It's already happened. We ask "What will happen to our society if the structure of family breaks down?" I'm afraid we're already living the answer to that question. Twenty years ago, I was just fourteen years old. I was raised by my grandparents because my parents were too young to do it well. They weren't done living, and back then I used to think that was the worst that could happen, that my parents were just too young to be good parents. Little did I know.

In twenty years families have been reduced in so many ways. Not only are children being parented by single mothers. But today children are being reared by single fathers too. It had become almost normal to be abandoned by a father who just wasn't up to the challenge or a father who was married with kids and living some place else. Today's children are also abandoned by mothers pursuing careers, mothers who are married with children and living some place else. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Many of today's youth have at least one parent incarcerated. Some don't even know who both parents are. Too many are in orphanages and foster care. Too many children have become victims of their own past; they too have become parents underage, unprepared and in poverty. While a small percentage of American families have managed to look the part, there still remains so much truth to be seen.

In today's typical family where two loving parents seem to wonderfully parent, there are so many underlying issues and problems. Today's families are forced to deal with children who have been diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder and all kinds of cancers that seem to plague the youth and suck the life right out of them and everyone else who watches.

Somewhere along the line a quake happened that shook families and family values at its root; families have been hit by too many things at once. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be able to recover. With the violence being carried out by children, the addictions they seem to acquire at earlier ages, and the inability to adapt to social change, it's no wonder that theirs is a generation so far removed from what families have known in the past.

In the last decade, not only have children had to face the breakdown of families, the change in the make-up of families, or the sudden deterioration of family values, but today's youth have also had to confront and live with the realities of school shootings, child molesters and pedophiles, increased

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