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Re-valu-ing
the Family, Part Ten: How Outer Sector "Sins" Hurt the
Family
by Richard
and Linda Eyre
(www.valuesparenting.com)
The
public sector, rife with sins of commission and omission, is damaging
the family.
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).
Sins of Omission
(what each sector has failed to do for families)
While the public,
private, and community sectors often assume too much responsibility
for kids and substitute too much for parents, they often do far
too little in terms of supporting and supplementing parents in their
difficult job.
Let’s start
with the next-to-the-family voluntary or community sector. Where
have churches and synagogues been during the last fifty years in
defending and upholding the family? Certainly family commitment
and fidelity are a part of the tradition and stated belief of virtually
all religions, but too often faith communities have tried too hard
to accommodate and be tolerant of anti-family social change rather
than standing up to it and challenging it.
Community and
voluntary groups too, while doing all kinds of creative and compassionate
things for downtrodden and unfortunate individuals, have
done too little to help in-need families as units. With all the
big-brother, big-sister and other mentoring programs, where are
programs that mentor parents or that link a relatively functional
family with a dysfunctional one in a one-family-to-one-family help
relationship?
Even in the
best religious and community organizations, with all their good
intent, whole family and parent involvement and improvement solutions
are too often just not on the radar screen. And by trying to help
children without involving parents we commit the classic mistake
of giving a fish without teaching anyone how to fish.
The private
sector is full of "sins of omission" when it comes
to families. In their emergence as huge new institutions, corporations
have viewed families as competitors for the time and allegiance
of their workers and thus failed to offer very much if any meaningful
help to families or even to consider family needs as they formulate
policies and work expectations. By becoming far more loyal to their
stockholders than to their workers, corporations lay off and downsize
without regard to families and deprive workers of the kind of flexibility
and selective time off that could make huge differences in their
ability to be effective parents.
It’s almost
as though corporate boards and decision-makers all across America
sat down and said, "Now, what can we do to make it as hard
as possible for our employees to have strong families and a fulfilling
home life." This didn’t actually happen of course -- what
did happen was nothing -- no agenda where the family and
home needs of workers were discussed. A sin of omission.
As public
speakers we frequently address corporate or association groups
on topics of "Lifebalance" and prioritized time management.
Generally speaking, as long as we tie everything to the goal
of improving the company’s bottom line, we are well received
by top management. But when we deal bluntly with what is best
for the family -- and fail to tie it directly to some benefit
for the company, most corporate leaders listen politely but
fail to invite us back.
The public sector’s
omissions relate most to government’s failure to recognizer
the social and economic value of the raising of children into productive
citizens. Historically, societies have given recognition to the
importance of parents by giving fathers and mothers a certain status
and often a certain economic acknowledgment. In the 1950s the tax
deduction for each child was about ten percent of the average wage.
Today, the tax deduction a parent gets for supporting and raising
a child is less than three percent of the average wage. Over the
last thirty years it has become dramatically more expensive to feed,
clothe, house, and education a child, yet our tax structure has
given us dramatically less help in covering those costs.
Beyond the economic
abdication and ignoring of parenting value and needs, government
has put far too little social and political focus on parents and
families. Since children have no vote and parents with children
have no more vote than adults without children, the needs and problems
of families and parents go too unnoticed and too ignored by politicians
and by public policy.
The real tragedy
of these sins of omission by the three outer sectors is that they
are poisoning themselves as they fail to nourish and protect
families. Every family failure, every child who doesn’t get
what he needs at home, puts an incremental burden on the larger
public and private institutions of society and robs those same institutions
of a productive, helpful addition. Once the problems of a child
spill out of the family into the welfare system, the justice system,
the corporate structure, the community and neighborhood . . . the
problem becomes impossibly complex and expensive, making all of
our institutions pay for their earlier omissions.
The broadest
failure or omission is that our larger institutions do not recognize
or value or reward the responsibility of parenthood or family. Not
enough credit or credibility or accommodation is given either to
parents or to families.
Sins of
Commission
(what each sector has done to weaken families)
If families
had only been neglected and omitted from the concerns and priorities
of larger institutions, they might still survive and prosper through
their own instinctive strengths and resilience. But our newer, larger
institutions have not only failed to help and support families,
they have, in many ways (sometimes deliberately and sometimes inadvertently)
taken actions that undermine and weaken families in both direct
and indirect ways.
The private
sector may be the biggest culprit when it comes to sins of commission.
Entertainment and media institutions have bombarded children
and parents with an amoral mix of movies, television, and music
that glamorizes early recreational sex and random violence and that
belittles and ridicules traditional family life. Financial institutions
have promoted easy and unwise credit so effectively as to bankrupt
countless families. The Internet institution clobbers kids with
sex and violence and makes parents and kids better at communicating
with a keyboard than with each other. Merchandising and advertising
institutions foster a mentality of materialism whereby we measure
ourselves by our possessions and our accomplishments rather than
by our family relationships.
The public sector
sins against family by imposing a "marriage tax" where
two married people pay more income tax than the total of what the
two would pay as unmarried individuals and by making it more profitable
for many people to live on welfare than to work. The courts make
divorce ever easier and less stigmatic. And child protective services
have the right to take away any child from any parent.
Is it
any wonder that more and more fathers, especially poor fathers,
are leaving their marriages and their families -- often for
economic reasons as much as for personal or emotional
reasons. Is it any wonder that only one-third of black children
live with their fathers? Imagine for a moment that you are a
black father struggling economically, living with your family
near the poverty line. First, you feel less and less responsibility
for your family because various welfare and special agencies
are assuming that responsibility. Second, your kids and wife
get less welfare and subsidy money if you live with them than
if you move out. Third, both you and your wife will pay less
taxes if you don’t stay on as part of the family. And fourth,
as you watch TV, you are constantly assured that broken, split-apart
families are the norm anyway. Why stay at home?
The above scenario
becomes even more disturbing when we realize that a child who does
live with both parents is less than half as likely to drop
out of school, to get arrested, to use drugs, or to commit suicide.
Even the community
and voluntary sectors commit "sins" against the family.
Games, concerts, and recreation are scheduled profusely on Sundays
and evenings, eliminating the only times long-hour-working parents
can be with their kids. Self-help books and seminars convince us
that we need to "look out for number one" -- to be more
concerned with our individual comfort, looks, and status, even if
it’s at the expense of family responsibility.
The whole syndrome
of larger institutions competing with and destroying the family
is fueled by the phenomenon of persons who have largely lost their
own family focus and fulfillment and turned from parenting as a
priority. It’s a corollary on the old axiom that misery loves
company. Those who have a different set of priorities subconsciously
want us to adapt that same set. Someone once said, "We are
all trying to convert each other." Those who have expended
the time and effort to be in a position to run other larger
public and private institutions have usually sacrificed a lot of
family time and family focus to get where they are. Subconsciously,
they seem to want us to join them. Subconsciously they seem to want
us as customers or as cohorts or as common sympathizers with their
choice of life style and priorities.
The past half
century has witnessed a sea change in what our larger institutions
are and in what they do to us and our families. They capture our
loyalty and identity. They take over our parental functions -- for
profit or out of misplaced altruism. They take our responsibility
and offer us redundancy. They fail to support and sustain and supplement
us in the ways we need most even as they undermine and weaken the
values and societal norms that could protect us.
Next week in
part eleven: Continuing the "cause" -- How "Paradigm
Problems" Contribute to the Mess.
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© 2001 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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