Disaffected Youth: continued

A home centered on an alcoholic parent can undermine a child’s ability to develop proper adaptive behaviors that can help a child deal with stress later in life. Children of an alcoholic parent often report higher levels of stress and tend to have a difficult time coping with stress. This stress may develop stronger tendencies toward emotional dysfunction when compared to children raised without an alcoholic parent.

One of the most important indicators of good mental health and coping skills as an adult is a child’s attachment pattern to parents. According to The American Addiction Centers, children with an alcoholic parent displayed more anxious and less secure attachment to their parent and had fewer feelings of hope than children with a non-alcoholic parent.

Cremation in the United States

According to the Cremation Association of America, cremation as we know it today began about 150 years ago, after years of experimentation into the development of a dependable chamber. After Italian professor Ludovico Brunetti perfected his crematory and displayed it at the 1873 Vienna Exposition, the cremation movement began almost simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the United Kingdom, the movement was championed by Queen Victoria's surgeon, Sir Henry Thompson. Concerned with disease and other hazardous health conditions, Sir Henry and his colleagues founded the Cremation Society of England in 1874. The first European crematories were built in 1878 in Woking, England and Gotha, Germany.

In the United States, Dr. Julius LeMoyne built the first crematory in 1876 in Washington, Pennsylvania. After residents in his community suffered fatal illnesses with similar symptoms, Dr. LeMoyne concluded that the culprit was linked directly to poor burial practices. He believed contaminated matter from buried and decomposing bodies ran into the community water source, producing disease. Cremation, he felt, would eliminate disease-ridden contaminants from leeching into the soil and water. Despite hesitation and fear, LeMoyne assured grieving families that the crematory he designed and built on his property produced flames that would never touch the remains of their loved ones.

Champions of early cremation were Protestant clergy who sought burial reform, and medical professionals concerned with health conditions in and around cemeteries. In the late 19th century, crematories appeared in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit and Los Angeles. By 1900, there were 20 crematories in operation in the United States. When Dr. Hugo Erichsen founded the Cremation Association of America in 1913 there were over 10,000 cremations performed at 52 crematories in North America.

Now accepted by a growing number of religious affiliations, exponential growth has been constant. There were 595,600 cremations in the United States in 1999, 25% of all recorded deaths. By 2019, there were over 1,500,000 cremations at 3,000 crematories, 54% of all deaths in the United States.