Settling down after two decades of tumultuous change, families are
painfully caught between their own needs and an indifferent culture. What
could help everyone is a dose of reality---a new marriage of family
values and public policy.
Whoever said that death and taxes are the only inevitable things in
life was overlooking an obvious third one: family. No other social
institution surrounds us more intimately from cradle to grave, so shapes
our bodies and minds, remains such an emotional presence wherever we go
and gives us such generous measures of joy and frustration. Pretending
that family is not important in our lives is like trying to cheat death:
it doesn't work and you end up feeling foolish for trying.
Because the family is so central to human life, no one can be
neutral about its future prospects. In fact, Americans have been wringing
their hands about the state of the family for well over 100 years--with
remarkably little change in the tenor of the worries. In the late 19th
century, Americans began to focus on the changes wrought by urbanization
and industrialization: smaller families, increased divorce rate, less
connection to traditional kin and community networks, more child abuse
and neglect, and squalid living conditions in urban slums. Sound
familiar?
Faced with such changes in the American family, 19th-century
professionals and community leaders divided into two groups, whose
descendants are with us still. The "pessimists" believe that the American
family is declining alarmingly in its ability to carry out its functions
of child rearing and providing stability for adult life. The pessimists
see the divorce rate--nine times higher than a century ago--as a key
indicator of the deterioration of family bonds and the fragmentation of
American society. They call for a return to the traditional values of
commitment and responsibility, and are appalled by the proliferation of
family types and forms in the late 20th century--never-married mothers,
single-parent families, step-families, cohabiting couples, and gay and
lesbian families.
The "optimists," on the other hand, view the family as an
institution that is not declining, but rather showing its flexibility and
resilience. The optimists believe that traditional family structures are
no longer appropriate for the modern age, and that these structures were
too male-dominated and conformity-oriented to begin with. Contemporary
families may be less stable in the traditional sense, but most people are
still committed to being in a family. It's just that they need a larger
menu of family arrangements to choose from. The world is now more
oriented to individual options, particularly for women, and the family
has changed accordingly. From this point of view, the main problems faced
by contemporary families can be traced to the failure of society to
accept that the "Leave It to Beaver" family is a dinosaur, and to provide
adequate support for the variety of post-Beaver families that now
dominate the landscape.
Depending on whether you are in the optimist or pessimist camp, the
next decade or two of family life will bring either: a) more
deterioration, unless a shift in values occurs; or b) continued creative
change, troublesome only if other social institutions keep facing
backwards instead of forwards. There is, however, a third orientation
emerging, a both/and approach, and I believe it will become more
influential in our national discourse about family life in the next
decade. This orientation agrees with the pessimists that the family is in
trouble and that a transformation of values is needed. It also agrees
with the optimists that changes in family structures are inevitable and
here to stay, and that both old and new family forms should receive more
community support.
We are at the threshold of a new dialogue about family life in the
United States, one that transcends the tired debates of the past and that
might lead to a workable consensus for the first time in our history. To
understand this emerging consensus on the American family, let's take a
quick tour of the revolution in family forms in the 20th century.
FROM RESPONSIBILITY TO SATISFACTION
In a breathtaking period of change, the 20th century has witnessed
the demise of one standard of family life, the birth of a second, its
subsequent decline, and the emergence of a third standard--one that we
are still learning to live with. The first two decades of the century
were dominated by the Institutional Family as the ideal. The
Institutional Family represented the age old-tradition of a family
organized around economic production, kinship network, community
connections, the father's authority, and marriage as a functional
partnership rather than a romantic relationship. Family tradition,
loyalty, and solidarity were more important than individual goals and
romantic interest. For the Institutional Family, the chief value was
RESPONSIBILITY.
Tags:
abuse and neglect,
adult life,
child abuse and neglect,
community networks,
cradle to grave,
death and taxes,
divorce rate,
dose of reality,
emotional presence,
family,
family bonds,
family values,
future prospects,
industrialization,
nine times,
pessimists,
pluralism,
private lives,
single mother,
social institution,
traditional values,
tumultuous change,
urban slums,
value,
values and public policy
