Families are Becoming Extinct; But, Call it Tradition, Call it a Clan, Call it Belonging. Whatever you Call it, You Still Need it.

Call it tradition, call it a clan, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, where ever you are, you still need one.
Our most basic instinct is not for personal survival but for family survival. Most of Mother Nature’s creations would give their own life for the survival of a younger family member. If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of individual sections, held together but separable-each segment distinct. The family is one of Mother Nature’s greatest masterpieces. Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family. The lack of emotional security of our North American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people-no mere father and mother-as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of a variety in age, and in temperament; and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he would, for Nature has welded him into it before he was born.
The problem derives from our "modern" society. We live in a world of "working" "single"parents, of day-care, pre-school, kindergarten, "day-camps" after school care,etc. etc. Many of our young people grow up believing that they are not wanted--that they have no family NO CONNECTIONS. Consequently, they often: take to the "streets", join "gangs" or turn to strangers (often an older person). This becomes their Family. This hurts US, hurts our society, and most importantly; it often destroys the lives of our young people.