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Re-valu-ing
the Family, Part Nine: The Four Sectors of Society and How the "Outer
Three" are Squeezing the Family
by Richard
and Linda Eyre
(www.valuesparenting.com)
The
family, and its basic purposes and functions, is being swallowed
up, undermined, and rendered irrelevant by our larger institutions.
The family is the victim and the larger institutions, whether purposefully
or innocently, are the culprits.
Note: In
this sixteen-part column, Richard and Linda Eyre explore the recent
revolution of the family from the honored centerpiece of society
to a disrespected and seemingly redundant appendage to the larger
corporate and cultural institutions of our new world. Re-valu-ing
the family, the Eyres believe, is the only alternative to America's
demise. The sequence of the column is: A. Re-valu-ing the family
(part one); B. The "crux" (parts 2 and 3 -- why family is the foundation
for everything, including happiness); C. The "curse" (parts 4 and
5 -- the social problems that plague our society today); D. The
"crisis" (parts 6 and 7 -- the breakdown and breakup of families
that allows and leads to the social problems); E. The "cause" (parts
8 and 9 -- the reasons our families are failing); F. The "culprits"
(parts 10 and 11 -- how our new, large institutions are destroying
the small, most basic institution of family); G. The "cure" (parts
12, 13, and 14 -- what you as a parent can do about it); and H.
The "case" (parts 15 and 16 -- a case for government and big corporations
to pay more positive attention).
Changes in
the "norms" of families (and who is causing the changes)
Changes happen
gradually, and it’s sometimes hard to realize how different
families are today
and how different the world is in which they exist.
Prior to
the twentieth century, most households were farm and rural families.
Work/family conflicts didn’t exist because farm families worked
together, and family communication happened in connection with that
work time spend together. The specialized roles of husband and wife,
mother and father were accepted and recognized, so expectations
were more clear and results more manageable. Children learned responsibility
by necessity and learned to work by having to work. When chores
didn’t get done on a farm, the penalties or negative results
were immediate and obvious. Delayed gratification was a way of life
because no other way existed.
I remember
reading my grand father’s journal. As a young father he
faced unbelievable hardships, working twelve hours a day as
a farmer and carpenter, trying to make ends meet. Yet the further
I read, the less sorry for him I felt. In fact, I began to envy
his life. He worked with his wife and children. They
had fun as they worked together -- and they communicated and
trusted each other. Their life had a simplicity and a quality
almost impossible to find today.
During the
first half of the twentieth century, as families urbanized and suburbanized,
most households took on a something of an adjusted and updated urbanized
version of the rural lifestyle. Parents still had fairly clear roles
according to gender, kids were expected to do household chores instead
of farm chores, and both divorce and living together before marriage
were shunned to the point of social stigma. And families were still
expected, both by themselves and by society, to perform the five
essential functions, and to contain the four basic elements.
All these
"norms" began to change in the sixties, and the acceleration
of these changes increased at the last decades of the century played
out, finally reaching the stages of crisis and "curse"
as the new millennium arrived.
The engines
of change . . . the huge, seemingly irresistible forces that pulled
the changes into effect were the new, large institutions of the
public and private sectors. Their growth, their instinct for self-preservation
and their agenda for profit have simply overwhelmed the family.
Going back
to our diagram:
The public sector,
comprised of all our levels and branches of government and all of
their agencies, bureaus, and systems has expanded and mutated so
drastically during the twentieth century that its effect on and
relationship to the family is completely different than it was 100
or even 50 years ago.
Every element
of the public sector from our courts and our welfare systems to
our public education and our tax structure was originally conceived
and set up to protect and serve our families. But as we start a
new century this "outer ring" looks less and less like
a protective shield and more and more like a swelling, squeezing
vice that makes it ever harder to raise, support, and have control
over our own families. Government tax policy puts economic penalties
on being married and having kids, legal precedent and court policy
makes it easier to abandon and run from family responsibility and
commitment than to face it and resolve it. Public schools often
seem to undermine family values and parental authority. Welfare
regulations reward families when the father leaves. And government
as a whole seems determined to take over every traditional function
of the family until parents essentially become redundant.
The business
or private sector grew up to meet and serve the needs of families
-- from employment to the providing of the goods and services that
households needed and wanted. But the emergence of massive corporations,
fueled by executive greed and stockholders’ demands, have forgotten
any loyalty or responsibility they once felt for families. They
demand more time and loyalty from workers than ever before, and
pay less for it. They want our loyalty and wish to be our prime
identity -- often at the expense of our families.
Within the
corporate world certain sectors pose more specific threats to families.
Media entities undermine values and portray traditional families
as outdated and irrelevant. Financial institutions encourage instant
gratification and over-extended credit. Merchandising companies
use advertising to promote materialism and con us into measuring
ourselves by what we own within the economy rather than by who we
are within our families.
Sometimes
a half hour is long enough to make a parent realize what he’s
up against from the private sector. I sat down to watch a sitcom
with two of my children, but it was filled with sexual innuendo
and profanity and it portrayed promiscuity and disrespect as
appealing and as the norm. During the program there were three
car ads and two clothing ads prompting one of the kids to say,
"Dad, we really need a new car," and the other
to say, "My clothes are so dumb, when can we go to the
mall?" I got one phone call during the show (a welcome
excuse to miss part of it) from our college student who mentioned
she’d received two pre-approved credit cards that week
at her dorm.
Even the
nonprofit voluntary and community sector -- traditionally an extension
of family, the "village" that it takes to raise a child
-- has become in many ways more an enemy than a friend. Our recreational
and cultural complexes, from sports to the arts, have become so
big and institutionalized that they divide families -- some family
members go here, some there, each with different loyalties and time-drains.
Evenings and weekends and other traditional family times are sucked
away. Churches, community centers, and clubs, instead of being the
family’s strongest advocates and supports, seem to be trying
to substitute for the family. And a whole new institution of pop
psychology and "self-help" puts such emphasis on individual
fulfillment and personal freedom that it undermines family commitment
and responsibility.
Essentially
all three of our "outer" sectors, which in previous eras
(and in an ideal world) have acted almost as a uterus -- protecting,
supporting, nourishing, and supplying the family -- have now mutated
into surrounding forces which imprison, choke, and suck the essential
elements out of families.
At the beginning
of the twenty-first century, the three outer sectors do damage to
families in four particular ways. 1. By substituting for families
-- taking over too many of their functions and replacing too many
of their roles. 2. By "sins of omission" -- failing
to do some of the things they should do for families. 3. By "sins
of commission" -- doing certain things that undermine families
and tear down the values that hold families up. 4. By creating
negative perspective and false paradigms -- which make
families think they’re okay when they really are not.
Substitution
for Family (a
transfer of responsibility and relevance)
Back
in the early 1980s I went to China -- it was a period when not
too many Americans were getting in, and I spent time in the
countryside as well as the cities. What I observed was a country
deliberately and consciously trying to make the large institutions
of the state more important and more functional than the small
institution of the family . . . to render the family redundant
in the social scheme of things. While both parents worked in
commune industry or agriculture ,children lived in the commune
care facility where they were fed, educated, and collectively
cared for. Some of the children still slept in their parent’s
apartment, but it was the larger commune that had the responsibility,
the authority, the loyalty, the identity, the resources and
the vitality.
Today, in
America and the rest of the Western World, responsibility and priority
is also transferring from smaller institutions to larger ones, but
here it’s not by design or conscious intent. Most of our larger
institutions are the creation of private enterprise rather than
public control and they were established to serve families rather
than substitute for them, but the results -- in terms of
what is actually happening to families -- are as dangerous
and as chilling as what I observed in China. The family, and its
basic purposes and functions, is being swallowed up, undermined,
and rendered irrelevant by our larger institutions. The family is
the victim and the larger institutions, whether purposefully or
innocently, are the culprits.
In
our private sector, company identity and corporate loyalty have
too often replaced family identity and loyalty. We’re more
likely to tell new acquaintances "what we do" or where
we work before we tell them about our family. We’ll relocate
for a raise or a promotion without enough thought on how the move
will affect our family. We’re so worried about the positive
possibilities of meeting a quota or the negative possibilities that
we don’t have the time or energy to worry as constructively
as we should about our kids. Some companies, often motivated by
their self-interests more than by altruism, hold out "solutions"
like maternity and child-care leave, job sharing, flex time, work-at-home,
and "mommy tracks", but these are usually aimed more at
the goal of not letting families hurt the job rather than at not
letting the job hurt families.
So they
(the companies we work for) try to provide day care, and other private
entities (a whole, huge new industry) -- offer child care in all
of its varieties. But these efforts substitute for families rather
than supporting them, and as in sports, the substitute is never
as good.
As
parent loyalty and identity shifts to career and company, other
parts of the private sector are hard at work winning the loyalty
of kids to various brands, or styles, or sports
teams, or TV and music personalities and life styles. The media
as a whole substitutes for families in the entertainment and social/cultural
education of our children, and it cons parents into thinking they
can make up for the time they don’t give to their children
by giving them more things.
The
outer ring -- the public sector -- substitutes for and replaces
families in even more obvious ways. Public schools take ever-increasing
responsibility not only for the intellectual education of children
but for their character and values education, for their social behavior
and for their after-school care. While it is, in many ways admirable
that teachers and schools accept more responsibility, it is a poor
substitute for the full responsibility and involvement of parents.
The courts,
the legal systems, the legislatures, and every conceivable kind
of agency or bureau also increasingly substitute themselves into
the traditional roles and functions of families. Courts are so preoccupied
with individual rights that they ignore and undervalue family rights
and responsibility. Children can sue their parents. Child protective
services can take kids from their parents on the hearsay of neighbors.
Custody rulings seem designed to pull families apart. Legislatures
keep trying to fix things with new laws. Government social services
and welfare, filled with well-intentioned policies and well-meaning
people, too often circumvent and disregard the basic purpose and
position of families in their attempts to assist children. While
there are family situations where the greatest need is to protect
a child from a parents, there are far more families where the real
need (and the real solution) is to help parents to take care of
their parental responsibilities and stewardships.
When
I was named by President Reagan to direct the ‘80s White
House Conference on Children, my first move was to try to change
the name of the conference to the White house Conference on
Children and Parents -- so the emphasis would shift from social
agency solutions to parental and family solutions. The name
change met with substantial resistance from many welfare social
service entities who seemed to view parents as the main problem
rather than the main answer.
Even
the community and voluntary sector, the churches an clubs and other
neighborhood entities that should be closest and most nourishing
to families often seem bent on making the family redundant. Plenty
of activities and involvements are offered for kids, but precious
few for whole families. Kids are encouraged to do things individually
and with their peers far more than to do things with their parents
and families.
Parents,
particularly suburban parents in middle class neighborhoods, seem
to be following the "general contractor" model for parenting.
As long as they get their kids to school, to scouts, to music and
dance lessons, to sports and summer camps, to after-school programs,
to etiquette classes and tutors and college test prep coaches, everything
will be fine. These "subcontractors" will do al the work
while general contractor parents just pay the bills (and work the
hours necessary to pay those bills). Just get the kids to where
they need to go and let the institutions of the public, private,
and community sector raise them.
The biggest
problem with this general contractor approach is that it doesn’t
work. What children need is the unconditional, even irrational love
that only a parent can provide. They need the time and attention
that is only fully meaningful when it comes from a parent.
The bottom
line is that no other element or agency or institution can provide
the unconditional, even irrational love that children need
to grow up emotionally healthy and happy. Other entities can give
huge help and support in the raising of children, but none are adequate
substitutes for parents and families in the five essential functions
or the four essential elements (see pgs. 12-15).
I think
of our two oldest daughters who each spent over a year in the
early ‘90s doing humanitarian service and missionary work
-- and assisting in orphanages -- in Romania and Bulgaria. From
their letters and from the two visits we made while they were
there, we realized that the basic physical care these orphans
received was adequate. They were fed, kept warm and dry, and
even played with occasionally in groups. Yet their dark hollow
eyes and empty emotions spoke volumes about what they didn’t
get -- personal, individual, unconditional love.
We were
reminded of the studies done with baby monkeys who were offered
a wire-mesh "mother" or a soft furry stuffed animal
"mother" in place of the real thing. Even though they
were given plenty of nourishment and a "fake" mother
(all chose the soft furry one), none of the infant monkeys lived
to maturity. They died from a lack of parental love.
The
starting point in looking for real solutions is the acknowledgment
that nothing can adequately substitute for real family.
Next
week in part ten: The "cause" continues -- Sins of Omission
and Sins of Commission and How Each "Sin" of the Outer
Sectors Destroys Families.
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