Family oriented or .......?

[hope]

Thank you for the welcome. I do not recall where I first came across these statistics, but if you go to CNN and put in teen suicide it should bring up a link showing that 1 in 6 have considered suicide and 1 in 12 are reported to have attempted it

I thought you meant teenagers who had committed suicide, not those who had thought of it or attempted it. For the source you gave, I could not locate it. However I did find this report from last year which indeed quotes the figures you gave....http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/1-12-teens-attempted-suicide-report-article-1.1092622

As you will note the majority of these cases are as a result of some type of bullying. I`m not sure how you, in turn, blame this on the breakdown of the American family however.
I am more inclined to think the bullying should be better addressed in the first instance and the individual targeted, better supported. Let us see how this might effect the despair that forces these young people to think on suicide.

Again this can be traced back to the breakdown of the family in America.

You may also note from the above link, that the highest rates are from Hispanic females. Now as we know, Hispanic families are as a rule, a close knit unit..usually high in traditional family values for the most part as I understand it. So again, I`m not sure how you blame the family here either.

 

[Balder]

Most American young people come from broken homes and the teen suicide rate is second only to Sweden.

Source, please?

Teen suicide is low in Sweden.:bored: It is high only in eastern Asian and in eastern European nations AFAIK.

 

[LeBrok]

What you're saying here doesn't support your thesis at all. Neither America nor any other developed country needs strong family ties to keep growing or to be happy. Since the 60's, family ties have been breaking down in almost every developed nation. Yet, economic progress hasn't been affected (significantly) and people are probably happier.

Exactly my point Boss, but instead of explaining, I was trying to get Michel "on track" asking questions.
It is obvious that family's ties break down during economic progression in every country. I would say that the reason is that in prosperous country you don't need huge family's help to survive or get a job. Kids have opportunity getting jobs and opportunity of being independent much sooner than in poor countries. Even grandparents are independent, not really needing to live with kids for support in old age. These days grandparent are the richest of all 3 generations. (at least statistically in Canada).

On other hand, families 70-100 years ago consisted of 5 to 15 people living under one roof, even in one room. It wasn't a family that we know today. It was more like small community or neighborhood kindergarten. Parents worked all the time, kids were roaming around the area, or had to work from young age, to help younger siblings, cook or fetch water from the well. There was not much of close contact with parents, as kids today have. There was no time or energy for it. How much love you can show every day to 10 kids when you worked physically for 12 hours? Did they take them on vacation to have some fun?
Today there is one or two kids under close supervision, school, after school activities, reading books, and with mother, or mother and father almost all the time. In more and more cases kids linger around parents houses rather than starting their own families. I'm not exactly sure what Michel means by broke families? Just because we have so few kids these days and we don't have to live with grandparents? Surely families changed, but is it for worse? Surely families are smaller but parents spend more time with kids.

Granted there are more divorces these days, but on other hand kids don't need to look at father beating mother every day, just because he is angry, or the soup is not to his liking. Beating women was sort of tradition back then. There were no divorces available way back in proper christian country.