Parental Delinquency!

Parental Delinquency: The Bomb That Destroyed the Home

When I first saw this Ramsey cartoon, I remembered the first time I seriously studied Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction was almost beyond comprehension. Buildings disappeared, lives were extinguished in an instant, and the intense flash left haunting silhouettes upon walls and pavement. It was destruction on a scale the world could hardly imagine.

Ramsey’s illustration makes a deliberately shocking comparison. Above the ruins of the American home rises a mushroom cloud bearing the words:

“PARENTAL DELINQUENCY.”

His point is not that neglected parenting produces the same physical suffering as an atomic bomb. His point is that the destruction of the home can devastate generations, cities, churches, and eventually an entire nation.

As I began reading books such as John Stormer’s None Dare Call It Treason and other histories of American education, I came to understand that public education was not always shaped merely by a desire to teach children to read. Some reformers openly desired to reshape society by reshaping the child—to produce citizens who were more uniform, manageable, and compliant with the values established by the state.

The Bible places that responsibility somewhere else:

“And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children…”
—Deuteronomy 6:7

Throughout history, even societies that were not thoroughly Christian have understood that children must be taught discipline, honesty, duty, respect for their neighbors, and responsibility for their own actions. These virtues did not arise from nowhere. They survived beneath the lingering influence of biblical truth—the overarching shadow of Christ upon a civilization that was gradually rejecting Him.

No generation simply awakens one morning as a mob of degenerates.

It was raised that way.

We praise the generation that endured the Great Depression and fought the Second World War, and certainly many among them demonstrated extraordinary courage and sacrifice. But that same generation also helped produce the culture that followed: commercialized pornography, widespread alcoholism, no-fault divorce, sexual revolution, abortion, and an entertainment industry increasingly hostile to biblical morality.

The children did not invent all of that.

Adults built it, financed it, advertised it, legalized it, and then handed it to their children.

Hollywood was not created by children. Pornographic empires were not established by children. Liquor stores were not placed on every corner by children. Corrupt politicians, predatory bankers, revolutionary educators, and Christ-rejecting entertainers were grown adults before they began shaping the minds of the next generation.

Then society blamed the children for becoming what their elders had trained them to become.

Parental delinquency has now entered another realm. A child is born and, almost immediately, the work of raising that child is delegated to strangers. First came kindergarten—literally a “children’s garden.” Then preschool, pre-kindergarten, extended-day programs, and institutional care beginning almost in infancy.

A nursery is where seeds are planted, cultivated, grafted, cross-pollinated, and prepared for transplanting.

The question is not merely whether children are being educated.

The question is: Who is cultivating them, what seed is being planted, and into whose image are they being shaped?

Children need the affection of their mother, the protection and instruction of their father, and a home governed by the Word of God. This does not mean every parent can avoid every hardship or that every family’s circumstances will be identical. It means parents must never surrender their God-given responsibility to know what is being placed into the hearts and minds of their children.

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
—Ephesians 6:4

We look at the ruins in Ramsey’s picture and ask how the American home came to this.

The answer is seldom one enormous explosion.

It is usually one compromise, one neglected duty, one delegated responsibility, and one rejected truth at a time.

“Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?”
—1 Corinthians 5:6

A little leaven may not look like much.

But what happens when there is nothing left but leaven?