An Atoll Futures Research Institute? Presentation for CANCC
S1 Lynn Walsh Presentation geneva family 2014 - 30 june 2014
1. Sustainable Family Values as a Means to
Create a Stable and
Prosperous Society and Nation
UN Headquarters, Geneva
June 30 to July 1, 2014
Lynn Walsh, Universal Peace Federation
2. Failure to Achieve the MDGs:
Can we exclude the family if the heart of the
human problem is the human heart?
4. Building peace through inter-religious and
international collaborations and education to
support universal values and spiritual
principles in order to resolve conflict and
reconcile the divided human family. A core
principle is that marriage, parenting and the
family are the foundations of sustainable
human development and the very cells for
building society.
5. Decline of Youth Well-being
• One of every four adolescents in the U.S. is currently at serious
risk of not achieving productive adulthood
• 21 percent of U.S. children ages nine to 17 have a diagnosable
mental or addictive disorder associated with at least minimum
impairment
• Current generation of young people is more likely to be
depressed and anxious than was its parent’s generation
• Twenty percent of students report having seriously considered
suicide in the past year
Commission for Children at Risk
6. Global Youth Violence Rises
Worldwide some 250,000 homicides occur
among youth 10-29 years of age each year –
41% of the annual total number of homicides
globally. For each young person killed, 20-40
more sustain injuries requiring hospital
treatment. Youth violence has a serious, often
lifelong, impact on a person's psychological
and social functioning.
WHO report 2014
7. Crisis in Mental Health in Youth
Data shows in the midst of unprecedented material
affluence, deteriorating mental and behavioral health of
U.S. children, high and rising rates of depression, anxiety,
attention deficit, conduct disorders, thoughts of suicide,
and other serious mental, emotional, and behavioral
problems among U.S. children and adolescents
Commission for Children at Risk, a panel of 33 leading children’s doctors, neuroscientists,
research scholars, and youth service professionals
8. Main Risk Factors for Youth Violence are
Instability in the Home Environment
• Low level of attachment between parents & children
• Poor supervision of children by parents
• Harsh physical punishment to discipline children
• Parental conflict in early childhood
• Mother who had her first child at an early age
• Experiencing parental separation or divorce at a
young age
• Low level of family cohesion
• Low socioeconomic status of the family.
World Health Organization report
9. WHO: Evaluation of Solutions
“Parent and family-based interventions are
among the most promising strategies for
producing long-term reductions in youth
violence. ..counseling and gang prevention
programs have been ineffective.” WHO
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/global_campaign/en/
youthviolencefacts.pdf
10. Parents: Hardwired to Attach and
Care, Marriage Solidifies the Stability
Oxytocin and prolactin in pregnancy, birth and
breast feeding enhance maternal bonding but also
residing fathers bond due to mother’s pheromones
decrease in
testosterone and
Increase in oxytocin.
(Wilcox and Kline, 2013)
11. Child Benefits: Married Parents
Children raised in intact married families are
more likely to attend college, are physically
and emotionally healthier, are less likely to be
physically or sexually abused, less likely to
use drugs or alcohol and to commit
delinquent behaviors, have a decreased risk
of divorcing when they get married, are less
likely to become pregnant/impregnate
someone as a teenager, and are less likely to
be raised in poverty. ("Why Marriage Matters: 26
Conclusions from the Social Sciences," Bradford Wilcox, Institute for
American Values, www.americanvalues.org/html/r-wmm.html)
12. Benefit of Complementarities of
Mothers and Fathers
Children receive gender specific support from having a
mother and a father. …particular roles of mothers (e.g.,
to nurture) and fathers (e.g., to discipline), as well as
complex biologically rooted interactions, are important
for the development of boys and girls.
"Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles," 2006,
www.princetonprinciples.org
13. Humans Continually Require Stable Attachment
Secure attachment predicts emotional
makeup, the ability to trust, learn and
develop healthy relationships
throughout life.
Adolescents seek attachment & learn
who they are as individuals through
their relationships. Without close
relationship with parents, teens will
instead attach to peers who naturally
lack maturity, do not give good guidance
and do not care about their long term
well-being.
14. Sexual Relations Create
Attachment even when Immature
Nearly half (47%) of all high school students
report ever having had sexual intercourse in 2011.
Hormones released during sex are
Intended to bond partners.
Early multiple partners can “wear out “
the natural bonding of sexual relations,
disconnecting relations & sex from
higher purpose.
CDC. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System:
US, 2011. MMWR, 61(-4). 2012
15. Fundamentally Relational and Naturally
Seek Meaning and Purpose
“Children are biologically "hardwired" for enduring
attachments to other people and for moral and
spiritual meaning. Meeting children's needs for
enduring attachments and for moral and spiritual
meaning is the best way to ensure their healthy
development.”
Commission on Children at Risk
16. Human Attachment and Moral
Development
The beginning of morality is primed in close
genuine relationships with one’s parents
– the essential foundation for the emergence of
conscience and of moral meaning
– the human child is talked into talking and loved into
loving
17. Primary nurturing relationships
influence early spiritual development
“The child spontaneously attributes to his parents
the perfections and abilities which he will later
transfer to God if his religious education gives him
the possibility.”
Jean Piaget
19. Adults Need Genuine Attachment
Marriages do not need more excitement, activity, glitz
but they yearn for depth in connection.
20.
21. Doha International Family Institute
IYF Conference on Empowering
Families: A Pathway to Development
Doha, Qatar April 16-17, 2014
UPF Secretary General, Taj Hamad
25. Parents Advantage
The mechanisms of attachment…
– oxytocin, and vasopressin
• social bonding manifests itself biochemically in the reward circuitry
located deep in the cortex of the brain
– hormones in the human bonding process
• including dopamine, prolactin, endogenous opioid peptides, and steroid
hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone
• help to trigger parental care, which in turn helps to trigger the release of
more attachment hormones
31. NOM Dinner
Public Square Leadership Award to
Ryan Anderson and
Marriage Champion Award to
Dr. Ben Carson
Introduced by Prof. Robert George,
Princeton University
(Co-authored George, Anderson and Sherif Girgis)
32. Youth Risk Increasing
• Since the 1950s, death rates among U.S. young people due to
unintentional injuries, cancer, and heart disease have all fallen
by about 50 percent
• death rates overall have dropped by about 53 percent
– homicide death rates among U.S. youth rose by more than
130 percent
– Suicide rates (the third leading cause of death among U.S.
young people) rose by nearly 140 percent
33. Our Intellectual Models are Inadequate…
• The Pharmacological Model
– enormous benefits for millions of suffering patients
– mental illness is still under-treated in the U.S.
– current lack of resources to treat children with major
mental illness is a serious problem
– significant progress in many areas of individual
treatment, especially those using psychotropic drugs
and specific psychotherapies
– but collectively regressing in the area of prevention
34. UNIVERSAL PEACE FEDERATION
Albania, Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Barbados,
Cambodia, Czech Republic, DR Congo, Ecuador,
Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy,
Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Switzerland, UK, USA, Zambia
35. CSD February 2014 “Family as Social
Driver” with Ambassadors from El Salvador,
Qatar, Romania, Nigeria and IFFD, Howard
Institute, Family Watch International
36. The Family and the MDGS: Using Family Capital
to Achieve the 8 Millennium Development Goals
Published by the Doha
International Family Institute
Our contribution, Chapter 3
on MDG 3:
Gender Equality and the
Empowerment of Women