Hi Ruthe,
This has so deeply concerned me that I have chosen not to have children in this day and age.
Economics always has great power to create and stabilize a loving home and also to destroy it with or without an abundance of wealth by values of competing with the neighbors to 'keep up with the Joneses'.
Money or the lack of it will determine what sort of neighborhood and therefore the environment to which you will be able to raise your child in and what culture you will be able to pass on above and beyond the genetics.
There is an organized effort to decimate the earning power and therefore the self-esteem of a male.
It has been going on a long time.
After the industrial revolution, with the emphasis upon education and the acceleration of technology and social mores leaning toward achievement in education has improved the earning power of women and has let to men being unnecessary in child-rearing.
To the point that 2010 heralded the year of more women then men in the workforce for the first time ever.
My Dad endured the Nazi slave labor camps after he was ripped from his native soil in Poland in 1939 when he was 17.
Every culture has similar stories of exploitation.
War, beyond the conflict of ideologies is basically a materialistic grab for land and wealth via violence.
The torturous work my Dad endured was basically free labor for international corporations that exist to this day.
After that Dad worked in the automotive factories in Detroit which gave mom and my two older brothers a great deal of security and stability.
That world is gone.
I hurt for the lack of village that has allowed us as a whole to survive for thousands of years.
Now, people are judged by the bank account, the clothes, and the cars.
So people tend to withdraw lest they incur the wrath of someone who has less.
This is the loss of the village.
The '60s tried to revive this through communal living but that degenerated into materialism also because of interlopers who have a spirit of destruction within and without who will not stop until this civilization is brought down to barbarism.
Marauding spirits of destruction is a possible explanation for the mom who was driven to kill the fruit of her womb.
What I'm trying to get at here is that until we slay the demons within and the demons without and stop treating others as a threat we will not solve the issue of raising children with the skills to move this civilization forward.
As there is a well-funded spiral of destruction in place, there are also less known uplift movements set in place to counteract such devastation to the human village of which we are all apart whether or not we are conscious of it.
One such movement is based upon the Maria Montessori Method:
http
://tsl.org/family/articles/Education/
If you did deeper into this organization and its sister web-sites, you will find that they have built and created a practical and realistic ' village ' near the Grand Tetons range of mountains in north america.
There is a great deal of controversy which swirls around this group but I would like to give you the opportunity to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.
I have never lived there, but I have visited in the summer of 1984. Like any place or group or organization, there will always be the good, the bad and the ugly.
I read a lot of their publications but have decided instead to oversee my dad's motel business in Florida.
So, in answer to your question, "Where Has The Village Gone"?
It is being built, and I encourage you to investigate it.
As you well know, even there the same economic laws apply and are pretty much one of the most powerful arbitrators of what we can and cannot do in this world of form.
All of the pundits and economic theories out there ad nauseam leave out one important underlying fact and principle:
The economic system of The United States and by proxy the world economy has been hijacked and manipulated since the the late 1800's. There is no reason for cycles of inflation and deflation, boom and bust... this is all smoke and mirrors. The Great Depression was engineered.
So, take the time to read the following pamphlet and see how all of our choices have been limited by ' funny money '.
http
://goldsecretpower.org/
Love, Peace, Hope
-- Burt B.