However, before we become too self-congratulatory, we need to take inventory of ourselves and our potential for divulging or withholding information on some of the newer skeletons in the collective family closet. Most such parents would rather forget their four or five years of drug use, and do not want their children aware of their use because it gives offspring tacit permission to experiment. As a result, withholding family secrets becomes as protective as it was a couple of generations ago in families of cancer. Our quick and easy judgment of our ancestors' behavior becomes a bit more complicated when updated to include our shortcomings. Statistics indicate that one-third of all brides today are pregnant.
Few children ask to see marriage certificates, after all.
Similarly there's the question about initially unwanted children within marriage. Darker secrets like generations of family incest and other forms of abuse are rearing their ugly heads today. Rarely a month goes by without a letter to Dear Abby or Ann Landers from a young mother, who suffered incest by her father, asking how to prevent it from happening between him and her children. Our quick and easy judgment of our ancestors' behavior becomes a bit more complicated when updated to include our shortcomings. But it isn't good to tell them about it because it might give them an excuse to gamble.