The family rests at the center of civilization. It is, even beyond the individual, the cornerstone of what it means to be fully human. Individuals achieve but families endure and continue. It’s a formula that has succeeded for millennia but now faces what may prove terminal challenges. At its core the family is both an economic and biologic entity.
Unfortunately, traditional families made maximum economic sense in agrarian civilizations – representing affordable and loyal labor. A 19th Century American farm family of 14 was an economic engine. A 21st Century American urban family of 14 is an economic nightmare. Most people can no longer afford large families, but economics isn’t where the family’s real challenge lies.
The family’s biological function – to nurture and preserve the species – is also at risk. Working mothers, geographically scattered grandparents and other extended family members, high divorce rates and other well-known social pressures make it more and more difficult for people to have successful families, assuming they’re so inclined. Biology figures into another part of the family puzzle. It used to be (really less than a century ago) that people met, married, raised children and (and in the case of men at least) died – pretty much in that order and all in less than 45 years. Today we not only live longer, we live less integrated lives. There are fewer and fewer examples of lives lived in a nice linear sweep from cradle to grave. Many people address these lifestage discontinuities by practicing what has come to be known as serial marriages – picking a partner appropriate to each discrete lifestage. This, of course, is beginning to result in lifestage children, lifestage in-laws and other considerations we didn’t have to worry about quite so much when we were more closely tied to a more demanding biological timetable. We used to grow old together, now we grow apart.
But as common as the behavior is, we haven’t developed social coping mechanisms to deal with it. We now have relationships without names. What relation, or example, re the second set of in-laws to the children of a first marriage in the event of a third marriage? How should two sets of adult children who have never known each other relate when their parents suddenly get married at 65?
There are legions of other family-related issues. Parents used to look forward to the day their children left home. Increasingly today those children are returning home, often with their children in tow. Increasingly more often one or both sets of parents are right behind them. And, what happens to that emotionally abandoned second set of in-laws the children have no name for when they have no other place to go?
Clearly families are critical, and just as clearly it’s past time we start thinking about how to adapt our social rules to meet their new reality.
The 21st Century Family: From Ozzie to Ozzy
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