There is nothing new about French presidents having lovers, nor about the media storm that ensues when their liaisons are exposed. What has changed in France, however, are basic notions about family values and what constitutes the norm in personal relationships….
Hollande is living proof of this shift in attitudes: He took office as the first president not to be married to his partner, who moved into the Elysee with him. He has four children from a previous partner, Segolene Royal, to whom he wasn’t married, either. His current partner, Valerie Trierweiler, has three children from her second marriage. Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, has two sons from his first wife, another son from the second, whom he divorced shortly after taking office in 2007. He also has a young daughter with his current wife, Carla Bruni, whom he married in 2008.
Unlike in the U.S., such nontraditional arrangements enjoy wide acceptance in France. In a poll taken before the latest revelations about Hollande, 91 percent of French voters said they simply don’t care about the family lives or sexual preferences of their politicians.
This article will only shock people who haven’t been paying attention to the fallout of the breakdown in traditional morality everywhere in the Global North. One of the money quotes is this depressing stat about France these days:
[i]Moreover, almost 40 percent of children are now born to unmarried parents, compared with less than 1 in 5 in 1990…In 2010, the majority–55 percent–of French children were born outside of marriage.[/i]
Here’s another, about Europe this time: [i]Nineteen of the 28 European Union nataions have some sort of civil-union legislation, and the number of marriages per 1000 people has dropped sharply.[/i]
Now compare the equally dismal situation in the USA, where church attendance is far higher than in France or most of Europe. 50 years ago, when President LB Johnson launched his famous War on Poverty, only 6% of American children were born out of wedlock. Today, largely due to a vast increase in cohabitation but also due to the way our welfare system has created a virtual permanent underclass in this country, a whopping 41% of kids here are born to an unmarried mother. And among African Americans (especially urban ones), it’s an overwhelming majority, 70% or more. There is a devastating lack of young black men with the education or skills that would enable them to provide adequately for a family. As a result, countless young black males have no reason to fear what fathering a child out of wedlock could do to their future prospects, or how it could derail their future career or sabotage their future family’s welfare, since so many of them have no realistic future prostects anyway, with no real chance to have a decent career or family regardless.
The demise of marriage in western culture is a HUGE problem that poses very serious threats to the welfare of the Global North. All of European civilization is in a state of moral free fall, with rampant sexual immorality as only one of its most obvious symptoms.
But what is most disturbing is that there is so little difference between professing Christians and the secularized, neo-pagan population as a whole. The levels of divorce, cohabitation, abortion, and illegitimate births are virtually as high among those who claim to be Christians (even “born again” evangelical ones) as those deadly problems are among non-Christians.
I don’t expect the non-Christian world to act like Christians. But what bugs me and frustrates me deeply is that Christians so seldom act like followers of Jesus Christ. The salt has largely lost its savor in the Global North, and how shall its saltiness be restored?
David Handy+
I couldn’t agree more.
David might be interested (and further depressed) to hear that the French people quoted on our TV channels have said simply that they are concerned that their taxes go to a First Lady office and staff. They want that situation cleared up so that no more money is wasted. That seems to be the concern.