Increasingly the very idea of family is under assault, particularly from universities and media that openly criticize monogamy and the nuclear family while extolling a wide array of alternatives including polyamory and some form of collectivized childrearing. Columnist David Brooks of the New York Times, who last week fretted that "human beings are soon going to be eclipsed" by AI, also argued in The Atlantic in 2020 that "the nuclear family was a mistake." Brooks, no woke zealot, oddly echoed the group Black Lives Matter, which made opposition to the nuclear family a part of its basic original platform, even though family breakdown has hurt African American boys most of all. One prominent feminist, Sophie Lewis, advocates "full surrogacy" as a replacement for the traditional family.
To be sure, many children are being brought up without two parents. The number of children living in single parent households has more than doubled in the last 50 years. In the United States, the rate of single parenthood has grown from 10% in 1960 to over 40% today.
Rather than a nation of families, the United States is becoming a collection of autonomous human beings and childless households. The impacts of a weaker family, as Brookings Institution scholar Richard Reeves and others have noted, are felt most among poorer people, and particularly their offspring. "This is probably the best documented fact in sociology in America that no one wants to admit," observed demographer Mary Eberstadt.
The links between family dysfunction and crime have been clear since at least the 1970s. This breakdown has worsened as city leaders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, New York and other urban centers now accept homelessness, open drug markets, and petty crime. This can be viewed as another aspect of anti-humanism, rejecting the notion that people are capable of productive and fulfilling lives. Instead of seeing people as members of a community with obligations to one another, it reflects a kind of live-and-let-die individualism that leads to isolation, despair, and anger.
The Friendless American
Family decline reflects just one aspect of an increasingly dehumanized social order. The U.S. Census Bureau has found that 28% of American households had just one person in 2020. In 1940, this number was just 8%. In a recent survey conducted by Cigna, researchers found that almost 80% of adults from the ages of 18 to 24 reported feeling lonely. In 2018, even before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, one study showed that 54% of Americans felt like no one in their life knew them well. The "atomization" of America, first examined 20 years ago by Robert Putnam in books such as "Bowling Alone," has been simply "speeding out in the wrong direction," warns journalist Jennifer Senior.
As the pandemic wound down in the spring of 2022 and many were looking to resume their lives as normally as possible, a survey of American adults revealed that many people found it harder to form relationships now, and one-fourth of adults felt anxious about socializing. The biggest source of anxiety, shared by 29% of respondents, was "not knowing what to say or how to interact." As social commentator Arthur Brooks notes, "Many of us have simply forgotten how to be friends."
But it's young people who bear the brunt of the loneliness wave. Data from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey on Community and Society indicate that younger Americans are, in fact, considerably more lonely and isolated than older Americans. For instance, 44% of 18 to 29-year-olds report feeling completely alone at least sometimes, compared with just 19% of 60 to 70-year-olds. Perhaps most troubling, 22% of younger Americans stated that they "rarely" or "never" have someone they can turn to when in need. For older Americans, this number was just 5%.
So, what replaces human connections? The solution is increasingly expressed as self-love -- the notion that the individual, however flawed, needs to be celebrated above all other human connections. According to one recent survey, 44% of people believe self-love is an essential aspect of mental health. For some, like pop singer Lizzo, self-love means accepting even traits such as obesity, which are clear threats to basic health.
In this tech-dominant future, even the most pleasurable direct human contact is being supplanted by artificial stimulus. Many younger people are falling into what researchers have characterized as a "sex recession." There has been a significant rise in artificial sex and numerous reports have found that pornography consumption can negatively impact marital intimacy and reduce relationship satisfaction. Younger generations are having sex less often and experiencing far more relationship instability, leading to fewer marriages and more atomization. In Japan, the harbinger of modern Asian demographics, roughly a third of men enter their 30s as virgins and a quarter of men over 50 never marry. Nearly a third of Japanese in their 30s have never had sex.
Psychologist Maytal Eyal, writing in Time, quotes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggesting that that loving yourself is "the one foundation of everything." She also quotes Nicole LaPera, a clinical psychologist with 6.4 million followers, who claims "Self-love is our natural state," citing Miley Cyrus, whose recent hit "Flowers" proclaims, "I can love me better than you can."
Life, Death, and Changing Attitudes
As reflected in "self-love," anti-humanism rests on a beliefsystem that substitutes the sanctity of human life with a new ideology centered on the autonomous individual's wants and desires. This extends to changing views on the most basic events of human existence, birth and death.
Attitudes towards euthanasia are increasingly permissive and expansive. Today a majority of Americans (54%), according to Gallup, think that doctor-assisted suicide is morally acceptable. Ten states now provide euthanasia. Several others, including Massachusetts and Vermont, also want to expand the use of "end of life" procedures.
The United States is behind the curve on this issue. In Canada, euthanasia is being made available even to those not terminally ill. Some apply to be killed due to homelessness or depression; since the new euthanasia law went into effect in 2016, the numbers using it have grown ten-fold. Canadian medical professionals have been reported to urge terminally ill patients to end their lives earlier, in part to defray hospital expenses. There are even government plans to consider allowing assisted suicide for minors without parental consent.
These trends can be seen as well in some European nations, such as Switzerland, where people not terminally ill can orchestrate their own extermination. In Spain, one convicted murderer opted for suicide even before sentencing. Belgium allowed the assisted suicide of a 23-year-old woman with depression, something that has sparked considerable controversy. In Japan, it is widely discussed whether that rapidly aging population should institute euthanasia for the elderly, even those who are not sick or dying. Last year the country experienced twice as many deaths as births.
The shifts here and abroad reveal a diminishing value placed on human life. A Connecticut civil rights lawyer, a former strong supporter of liberalized euthanasia laws, reports how physicians advocated assisted suicide for patients with disabilities, even those able to live longer and thrive.
Similar attitudes toward life define the ever more contentious abortion debate. When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, his platform was that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." Today, the nation's most prominent abortion advocates - like their opposite number in the pro-life movement - leave no room for compromise. Pro-choice leaders often view abortion as an unchallengeable "human right." Just as the idea of limiting abortions for rape and incest, and placing very strict time limits, seems extreme to most Americans, the alternative view that has taken hold is that abortion idea is no longer something to be regretted, but celebrated. And this attitude has only intensified after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.