Like everything else the concept of family is morphing to fit the lifestyles we live in the 21st century. No matter what your "family" looks like you can’t deny that how families are looking in general is very different. Ozzie with Harriett has given way to Ozzy Osborne as the über patriarch of the times. Ozzy swears at his kids, wonders if his 15 year old son has better grass than he does and hopes that his manager/wife doesn’t schedule him for back to back concerts because he is too "fried" to do it two nights in a row.
But the most amazing part to me is the structure of Ozzy’s family. It is the "nuclear" design of the information society’s orientation (complete with a physics metaphor… which was the dominant science of the epoch.) In England, Tony Blair’s press secretary has three children with his companion, who just happens to be Blair’s wife Cherie’s chief aid. Britain has already removed special tax breaks for married couples at the same time as it has increased cash allowances for "families" with children. I guess the brits get the fact that families no longer have to be "nuclear" in the 21st century.
In all of Northern Europe marriage as a cornerstone to a prerequisite for being "a family" is in decline. In 1999 a full 49% of all births were to unwed parents. In France 41% of births were to non-nuptuated couples (1998) and while Britain weighted in at 38%. In Iceland the figure was a whopping 62%.
The world’s attitudes toward religion, morals, individual liberty and community are conspiring to accelerate a new definition for family. Even in Italy, where the out of wedlock birth rate is still just 9%, it is not unusual to see an obviously pregnant bride walking down the aisle to meet the groom.
I wish my own country would wake up. Single mothers in European countries are much better off than those in the USA. Upwards of ½ of all single mothers here in America are living below the poverty line. The concept of what constitutes a family is now open for debate and communities that get that fact will look both at the composition and the nature of how the people who comprise that composition relate to each other as a keystone to understanding the future.
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| Collected Visions |
| Daughter For Sale |
| So Who's Ward Cleaver? |
| The Marrying Kind |
| Three Worlds - One Family |
| Will Tribal Knowledge Survive the Millennium? |
Rick - 4/26/2002 1:08:23 PM DST (GMT-4)
Watts, we don’t live in Europe. This is America. We enjoy the virtues and the personal responsibilities of living in a free society. We live unshackled by the demands, and the enabling largess of an overbearing central government. We also enjoy the freedom to love, and not love whomever we choose. That includes the extraordinary number of children without loving fathers. So many live below the poverty line not because our government is asleep at the switch. Individual parents choose to neglect these children. They just walk away from the children they create. Hard to believe such ignorance and cruelty exists. The world did not conspire to make these choices. The only thing motivating individual actions are individual choices. Pretty simple stuff. However, their choices are enabled by a culture that preaches tolerance over dignity. That celebrates rock and roll over character and substance.
Which brings us to Ozzy. Watts, Ozzy is a rock and roll star and a TV show. Television has the power to take things small and insignificant, and make them full screen. We don’t get the benefit of seeing Ozzy in context with the millions of other families he shares the planet with. Nope. We see Ozzy full screen. He looks big and important. He’s not. He’s a TV show. PT Barnum had the good sense to put shows like this behind a curtain. Here in our post-modern culture, we stream them 24/7 into your living room.
Which brings us back to the joys and responsibilities of living in a free society. Watts, turn the damn TV off. Take a walk in the woods with your son or daughter. And love them with all your heart.
Jacques - 4/29/2002 9:56:02 AM DST (GMT-4)
We live in America where some people expect that everyone will have the education, moral values and financial capacity to enable him/her to make decisions that are wise and effective. If they don't we can complain about "family values" not being taught in the home. That attitude merely perpetuates the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
It's time for Amreicans to accept the fact that if we don't take care of those in need, we will eventually be a country with far fewer haves, and far more have-nots. Then, who will we have to blame? "They" are us.
Rick - 4/30/2002 6:33:43 PM DST (GMT-4)
Jacques: Yes, the overwhelming number of Americans do believe that we are, in fact, born with the capacity to make our own “wise and effective” choices. The Founders created America with this big idea at the heart of the matter. They believed we would listen to our better angels and strive to choose what is right. So do I.
You certainly do not believe those born without money in the bank, who don’t get into the “right” schools will fall into some vast crevice never to be seen again? You cannot possibly be suggesting a “wiser” ruling class to make correct decisions for us all? The world tried that approach. It doesn’t work.
We do take care of those in need. There is not a kinder, more generous nation on the planet. But, the most wonderful gift of all is to live free.
Watts will tell you that freedom is the very core of our culture. It is the stuff our future is made of. The values, however you wish to define them, glues us together. Only in their absence do we fall apart. Watts didn’t say that part, I did.
Watts sees the future. And sees cultural change. By no means am I blind or a statist. I embrace change too. I just don’t want anybody managing it. Not Ozzie or Ozzy, not Watts, and not you Jacques. I want it to happen on it’s own. May the best future win.
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