The Broken Hearth

Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family

By: William J. Bennett

Narrated by: Eric Park

Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Today the American family is under siege as never before. From the dramatic rise in illegitimacy, divorce, cohabitation, and single parenthood to the call for 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.

Many think it doesn't matter whether we preserve the nuclear family. Some even argue that its dissolution is a good thing - a liberation from repressive patriarchal authority. William J. Bennett maintains that, to the contrary, the dissolution of the American family is the fundamental crisis of our time.

Americans like to think they are free to reinvent every aspect of family life without social or personal consequences. Yet, far from being strictly a matter of private choice, the integrity of families is, Bennett shows, a strong and legitimate interest of society at large. And, he argues, the monogamous nuclear family is not a repressive patriarchal institution, but quite the opposite: a precious and hard-won historical achievement, one that safeguards the interests of men, women, and children as no other arrangement yet devised.

Rising above the jeremiads characteristic of so much contemporary public debate, The Broken Hearth provides a powerful affirmation of family life and the matchless benefits it bestows on individuals and society as a whole.

©2001 William J. Bennett (P)2001 Random House, Inc., Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, a Division of Random House, Inc.

The broken Hearth

This was a very good about how families have been harmed by the modern view of family. Families are so important to our society and the world at large. Without close, loving families, that consist of a man as the father and a woman as the mother, children generally, have a harder time developing into good, productive, and relied adults. Yes, there are families that don’t have two parents of the opposite sex that do well, but not as many. There are families living with parents of the opposite sex that aren’t meting the needs of the members. It happens but families and the children generally do better. Society needs to consider how marriage has been a help to the world in general and as the author has stated, place more importance on keeping marriages intact and less importance on the dissolution of marriages.