaps the national dialogue keeps coming back to the same small list of explanations because they are easy and familiar targets to blame. Sometimes we look for solutions in the wrong places, or we fail to look for solutions in the right places, because they're counterintuitive and even offensive to suggest. Two classic examples:

1. In 1822, obstetrician William Campbell, and later, Ignatz Semmelweiss, identified correctly that the horrifically high death toll of childbed fever in maternity wards was not due to the hospitals or the method of care - it was the doctors themselves who were carrying "disease particles" on their unwashed hands. The suggestion was immediately rejected because, as one Philadelphia practitioner said, "Doctors are gentlemen...and gentlemen's hands are clean." The theory was rejected because it offended practitioners and Campbell could offer no scientific explanation because germs hadn't been discovered.

2. Suicide clusters have similarly puzzled the public for decades, until researchers in the early 1990's identified the media as a key factor. It turns out that media coverage or publicity over one death serves to presents suicide as an option to other vulnerable people and encourages suicide in the same way - called copycat suicides. Two Viennese studies showed that less dramatic and extensive media coverage of subway-related suicides led to fewer suicide deaths in the following months. After introducing a campaign to encourage safe media reporting, suicides and attempted suicides in the subway actually dropped by 80%.

Intuitively, it makes no sense that a newspaper article should influence whether a 16 year old boy chooses to end his life, but it doesn't matter - when we notice a connection, we should pay attention. And as with the lack of understanding around germ theory, we may not be able to immediately identify WHY a factor is related, but if changing it helps, it doesn't really matter if we understand it.

I don't know why school shootings seem to be so common. I don't know why mass shootings in schools increase while individual homicides decrease. I don't know if or how shootings could be related to gender, policy, religiosity, biochemistry or Pokemon, but I hope that in our desperation we will stop squabbling and work together to find out.


As a final note, I recognize that with all the data we collect, we may still fail to identify the true causes of mass shootings. We will continue to invent and test various theories, and hopefully those theories will become more sophisticated and helpful - but if we put our trust in science alone, our survival relies on the skills and creativity of our PhDs, none of whom can see into the future. A situation like school shootings puts into perspective how limited we are as mortals in this respect. That is why we inscribe on every dime: "In God We Trust". God is not just for Sunday or to make us feel good - He can also help us survive: Heavenly Father has promised us that if we obey the commandments, we will prosper in the land, and if we don't, we will suffer (this promise is repeated at least 14 times in the Book of Mormon). Following the discussion above - if more information is critical to better decision making, then God is the ultimate decider. His recommendations should hold far more weight than any scientist or politician. What has He asked us to do? Love each other, be honest, keep the Sabbath day holy, honor our mothers and fathers, be sexually clean. In the Proclamation on the Family we're commanded to strengthen our families with a warning that a failure to do so will result in individual and national calamities. Am I saying that failing to love each other and strengthen families is contributing to school shootings? I don't know, but in our quest to understand and solve "calamities" like these, let's start here.

The Deceptive Difference of Paradigms on Religion

Last night, my husband and I had a long and fascinating discussion with someone from a very different political background. For the sake of polite conversation (and our somewhat desperate attempts to make friends in a new city), everyone's views about most things were expressed in general terms that called on shared values of love and tolerance. However, later that night, something occurred to me about the narratives that both sides use to discuss the role of religion in society. On the surface level, they sound very similar, but there is a small, sinister difference between these two arguments. See if you can identify it:

1. We shouldn't go around judging who's right and wrong.

2. We shouldn't insist that everyone agree with us.

The first argument could be reworded to say, "What gives me the right to claim that I'm right and that someone else is wrong?" It challenges the ethnocentrism of our personal beliefs and values. By saying we shouldn't "judge" the beliefs or actions of others, it implies that our own opinions of rightness and wrongness aren't necessarily universal. What I perceive is “wrong” may be just wrong for me, but not for someone else. In fact, my insistence on being right could lead to fanaticism and even terrorism (see Andrew Sullivan's post-9/11 New York Times Magazine cover article, "This is a Religious War"). This argument naturally leads to the view that organized religion itself can be dangerous, so it's important that we keep them in check by adapting our beliefs, or at least becoming more flexible with them, in order to foster a free and civil society. Let's call this group "relativists".

The second argument says, "I absolutely believe I'm right, but others have the right to be wrong." It just accepts that people will always have strong beliefs about what is right and wrong, and that in fact, personal convictions are inevitable, regardless of whether we realize we hold them (even 3 year-olds recognize the immorality of something being "unfair"), or whether they are contained in an organized religion (think:"We hold these truths to be self evident"). It also acknowledges that even if we agree on certain core values, we still differ in our beliefs about the nature of God and mankind and the universe, the purpose of life, and what actions are good and bad. But the second argument doesn't see inflexible beliefs as a problem - in fact, this argument is fine with people believing ridiculous or even dangerous things and disagreeing with each other vehemently - the second argument believes we can still live in the same pluralistic society where we respect each other's privilege to worship without being required to accept the rightness or wrongness of those beliefs. Let's call this group the "pluralists".

Can you see the difference between these two arguments? Two similar phrases each reflect the tip of a metaphorical iceberg representing a different social paradigm toward religion. So why is this difference so sinister? And why does it matter?

Look at them again. 

While wearing the clothes of respect and tolerance, there is something deceptively intolerant about the relativistic argument of religion. Relativism is itself an ideological paradigm. The belief that there is no universal code of conduct is, in fact, a belief, a value system: a religion. The church of relativism seeks social unity not by embracing diversity, but by eliminating it. And when that paradigm becomes the law of the land, it becomes paramount to a state-instituted religion. It's a bit paradoxical, but think about it this way. An adherent to the relativist argument will say "I believe there is no universal moral code of right and wrong" but the unspoken follow up is, "...and if you don't agree with that, then you're wrong." You see? Moral absolutes are still strongly held, it's just being done in a way that is less noticeable. Those who use the paradigm of irreligion as their religion are like fish in the sea claiming they don't believe in water.

Pluralism, as I describe it in argument two, is also a belief system - but it's about the nature of society, not the attainability of truth. Rather than seeking to whitewash religion or restrict certain actions and beliefs, it provides a framework under which adherents of all faith groups can believe and practice freely, however their conscience dictates. Requiring "flexibility" sounds perfectly reasonable to irreligionists, but it may be a ticket to hell for some groups, for whom any flexibility in keeping God's commandments is not patriotism, but sin. And remember - requiring people's beliefs to be flexible is in of itself a very inflexible belief!

Kevin Seamus Hasson, the founder of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said, "We can, and should, respect others' duty to follow their consciences even as we insist they're mistaken. Why? Because others have their duty to follow their presumably mistaken consciences as we do to follow our presumably correct ones." So...shouldn't that make us relativists? Not at all:

Respect for conscience makes sense of clashing truth claims without denying them or relativizing them. It's not that there is no truth, as the deconstructionists would have it, or that everything is somehow true for somebody, as the greeting-card writers would. It's that people make mistakes about what truth is, yet still have to obey their consciences nonetheless. So we can respect their duty to follow their consciences and embrace a particular faith-- and at the very same time be utterly convinced that the faith they're embracing is absolute drivel. [The Right to Be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America (San Francisco: Encounter, 2005), pp. 15-16.]

Pluralism doesn't waste any time trying to decide who is right or wrong, or whether there is a right or wrong. It doesn't need to. It accepts that even if I was utterly convinced of the rightness of my beliefs (including the belief that all religions are oppressive!), others have the right to be wrong, even holding beliefs that I consider oppressive, misogynistic, racist, old-fashioned, unscientific, or just weird. 

Adherents to the first argument believe that their position respects all different viewpoints, that their 'tolerance' is making this country safe for minorities and American pluralism. However, by insisting that "the price of freedom for everyone is that no one can be allowed to publicly claim that anything transcendent is absolutely true" (Hasson, p.3), these self-appointed guardians of public trust actually just eliminate pluralism itself. Hopefully, it is clear to everyone reading this that we don't keep our country safe by excluding persons we disagree with from national discussions (Evangelical Christians or nazis, communists or polygamists), but by including everyone. 

Reflecting on relativism as a religion, bent on eliminating religious diversity in order to protect it, Catholic commentator M.J. Sobran said the following (replace the word "secularism" with "relativism"): 

The Framers of the Constitution...forbade the Congress to make any law 'respecting' the establishment of religion...and they explicitly forbade the Congress to abridge 'the free exercise' of religion. It takes a special ingenuity to wring out of this a governmental indifference to religion, let alone an aggressive secularism [we might say aggressive relativism]. Yet there are those who insist that the First Amendment actually proscribes governmental partiality not only to any single religion, but to religion as such; so that tax exemption for churches is now thought to be unconstitutional. It is startling to consider that a clause clearly protecting religion can be construed as requiring that it be denied a status routinely granted to educational and charitable enterprises, which have no overt constitutional protection. Far from equalizing unbelief, secularism has succeeded in virtually establishing it.  

What the secularists [relativists] are increasingly demanding, in their disingenuous way, is that religious people, when they act politically, act only on secular [relativist] grounds. They are trying to equate acting on religion with establishing religion. And--I repeat--the consequence of such logic is really to establish secularism [relativism]. It is in fact, to force the religious to internalize the major premise of secularism: that religion has no proper bearing on public affairs. [Human Life Review, Summer 1978, pp. 51-52, 60-61]

I agree with Neal A. Maxwell that "irreligion as the state religion would be the worst of all combinations...its orthodoxy would be insistent and its inquisitors inevitable." If the state religion is irreligion or relativism, than every other religion is oppressed and marginalized in the name of tolerance. Elder Maxwell continues:

In its mildest form, irreligion will merely be condescending toward those who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian values. In its more harsh forms, as is always the case with those whose dogmatism is blinding, the secular church will do what it can to reduce the influence of those who still worry over standards such as those in the Ten Commandments. It is always such an easy step from dogmatism to unfair play--especially so when the dogmatists believe themselves to be dealing with primitive people who do not know what is best for them." ["Meeting the Challenges of Today", The Inexhaustible Gospel: A Retrospective of Twenty-one Firesides and Devotionals, Brigham Young University, 2004]

Even with its tenets of liberality and tolerance, note the word Maxwell uses to describe relativism: Dogmatism. Isn't that ironic?

"Not judging" is not the same as "not insisting that we agree," even if it sounds very similar. I have written many posts about the importance of being able to recognize and analyze our own social paradigms. It is in large measure because of this problem – when a paradigm is so persuasive it no longer seems like a paradigm at all, but rather the only way to possibly interpret the facts. But let us stop and question the most fundamental tenants of this "religion" which by its very nature condescends, discounts, and oppresses those who hold any other firm religious belief that differs from our own. Is that the way we want to look at society? Is that how we want America to be? Is there a better way?

As a Mormon, I care deeply about this topic because I personally hold some very strong, unusual, and admittedly inflexible beliefs. I believe that a man named Jesus who actually lived in Judea was the Son of God and died for our sins. I believe Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to a 14 year-old boy in a grove of trees in New York in the Spring of 1820, and that that boy later uncovered and translated by the power of God the Book of Mormon, another witness of Jesus Christ. I believe there is a living prophet today who gives us counsel from God for our current challenges - and that acting on that counsel will lead to better and happier lives for everyone, universally. I believe my religion teaches me not just to take these actions myself, but to encourage those around me to take these actions, so they can be happy too.

You may not agree with me. But that's the point isn't it? If your religion believes that "there is no universal code of good and bad", then I won't stop you from preaching that. But I hope you will be a pluralist as well as a relativist, and allow me to practice my faith as well, which insists that there is an eternal law, and commands us to "discern between truth and error" and between "good and bad" (1 Kings 3:9).

I agree with Hasson that fundamentally, every person “share(s) a thirst for the true and the good, and a conscience that drives our quest to find them." I hope America will continue to be a nation that respects and protects our individual quest to do so.