Divorce has become the latest ugly trend of American marriages. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the divorce rate has quadrupled from 4.3 million in 1970 to 18.3 million in 1996. From 1970 to 1975 alone, divorce increased nearly forty percent. Seventy percent of the youths who commit suicide each year have divorced parents. When divorces exploded to new levels in the 1970's, suicide followed the trend. .
Many parents beat their children into submission these days, another trend that has exploded in our era. In 1999, the state of Alabama alone filed over 35,000 child abuse reports. In all areas of the country, the poor, rich, urban, suburban, and rural, reports of child abuse have accelerated in the past decades. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that in 1997, 42 out of every 1,000 children in the United States were reported as victims of child abuse, a 320 percent leap from 10 per 1,000 children in 1976. As if it wasn't known, physically attacking anyone can cause serious traumatic damages that can never be cured, and abusing children makes them extremely vulnerable to psychological distress that would normally have no affect. .
Nearly every household in America owns a television, a fact that was unheard of in the 1960's. The television set was a luxury in those days, but it has now transformed itself into one of America's favorite past times. As if this wasn't enough, the National Association of School Psychologists, says that eighty six percent of television shows and movies depict characters that solve interpersonal problems with violence. The Center of Media Education says that by the time a child exits elementary school, the average child will have watched 100,000 acts of violence on television, including 8,000 murders. Through the crucial course of learning that a child receives in elementary school, a child will be brainwashed by television by believing that violence can be a way to solve personal problems.
