The Broken Hearth
Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Bestselling author William Bennett addresses the central social issue of our time—the deline of the family—in a book as intellectually provocative and politically controversial as his landmark The Death of Outrage.
Our recent economic prosperity has masked the devastation of the American family, which is now under seige as never before. From the dramatic rise in illegitimacy, divorce, and single parenthood to the call for the recognition of gay marriages, the traditional nuclear family is being radically challenged and undermined, along with the moral and legal consensus that once supported it.
Now in The Broken Hearth, William Bennett, America's foremost conservative spokesperson on matters of family values, presents a strong, well-reasoned, and informed defense of the traditional family. Interweaving history, anthropology, law, social science, and the teachings of Western religions, he argues that marriage between a man and a woman and the creation of a permanent, loving, and nurturing environment for children is a great historical achievement, one that should not be lightly abandoned in favor of more "progressive" arrangements. Bennett displays his ability to combine fearless conviction, acute insight, and respect for his adversaries in thorough, balanced, and enlightening discussions of single parenthood, cohabitation, gay marriage, and other trends that are undercuttingthe ideal of the family as the essential foundation of society.
Looking closely at the concerns and questions that divide America, Bennett provides a powerful affirmation of family life and the values and benefits it bestows on individuals and on society as a whole.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pointing to contemporary attitudes on divorce, homosexuality, children born out of wedlock, fatherlessness and cohabitation as challenges to the stability of traditional marriage, bestselling author and former secretary of education Bennett (The Book of Virtues; The Death of Outrage) argues that people must take steps to restabilize the institution because "(t)he nuclear family, defined as a monogamous married couple living with their children, is vital to civilization's success." Articulate and impassioned as always, Bennett delivers a forceful defense of his position with selective quotations from studies like Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur's Growing Up with a Single Parent and What's Happening to the American Family? by Sar A. Klevitan et al.; prominent politicians like former senator Patrick Moynihan; and literary sources from the Bible to the pro-lesbian children's book Heather Has Two Mommies. Although Bennett refers in passing to being a child of divorce and offers the teachings of his Catholic faith as a template for marital constancy, he shares no personal anecdotes from his own presumably successful marriage. Nor does he quote interviews with other happily married couples or divorce survivors. As a result, the structure of the book resembles that of a legal brief (Bennett counts a law degree from Harvard among his many academic achievements). However, he does not include citations, as he would in a brief, for some of his more arresting pronouncements, such as, "Cohabiting couples show lower levels of sexual satisfaction than do married couples." In a too-brief discussion of remedies to reverse the trends he sees, Bennett proposes repealing no-fault divorce, reaffirming publicly the centrality of family with churches assuming moral leadership, tightening the payment structure for mothers with dependent children and supporting the Defense of Marriage Act.
