The Abandoned Generation

By Gabriele Kuby

A broken family throws formidable stumbling blocks onto the path of life that a society as a whole must traverse. But the stones under the feet of the children in these situations are the most hurtful and most in need of redress. Gabriele Kuby answers the call and does so with an acute sense of responsibility. As a child of divorce and later divorcee, Kuby speaks to herself when she urges the men and women of her generation to consider how failing as spouses we fail as parents, and as such cause the most trouble for our children. 

Reading Kuby’s analysis of cultural, sociological and biological data, the danger is clear and present. Yet Kuby asserts that, generally, our plight goes unnoticed and is veiled from our eyes. We need to see children for who and what they really are to us, to the family, and society at large. In the words of Fulton Sheen, “Children play a redeemer role in the family. The represent the victory of love over the insatiable ego. They symbolize the defeat of selfishness and the triumph of giving love.” Tragically, children are increasingly less a part of Western culture. This leaves the family, in the best case scenario, an artifact, and in the worst case, a casualty. 

The topics addressed by Kuby cover towering influences in postmodern family life: Gender politics, the abortion mentality, daycare (“Socialism 2.0”), premature stress, rights of children, digital distractions, pornography, and divorce. A native German, Kuby’s work is, heartbreakingly, as relevant to American society as her own.  This European perspective drives home the urgent need to recognize our situation as global and embedded, and one that requires more than political mobilization of mainstream efforts and responses. What really is good and normal, and how to we realize it? Listen to the heartstrings that yearn for true knowledge of oneself, Kuby implores, of God, and how in the surprise of God’s mercy we are guided through life. Kuby backs up this invitation to personal conversion and betterment with hard data.

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Augustines Press
• Release date: Aug 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781587310058

Gabriele Kuby

GABRIELE KUBY was a student of sociology at the Free University of Berlin in 1967, a pivotal year of upheaval and rebellion among students. She completed her Masters degree under the direction of Ralph Dahrendorf at the University of Konstanz, following which she worked as a translator and interpreter for twenty years. After her conversion to the Catholic faith in 1997 she became a successful author of books on spiritual and political issues and an international speaker. “As a sociologist I observe the developments of our society; as a mother I am committed to the future of the next generation; as a Catholic, I try to live what I believe.”

Book preview

Introduction

The child — our future

Children play a redeemer role in the family. They represent the victory of love over the insatiable ego. They symbolize the defeat of selfishness and the triumph of giving love.

Fulton Sheen

How delighted we are when we see a mother duck leading her ducklings; a cat gently licking her kittens; a polar bear cup cuddling in its mother’s paws; when a father penguin spends weeks rocking the egg under his flat feet and warms it under his plumage while the mother fetches food. The strong care for the weak. This is how life begins anew again and again — and we humans are touched by it.

We’re also touched when a baby smiles at us. Just a few weeks after birth, without thought or judgment, the baby bestows us with a pure look of complete, loving acceptance. Heaven opens up to us. But do we feel the same enchantment from animals’ care for their young as we do from a nursing mother? Does she not make great sacrifices from conception to birth? From birth to weaning and continuously throughout life? She gives her body — her physical substance — so could she not give her heart? But something strange is going on: People are not moved, do not respect a mother who cares for the weak and thus passes on life.

What is wrong? Aren’t we in the West proud of our humanity? We don’t sacrifice virgins to appease the gods, like the Aztecs did. We don’t murder newborns if there are too many of them or they are defective, like the Romans did. In the affluent Western countries, we don’t force children into labor, like those whose cheap products we buy, and we don’t force them to be soldiers in a war. But do children really have it made in our culture?

No. They don’t fare so well. A quarter to a third of children and youth in Germany are sick in body and soul — so sick that they need treatment by doctors and therapists. Behind the numbers hides sorrow, great existential suffering of children and youth with negative consequences to their personal life and to the future of all society. The figures also conceal the sorrow of parents whose children do not thrive, who give them no joy, who are sick, aggressive or depressive and soon slip from their embrace. Children whose psyches are ruptured have more trouble in school, are more likely to drop out, have little or no educational achievement, have poor opportunities for training and jobs, and are at greater risk of addiction and imprisonment.¹⁰ Families have always had their hardships, but before the late 1960s a happy childhood, a carefree childhood, nestled in a family of father, mother, and siblings, an extended family, a natural environment safe for children, was still the norm that people strove for. Today, destruction of the family is encouraged as the back way to socialism: equality of the lowest common denominator of a collectivized people ruled over by the political classes.

The major studies documenting the mass suffering of the young generation link it to low socio-economic and educational status, but the deeper causes are not examined. Family disintegration never surfaces as a reason, and the word divorce never comes up. Medication and therapy are supposed to take care of it. In the best of cases, they can provide relief, but they cannot stop the further slide into a society that largely consists of ill individuals.

Refusing to accept so much suffering has nothing at all to do with nostalgia, but with the will to life and with hope for a return to a livable future.

Life is set up such that people in the earliest and latest periods of life depend on help, and that people in the middle of life have the strength to aid the young and the old. Life is a burden no matter which way we look at it. A humane society takes on this burden: The strong care for the weak, and the young for the old. When parents take good care of their children, the chances are better that the children will take good care of them when they’re old. An inhumane society wants to throw off the burden and ends up on a collision course with life itself.

The word humane evokes the idea that it is characteristic of people to be good, but here the language is mistaken. It doesn’t describe the reality, but just the potential — the human ideal: Father penguins go weeks without food and barely move, so that the chick can grow inside the fragile shell on his feet and hatch at the right time to become a penguin itself, and take its turn in the outermost row to protect the whole herd from the howling north wind.¹¹ He doesn’t decide to do that. His instinct drives him to selflessness. People have to choose good. It doesn’t come easy — it’s an uphill battle. But we typically prefer to slide downhill, especially today. The path uphill brings life, joy, and a future. The path downhill brings sadness, depression, fear, hopelessness, and death. There is suffering on both paths — uphill and downhill. Uphill, hope is the companion. Downhill it’s misery.

How can we become as humane as a penguin?

In our society, children are largely depicted as a burden. And bearing and raising children is, in fact, no child’s play. It is the serious business of life. Great joy and great sacrifice come in a two-pack. During mass prosperity, a whole generation was sold a lie — that fun is the meaning of life, and that this fun comes with no sacrifice or suffering. From one moment to the next, parenting collapses this lie. There in your hands is a tiny bundle of humanity, completely helpless, fully dependent on love and care.

It can suckle and scream and grasp a finger, but not much else. Forget sleeping through the night. The whole day is devoted only to the baby. Up to the time of birth, the mother was an autonomous person, her wishes were the compass of her life. Now, all of a sudden, it is an infant’s cry. Her ego has been pushed off the throne without warning — suddenly it should, it must serve instead of rule. And the astonishing thing: The mother wants to do it.

Oxytocin, the happiness hormone, is secreted. It’s also called the bonding hormone. It is secreted during sexual union, during birth, and during nursing. A mother who not long ago got her self-esteem from her attractiveness and professional recognition looks at this newborn with deep emotion and wonder. Her face takes on the radiance of tender love. She loses herself upon looking at the child that she has borne. It has gone from a mystery in her body to a visible wonder in her arms. Life will never be the same. Her care for the child will never end. The journey of life now has new coordinates: Child — Mother — Father. Nature and oxytocin have administered the initial dose of love. Asserting this love in all coming phases of life requires continuous inner growth, constant new types of sacrifices, always letting go in new, more profound ways to give the child the appropriate level of freedom, without which love cannot thrive.

Life unfolds from the inside outward, all by itself. A few days after birth, the child looks into the mother’s eyes. There is a self, endowed with a soul. How incomprehensibly precious this small person is. Who is this child? What will become of him? What are his gifts, his traits, his mission? With each new expression of life, the parents grope for signs that might reveal this mystery. No one teaches the baby to lift his head, to turn over, to take interest in a mobile, to sit up, to crawl, to exert himself to exhaustion, to climb the stairs, and to dare his first step. Is there anything more delightful than the smile of an infant, anything more contagious than a child’s laughter? And there is celebration all round when Aiden learns something new. Photos and videos are sent, and grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends are riveted when Isabella enthusiastically stomps in a puddle. Is there anything more beautiful than a joyful child running into your arms, giving off peals of laughter over things we grownups don’t even notice; putting full trust in Dad when he throws him into the air, nestling into Grandma’s arms all ears when she tells a story?

A mother needs a lot of staying power to feed, change diapers, protect, and speak to a child 24 hours a day, without receiving a single word in response. She always has her antennas aimed at the child and develops a sixth sense for the child’s needs. A complete change in rhythm is required of the mother, from the frenzied pace of the digital world, the reward system of professional work, and the enjoyments of childlessness to a constant, patient presence. Between the joy of each new step the child takes, there are long dry spells, sleeplessness, and hours alone with the child when the father leaves the home and comes back tired in the evening.

Fathers have become more tender with their small children, get up at night, feed them, change their diapers, and rock them until they go back to sleep. Fathers who take a few months off from work to care for their babies experience what the mother does, and soon develop their own bond with the child.

Yes, it is stressful to smooth a child’s path through life, always to look after the child and not after yourself, sometimes without being able to comfort, but just to wait out illnesses. But the payoff is huge, infinitely greater than the effort: A new child has come into the world. The parents can be renewed through the child’s unconditional love. They are now inextricably connected to life itself. And there’s no turning back. The child draws its parents along into the future.

Before long, maybe others will attend to the child in the crib, the child will go to kindergarten, to school, reach for the smartphone and seek a place among children of the same age. More and more, parents lose their power to shape the child’s world. Fortunate are the parents and children if, in the first three years, a secure, indestructible bond to the mother and father has been formed that gives the child the inner certainty: I am wanted. I am loved. I am secure. The world is good. I can trust.

So much for the course of life for father, mother, and child. But what goes on today? Let’s look at what we do to children. Children are our future. Let’s look at what we do to our future.

It’s painful to see reality as it is. We are all part of this reality and contribute to its creation. But pain can yield a decision to put the child at the center, to serve the weak, the child. This means sacrifice — sacrifices that bring blessings.

In a society that places adults’ needs in the center, children don’t have it so well.

• Children are prevented.

• Children are killed before birth if they are unwanted.

• Children are produced in a laboratory if they are wanted.

• Children are deceived about their lineage.

• Children are frozen as embryos and consumed for research.

• Children are carried in a rented womb.

• Children are bought and raised by same-sex couples.

• Children are placed in the hands of strangers from infancy.

• Children are sexualized as early as kindergarten.

• Children are made confused about their sexual identity.

• Children are sexually indoctrinated in primary school.

• Children are encouraged to change their gender.

• Children are exposed to smartphones.

• Children are exposed to pornography.

• Masses of children are sexually abused.

• Children are orphaned by divorce.

• Children must grow up in shattered families.

• Children become sad.

• Children become