(Matthew 5:27-28 NIV) "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' {28} But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Unwed Mothers

The illegitimacy rate in 1940 was 7.1 per thousand births to unmarried females; 14.1 in 1950. When effusive welfare began in 1965, it was at 23.5. In 1975, it was 24.8. By 1993, it had increased to 45.3. … In 1940, there were 54 pregnancies for every thousand teenagers. That figure climbed to 89 in 1960. It really hasn't oscillated all that much since then (1970 -- 68; 1980 -- 53; 1993 --59). …the per/thousand figures tells us nothing about the ratio of illegitimate teenage pregnancies. That "continues to soar. It reached 75.9 per cent in 1994. That surely should be a ceiling; and yet the ratio has reached 96.8 percent in the District of Columbia."

In 1991, 1.2 million children were born to unmarried mothers, within a hair of 30 percent of all live births. How high is 30 percent? About four percentage points higher than the black illegitimacy rate in the early 1960s that motivated Daniel Patrick Moynihan to write his famous memorandum on the breakdown of the black family.

Our media are very health conscious. They pushed the panic button in 1989 when a PR firm for an environmental organization persuaded them that there was a one in 200,000 chance that apples treated with Alar might cause cancer in children. …"60 Minutes" has spread the fear that amalgam dental fillings cause multiple sclerosis and that NutraSweet may cause brain tumors.

With such evidence of concern for our health, it may be hard to believe that the United States is experiencing a serious epidemic of infectious diseases that the media have overlooked. Moreover the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, says there is no organized national effort to do anything about it.

The Institute has issued a report titled "The Hidden Epidemic" that describes the explosive spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) since the 1960s. It points out that of the 10 most frequently reported infectious diseases tracked by the state health boards, in 1995 five were sexually transmitted. Those five accounted for 87 percent of the newly reported infections, but this understates the scale of the STD epidemic. Four of the most common STDs are not officially tracked. The CDC has data on them that indicate when they are included in the list of 10, seven of the most frequently reported diseases are STDs. They would account for about 94 percent of the top 10 newly reported infections.

The newly reported cases are only the tip of the iceberg. STDs are notorious for being under reported. "The Hidden Epidemic" says there are approximately 12 million new cases of STDs annually, 3 million of them among teenagers - six times the number of cases reported. Also, several STDs are incurable,and the number of people who carry and can transmit the infection is considerably greater than the number of new cases.

The Institute of Medicine puts the direct and indirect costs of STDs at $17 billion in 1994. In addition, these diseases cause untold human suffering; AIDS is not the only one that can lead to death. A fourth of the women who suffer two episodes of gonorrhea become infertile. Venereal warts, another common STD, increase the chances of a woman getting cancer of the cervix tenfold. Pelvic inflammatory disease, which is associated with chlamydia and gonorrhea, the two most common STDs, is a serious cause of female infertility and childbirth deaths.

A parental affair is hard on a marriage, and anything that's hard on a marriage is hard on children. Just ask Chelsea Clinton, who is a member of a big club. Or princes Harry and William, club members, too. Depending on which statistics you like, 25 percent to 50 percent of husbands and 15 percent to 30 percent of wives have affairs at some point during their marriages. And most marriages feature children.

We asked several professionals who have counseled families blown apart by affairs to talk about the risks to children, and about what parents can do to get kids through the crisis with as little damage as possible.

"A father's affair poses particular danger to boys,'' said Michael Gurian, a family therapist in Tacoma, Wash., and author of A Fine Young Man and The Wonder of Boys. "It can give a certain permission to be sexually promiscuous, and a lot of boys are looking for that. Boys require a tremendous amount of guidance and nurturing to develop morally, and a father's affair can derail a boy's ability to form a moral system around his sexuality.''

Girls, too, are at risk, says Elise Katch, a licensed clinical social worker with a family therapy practice in Denver. "When the first trusted male in her life devastates her and lies to her, it's going to shatter a girl's future ability to trust,'' Katch said. "The father is a girl's primary role model for her future love relationships.'' Katch says girls whose fathers have affairs may choose husbands who will do the same thing, or they may never marry. "Many women make those choices without ever realizing why.''

A mother's affair is no picnic, either. "A child tends to carry the shame of the same-sex parent,'' Gurian said, "and a daughter will take on the shame of the mother.''

BROKEN HEARTS KIDS SUFFER LONG-TERM HARM WHEN PARENTS SLIP INTO ADULTERY ( Denver Rocky Mountain News )

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The largely untold story is that fewer women--including teens--are having abortions. The abortion rate recently hit its lowest level since 1975. States reported 1.21 million abortions to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1995, down from the CDC's peak tally of 1.43 million in 1990. Contrary to the arguments of some abortion-rights groups, however, the drop does not seem to stem from a decline in the accessibility of abortions. Rather, it appears that fewer women need them: Since 1990, birthrates have been going down, too, suggesting that women are not being forced to carry to term. Studies show that, prompted by the fear of AIDS, some teens are waiting longer to have sex, and more sexually active teenagers now use contraceptives than in the 1980s. What's more, despite the murder in October of Buffalo obstetrician Barnett Slepian, antiabortion violence is down from its peaks in 1992 and 1989….

The United States still has some of the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy and abortion in the industrialized world. Half of the nation's pregnancies are unintended, and, at current rates, 43 percent of American women will have at least one abortion before turning 45, according to the Guttmacher Institute….Abortions on the wane. The latest official data show abortions declining in the United States.

Legal abortions

1973 615,831

1974 763,476

1975 854,853

1976 988,267

1977 1,079,430

1978 1,157,776

1979 1,251,921

1980 1,297,606

1981 1,300,760

1982 1,303,980

1983 1,268,987

1984 1,333,521

1985 1,328,570

1986 1,328,112

1987 1,353,671

1988 1,371,285

1989 1,396,658

1990 1,429,577

1991 1,388,937

1992 1,359,145

1993 1,330,414

1994 1,267,415

1995 1,210,883

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

…One such study has shown divorce has not just increased in the last 30 years in the United States. It has become increasingly more common in all but two of 27 countries in which divorce statistics are available, according to David Lester, lead researcher of the study published in the Journal of Remarriage and Divorce.

Divorce in America has been steadily rising for more than 150 years, he added, except during parts of the Great Depression.

The lower divorce rates during the Great Depression was an economic phenomenon, according to Marlene Lehtinen, University of Utah associate professor of sociology…

Since that period of time divorce rates of first marriages have risen to nearly 40 percent.

… the United States has had the highest divorce rate in the industrialized world throughout this century, according to Lester. He found divorce rates rose faster for those countries with a higher rate of divorce in 1950 as compared with other countries. "This suggests that as divorce becomes more acceptable, more people are likely to divorce in the future," said Robert Wood, president of FACTS Science Service.

According to Lester, social scientists have demonstrated that divorce leads to future divorce for two reasons. First, the divorced person in more likely to divorce in his or her second marriage. Second, the children of divorce are more likely to divorce when they are adults than children from intact families.

…In addition, a recent study by University of Delaware researcher Teresa Cooney suggests young adult women whose parents have divorced during recent years have poorer mental health. Children of divorced parents also do more poorly academically, behaviorally, psychologically and socially, according to Cooney.

In her study, published in the Journal of Family Issues, she found males did not differ whether they were from divorced families or not.

"However, young women were worse off in several ways," she said.

They were 50 percent more likely to believe they needed professional help and were twice as likely to believe others thought they needed it. They were also more depressed during the studies' interviews and were less likely to be satisfied with intimacy with others, compared with women raised by non-divorced parents.

Cooney explained why a difference may exist between males and females raised by divorced parents.

"Women may have greater awareness of family dynamics than men," she said. "Also, women may be more involved in mediating conflicts than men and they may be more sensitive to the feelings of both their mother and father. Thus, men may be better able to insulate themselves from the tensions in marital problems of parents."

A third study suggests not only are divorce rates increasing all over the world, but marriages may also have declined in quality over the last 10 years.

The authors of this study, Rogers and Amato, investigated the possibility that changes in the economic and social context of marriage have lowered marital quality in recent marriages. They used information from two generations, representing individuals married between 1969 to 1980 and between 1981 to 1992.

When the two groups were compared, Rogers and Amato found the younger group reported significantly lower levels of marital interaction and substantially higher levels of marital conflict and problems.

…"Interestingly, commitment to the idea of life-long marriage appeared to be stronger in the younger generation," Wood said. "Such a pattern suggests that young married people may be committed to salvaging marriage, and that reports of increased marital tensions and difficulties reflect not the struggles of an outmoded social institution, but the inherent difficulties in adapting marriage to a rapidly changing social climate."

While the overall divorce rate is in slow decline, an increasing number of older Americans are heading for divorce court. The number of divorced Americans over 65 has nearly doubled since 1980, according to a Temple University study.

 Divorce statistics :Reflecting values ( USA Today )

 Americans' concerns about values are running high. But by objective measures, have the nation's values really sunk so low? Judging from a broad range of statistical measures, there's both good

news and bad news about how Americans live out what they say are their values:

% of children under 18 years living with 2 parents

1950 93%

1960 91%

1970 85%

1980 77%

1990 73%

1994 69%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Children born out of wedlock Percentage of all births

1940 3.4

1950 3.9

1960 5.3

1970 10.7

1980 18.4

1990 28.0

1991 29.5

1992 30.1

1993 31.0

1994 32.6

Source: National Center for Health Statistics

Divorces  Rate per 1,000 married women, 15 or older

1940 8.8

1950 10.3

1960 9.2

1970 14.9

1980 22.6

1990 20.7

Source: National Center for Health Statistics

 Matt Roush, Reflecting values., USA Today, 08-06-1996, pp 05A.

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