Thread: Marriage and family the basis of a strong society? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
I was at a wedding the other day, and the phrase was used that "marriage and the family is the basis of a strong society". I was unsure at the time, and the more I think of it, the more I worry about this.

The problem is that this would imply that singles and those who are not in "families" - generally meaning one man one woman and children - are not part of our society.

I am also concerned that the "insular" nature of this - a family looking after itself - is not the core basis of our society. It is the relationships and engagements across all sorts of connections that makes our society strong. It is neighbours and families and singles and school-gate-groups and tai-chi classes and writing groups that make society strong. It is people who are prepared to help others, support the down-and-out, stock and help at food banks, volunteer at shelters, make society work despite the efforts of some people to destroy it.

I do think that family and marriage are important. But I think I would understand these terms is much wider terms - committed relationships of all sorts are important. But they are only part of the interaction of relationships that make for a strong society.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I was at a wedding the other day, and the phrase was used that "marriage and the family is the basis of a strong society". I was unsure at the time, and the more I think of it, the more I worry about this.

The problem is that this would imply that singles and those who are not in "families" - generally meaning one man one woman and children - are not part of our society.
I think the idea is that families once provided the basic unit of care, moral instruction and support which would enable both individuals and communities to function well, and hence create strong societies. So it wasn't an attempt to exclude single people, since single people themselves were nurtured and formed by families.

It seems obvious that the importance of the family in Britain has declined with the growth of state support and individualism, and heterosexual marriage is now more of an optional celebration of romantic love and less of a rite of passage on the way to founding a strong family.

Perhaps when conducting weddings clergymen feel they must insist that strong heterosexual marriages and families still matter to society at large, but I suspect that few of their listeners are likely to take it very seriously, unless they're folk who lead a sheltered life. Ordinary people, even churchgoers, realise that society is different now.
 
Posted by PaulBC (# 13712) on :
 
I know, from experience in many parts of the church in North America if you are single and not in missions there is something dreadfully wrong with you. A paralell to if you don't have a happy slappy smile you have a deep spiritual problem.
Of course they are wrong . I wonder if I would a happy person if married ? I can be a right old so & so at times . But just cause I am single doesn't make it impossible to serve the church, I have a friend who went on a short term mission with Operation Mobilization and she still with them 30 years later. I served 2 churches here 1 as a libtrarian for 18 years and 2nd as a server also for 18 years . In most places thats known as a career !! For me it was doing what I could help the church I was/am part of
and I was happy though single .
 
Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :
 
Personally I would say that marriage and the family are one of the basis of society, but that doesn't mean they are the only basis of society. Or that if you aren't part of a marriage or a family you're not part of society. It seems to me that society is the interlocking of individuals to form increasingly greater units, and certainly one of those units can be a marriage and family. But that doesn't mean it's the only unit.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
It's just one of many things that we (Christians) "just say" all the time (I could list others) and by saying them all the time we come to believe them, believe even that they are somehow biblical or God's will-- despite any real evidence that that is the case. As noted above, the more you think about it, the more troubling it is. The implications for singles, for divorcees, for widow/ers, for childless couples-- theologically it's a minefield. But we say it all the time so it just must be true.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
Even worse, far too often we say it without thinking assuming it's a Christian value, when all we're doing are repeating what some politicians who may have all sorts of agendas are saying.

I think it's fair to say that within the Bible it is normal for the household to be the base unit in society. Which is not the same as the nuclear family of the modern West.

The Biblical household would be the extended family - so not the pair of adults and 2.4 children, but the grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins etc - many of whom would probably be 'single' (though, how you would apply that word to a setting where you're surrounded by family, it's just that none of them are your spouse). And, the household would also include servants, if there was a trade possibly an apprentice or two who are not blood relatives, tenants of a large landowning family etc.

So, if we accept the Biblical pattern to be normative, we've got the wrong definition of 'family'. And, if we don't accept the Biblical pattern to be normative we have no other Scriptural foundation on which to base a claim about the importance of marriage and family.
 
Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :
 
I wouldn't underestimate the value of childless aunts and uncles, mentors and friends in the family system, either.

I know I would have had a much more difficult time as a teenager if I hadn't had my childless godparents in my life, all three of them.
 
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 
Of course it's true!!

For goodness' sake; why do people want to denigrate something just because not everyone can experience it?
Anyway, it shows the decline in the respect and regard for 'the family' when people start to retreat into the '2 parent, 2.5 children' model.

Surely 'family' is aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, grandad and grandma - and increasingly nowadays great grandad and great grandma. Yes, there are many people who choose to be single or, through circumstance or lack of opportunity, become single again. But family life is not just being married or being a parent.

In my immediate family there is me - married with 3 adult sons; one sister, divorced but now partnered and with 2 sons, a married sister who has 2 kids and 2 stepsons, a sister who, at 42, has never married and never had a boyfriend to my knlwledge! - and my mother who was widowed at 60 and now lives alone at 74. This is a family and you can add to it the aunts and uncles, cousins, etc - some of whom 'have no family' (to use the narrow definition) but who are part of a wider circle.

And, because this is a religious discussion forum, we remember that the Bible and Judaism itself, speak very much of that wider family - the household.

The church's witness is that the family is vital - and our mission and ministry is to ensure that the solitary are placed in families (Psalm 68 v 6)
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Surely 'family' is aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, grandad and grandma - and increasingly nowadays great grandad and great grandma.
Yes, but in the context of a wedding statements about family will be about husband and wife, and any potential future children.

And, if we're discussing politics then it's the same pattern - family is two adults with children. When was the last time a politician proposed supporting families through the tax system to mean give everyone who is part of an extended family a tax break?

The challenge today is for those of us who recognise that the Biblical model (and, for that matter the pattern throughout practically all of human history) is of an extended family being the fundamental community unit. How does that model work out in the modern western world of geographic dispersion? It's quite easy to see how it works when the extended family are all living in the same place, either in a family home or in a series of smaller homes in close proximity. At present I'm living in a location where the number of close relatives within 1000 miles is precisely zero. Even when back in Scotland, the number of close relatives in the same town is still zero; within 1h travel I have a brother, it's more than 3h travel before the number of family members starts to get reasonable (1 brother, 1 sister and nephew, one cousin with her children), it takes 8h to get to my mum or my other sister. I'm not unique in that, and for a lot of people they have even less close family nearby.

Modern society has fragmented, in many cases totally destroyed, any functional extended family. We no longer have grandparents who can provide childcare, cousins for the children to play with after school. We're reduced to holiday visits and Skype. What alternative for a strong society do we have left? Politicians, and often the church in compliant support of politicians, just adds to the burden of parenthood. "Raise your children well, work full time to pay for the costs, have no support from close family" is bad enough, but now we also have "and be the basis for a strong society".
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Four thoughts.

1. I think that many Christians have romanticised the notion of "family" with the result that it has almost become an unattainable epitome of perfection. Yes, families are important, although they are most certainly not the only building-block of society. But idealising them too much ignores the very real problems that families often have and glosses over the normal wrangles and rows that beset most families.

2. Families may be good: but they can also be constricting and manipulative. At the very least one can have families ruled by a patriarch or matriarch who decidsd everything and does not allow other members to pursue their own aims and flourish. Then we have the problems of closely-knit families in some communities which lead to the ostracism and even murder(the so-called "honour killings") of members who step out of line. And one cannot forget the criminality endemic in some families, whether it be the Krays in East London or the Mafioisi. Not all families are "nice"!

3. I actually agree that weddings should be regarded as more than the romantic coming-together of two individuals. But, in practice, that's what it really means for most folk nowadays (things might be different in small close-knit rural communities).

4. I've noticed that no-one has yet mentioned the fact that families - at least according to British politicians - are either "hard-working" or "benefit cheats". Are there any who lie in-between?

[ 20. April 2015, 06:48: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
The modern West has turned the state into everybody's family. For better, singles / single parents can pretend to be equal members of society. For worse, David Cameron will be our elected foster mum. It's a trade-off we have come to accept as normal, demonstrating once more the flexibility of human behaviour. The nanny state is as far as the "divide and conquer" approach against the family will go, but it is inherently unstable and requires continuous economic success to finance its tremendous upkeep. When (not if, there is no end to history) the current social structure crumbles, the natural unit of human autarky - the family - will reassert itself near instantly.

The claim "marriage and the family is the basis of a strong society" is a kind of mantra in support of an ancient truce between the power of the state and the power of the family. Modern society has broken that truce through a relentless power grab of the state, turning this mantra into mockery in the mouths of its politicians. The other extreme, the total rule of families amidst a weak state, is however no particular fun either. Whether the future will find some balance without wild swings of the pendulum is anybody's guess. Let's hope so...
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I'm not sure what a strong society is, or if it's a good thing; as others have said, the family can also be the source of great hurt and damage.

It's certainly important as a place of care for children, and as a place to learn about love and hate, so these are vital abilities.

I suppose in addition, there is a right-wing cast to 'strong family', that makes me nervous, Kinder, Kirche, Kuche, and so on, (children, church, kitchen), this sounds quite repressive, as the family can be.

My own family was a scary place, no doubt, I have kind of recovered from it, at vast expense!
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
Far from being the foundation of society, marriage and the family is a way of getting care - for ther elderly, the housebound etc. - on the cheap.

As for raising children, any combination of loving partners is good - they don't have to be married heterosexuals.

Single people are the backbone of society - as carers, in the nurturing professions like teaching, nursing etc.

And the churches would collapse without celibate (or discreetly partnered) clergy and lay volunteers.
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
I'm with Mudfrog on this, both as regard the nuclear blocks and the extended family.

Society is built on families. Even those who are anti-family can't avoid this without special pleading that isn't very persuasive. We have to work with this not against it.

Nor is it honest to pretend this is not so because we don't want to upset those who are single, do not have families or whose families have been a disaster.

Even in Dawkins terms, families that work reproduce more effectively and through more generations than families that don't work, people who don't have children etc.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
For me, the family is ambivalent, since while here we can learn about love and attachment, we can also learn about cruelty and fear. But I suppose it's necessary to learn about all of these things. But strong societies can be very cruel.
 
Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
As a single/no children, I feel excluded from society. Church communities are the most excluding, sorry to say. On the other hand, it is the one aspect of my life which allows me to share the experience of those who are excluded for other reasons eg physical or mental illness/disability, appearance (eg gross facial disfigurement) or marginal economic status. I realise that I am privileged in economic terms. If it wasn't for my single hood, I would be a pain in the tonsils.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
Recognizing that people can see this formula as one that excludes, I think that it is useful to think of it in terms of happy childhoods, and especially the long-term effects of a happy childhood.

There are numerous variations on the concept of the nuclear family that can result in a happy childhood. The key ingredients seem to be stability, love, support, an absence of extreme deprivation, and I'm sure people can think of others.

A congenial, supportive home life in childhood can help a person grow up to be confident and well adjusted, and reduce our common tendency to feel isolated and to have low self-esteem.

I think that it is happy childhoods that are the real basis of a cohesive and loving society.

The question then is what the situation is that is most likely to produce happy childhoods.

While I'm sure that many variations on the theme can produce this hoped-for result, I think that the most reliable one is also the most common one - traditional marriage. [Angel]
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Single people are the backbone of society - as carers, in the nurturing professions like teaching, nursing etc.

And the churches would collapse without celibate (or discreetly partnered) clergy and lay volunteers.
LOL, a friend when widowed told me all her coupled friends dropped her, the people she and her husband played cards with every Friday evening would not return a greeting in the church hall, she became invisible right after the funeral. That's a story I've known to be common in the USA mainstream culture since at least the 50s.

The clergy person put her to work in the church as head altar guild. Then she observed to me "the singles do all the work, but they don't get invited to the parties."

Looking around, I don't agree the singles do ALL the work, but a far higher proportion than their population share. Couples are "busy" hanging out with each other or with other couples. Altar guild, choir, coffee hospitality volunteers, predominantly older singles. Greeters are often couples.

Not true in my youth when stay at home wives volunteered at church to get out of the house.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
Just to add a "therefore" to my post above in case it is not immediately obvious.

Therefore, although it is often the case that a societal stress on the importance of marriage and family leads to people feeling unfairly excluded, the overall effect of that stress ought to be a reduction in feelings of exclusion and isolation.

Conversely, if this point of view has value, a reduced stress on the value of marriage is likely to lead to an increase in feelings of exclusion and isolation. The reason for this is that if traditional marriage is the most reliable source of happy childhoods, then fewer traditional marriages will result in an increase in unhappy childhoods, and therefore more feelings of isolation and exclusion.

Of course, if it is not really true that a happy childhood causes life-long well-being, or if it is not really true that traditional marriage is the most reliable cause of happy childhoods, then this house-of-cards falls apart.

I expect that the data on this question is available somewhere, or will be eventually. [Biased]

[ 20. April 2015, 13:39: Message edited by: Freddy ]
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Of course it's true!!
because.... ????

Look, I'm very happily familied. Married, three kids. Anxiously awaiting grandkids to the point of being that naggy mom pushing married daughter to get on with the show. It is pure joy.

But the basis of society? No. The basis of a strong society is a strong community that cares for and supports each other in all their varied life choices.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
It's worth making a historical point, that patriarchal society has privileged men, oppressed women and children, and used the family as a source of cheap labour and sexual servitude.

Of course, things have changd for the better in the West, but it was only in the 19th century that married women acquired certain legal rights, separate from their husbands (in English law) and children were taken out of factories. So it depends on how traditional you mean by traditional.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
I will also not that traditional and patriarchal families were very often reserved for the upper class and white members of the society. If you happened to be a black slave, good luck with the family thing; you might be paired off with some other slave at Master's dictate, and your children sold off. Or if you were very poor, and could not maintain your wife and kids, you didn't get support for being a family, but just criticism for breeding like a rabbit.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I will also not that traditional and patriarchal families were very often reserved for the upper class and white members of the society. If you happened to be a black slave, good luck with the family thing; you might be paired off with some other slave at Master's dictate, and your children sold off. Or if you were very poor, and could not maintain your wife and kids, you didn't get support for being a family, but just criticism for breeding like a rabbit.
Yes, when people talk about traditional families, I am curious about which traditions they mean. For example, married women could be raped, their legal rights were subsumed into their husbands (so-called coverture), they could not own property, or form contracts, and so on (under English law). Is this supposed to be some golden age, which produced happy children, and happy wives?

[ 20. April 2015, 16:33: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
For better, singles / single parents can pretend to be equal members of society.
Why the assumption that this is a pretense?

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The nanny state is as far as the "divide and conquer" approach against the family will go, but it is inherently unstable and requires continuous economic success to finance its tremendous upkeep. When (not if, there is no end to history) the current social structure crumbles, the natural unit of human autarky - the family - will reassert itself near instantly.
I'm not convinced by your assertion that socialized medicine or old age pensions or whatever it is that you consider "the nanny state" is such a terrible bane to the family. It's more plausible that families are actually more stable when they're not one serious medical incident away from complete bankruptcy (e.g. pre-ACA United States) or where workplace safety regulations are strong enough so mom isn't killed by radiation poisoning.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The claim "marriage and the family is the basis of a strong society" is a kind of mantra in support of an ancient truce between the power of the state and the power of the family. Modern society has broken that truce through a relentless power grab of the state, turning this mantra into mockery in the mouths of its politicians.
Isn't this analysis somewhat flawed regarding democratic societies, where adult members of families are also (theoretically) the controllers of the state? There seems to be the underlying assumption that voters will support policies against the interests of their own families. Or that modern democracy is a sham where the state can enact policies contrary to the wished of its electorate.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
That for some of us, joy and happiness is experienced through being married and having a family does not mean that everyone shallbe required to experience the same joy. Any more than you are required to enjoy pickled herring, such as I had for breakfast.

The comments about nanny state are incomprehensible. Any than one can assert that I am part of a family of [i]exclusive and sexy undergarment aficionados[i] because my underwear are made by Victoria's Secret*.


*which they are actually not.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Solid and lasting relationships are the bedrock of a good society. For these relationships to be formed it is essential that each person learns that (i) they are of value but (ii) the whole world does not revolve around them. The best time and place to learn these things is in early life and in a loving family (which speaking from experience as a person who is an uncle and a godfather but not a father I think should be understood as extending beyond the nuclear unit and indeed perhaps even beyind the blood tie).
I really can't see how anyone could reasonably disagree with these statements. And while there are people- too many people- who grow up in a family in which, because for example it may be chaotic, cold, over-indulgent or abusive, these lessons cannot be learned, that does not mean that they cannot learn them later or elsewhere- it just means that they will be playing catch-up for a time.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
I really can't see how anyone could reasonably disagree with these statements.
That is my thought as well.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
I think Alan Creswells point about the biblical model is important. At a time in the past, the "family" would have consisted of a small nuclear family, with many other parts of the family around - aunts, uncles, cousins siblings even. This is because families tended not to move far away. There can still be the essence of a nuclear household, with the wider family structures in place.

But that is becoming increasingly rare. I have no blood-family near me. One of my sons has moved away. In terms of actual blood-relatives, that cannot be a foundational part of society. Where I used to live in East London, many people stayed for just a few short years - 50-60% or more of a local community would turn over in 2-3 years. In that type of community, family - even short-term friendships - cannot be the basis of the society.

Now just to put the record straight, I am not dissing families. I think they are important, and there is something special about the family gathering I was at over the weekend. Mainly because it only happens every year or so. But mostly, day-to-day, society where I am is held together by completely different things.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not sure what a strong society is, or if it's a good thing; as others have said, the family can also be the source of great hurt and damage.

It's certainly important as a place of care for children, ...

My own family was a scary place, no doubt, I have kind of recovered from it, at vast expense!
If "society" means living together instead of separately, family is probably the most common unit of shared work and assets and life-space. In that sense it is the lowest common level of "society," which can be called "base level" of societal awareness.

But family is also a major vehicle of social separation and in that sense an opponent of larger society. Hatfields and McCoys is an extreme of families identifying themselves as NOT in society with each other. But I'm thinking more broadly, having moved to a town where many families live withing a house or a block from grandma aunts uncles cousins kids grandkids.

In one sense it's great fun - for them. Any occasion is a party with lots of people attending, all family. But especially with churches proclaiming "God first, family second, church third" (note, no mention of friends or neighbors, when I asked I was told "that's the people in church"), it's really hard for a stranger who moves to town to find people to be friends with. They don't invite you to "family events," and they don't come to your parties, they have enough going on just in the family.

In a fast growing community like mine, whole churches of newcomers spring up because the old timers in the old churches can't take time way from their weekly Sunday morning family reunion to make friends with newcomers. In slow or non-growing communities, moving in is deadly lonely, because the family orientation blocks broader society.

Families are a base level of social living, but they can be an adverse influence on forming of broader society.
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
Mudfrog and Enoch - questioning marriage and family being the (as in, the only) basis of a strong society does not make someone anti-family. I'm not anti-family at all, and certainly very much value marriage and family. Please don't make assumptions about people's motives, I can't see anyone in this thread who has been anti-family either. I just don't see why me being a single person makes my contribution to society less important.

Society is strengthened by relationships and community. Blood relatives and married couples may be part of this, or may not. Churches are definitely hostile places for single people, especially those who have chosen singleness. Given that Jesus was single, this seems wrong. It really is true that single people in the church do all the work but get none of the support or benefits.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
And for really abusive relationships, you go to a family. One abusive parent, one mentally-disturbed relative, one psychopathic sibling, and the entire cozy structure becomes a prison.

Too many novels and movies to cite here, and if I lived in your community we could probably trade hair-curling real-life examples. But here is a historical example we all probably know: Queen Victoria. Between her obsessive mourning for Prince Albert and her dysfunctional relationship with her son and heir the future King Edward, she created a fantastically unhappy family.

To hold the family up as the epitome of social stability is foolish -- I doubt if any mortal institution can make all of us happy all of the time. Those who hold it up as the only mode of Christian life are as off base as those who (a thousand years ago) insisted that monastic life, or priesthood, was the only way to go.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I can't help thinking of Larkin's famous poem, 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad'. Well, for some, that's true, but we also learn about love and attachment. So I see the family as both stable, and destabilizing, a place of safety, and also a place of fear and misery. I'm not anti-family, since it's the best thing we've got for kids, but watch out for the repair bills. Well, it's kept me in work!
 
Posted by Truman White (# 17290) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Of course it's true!!
because.... ????

Look, I'm very happily familied. Married, three kids. Anxiously awaiting grandkids to the point of being that naggy mom pushing married daughter to get on with the show. It is pure joy.

But the basis of society? No. The basis of a strong society is a strong community that cares for and supports each other in all their varied life choices.
Taking Alan C's view of family as "extended"

[QUOTE] The challenge today is for those of us who recognise that the Biblical model (and, for that matter the pattern throughout practically all of human history) is of an extended family being the fundamental community unit [\QUOTE] I'd agree we need to think "community" as a starting point and put (extended) family in the guts of that community. In some parts of the UK (not to mention overseas) "extended" is the default view of family.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And for really abusive relationships, you go to a family.
That is also an important aspect. The idea that families are foundational to society means that leaving an abusive relationships is seem as "breaking up society". Reporting abuse within the family is "destroying the roots of out country".

It is like leaving or reporting an abusive church is "attacking Gods kingdom". No - at its best, it might be a partial reflection of an aspect of the kingdom, but it is not sacrosanct. The same with families - they are wonderful, they should be supported, helped and encouraged. I don't think anyone is in doubt about that on this thread. But they are not sacrosanct, and when they are broken, they need fixing.
 
Posted by Truman White (# 17290) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And for really abusive relationships, you go to a family.
That is also an important aspect. The idea that families are foundational to society means that leaving an abusive relationships is seem as "breaking up society". Reporting abuse within the family is "destroying the roots of out country".

It is like leaving or reporting an abusive church is "attacking Gods kingdom". No - at its best, it might be a partial reflection of an aspect of the kingdom, but it is not sacrosanct. The same with families - they are wonderful, they should be supported, helped and encouraged. I don't think anyone is in doubt about that on this thread. But they are not sacrosanct, and when they are broken, they need fixing.
I'm with you on the sentiment (if not Cloughy's rhetoric). Stable, loving functional families are a foundation stone in society since it's primarily here that we nurture our offspring. Abusive families are abhorrent precisely because they undermine that foundation.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Why the assumption that this is a pretense?
Raising a child is at least 50-75% FTE for at least about eight years. Consequently, single parenting relies on institutionalised child care, the wider family (grandparents...) and/or charity, and even then outcomes for the children are generally subpar. That's not a slur on single parents, but simply a reflection of the demands of parenthood. Single parenting is not an equivalent substitute for the family to society. And as much as singles may contribute to a society, it would all come to naught within a few decades without parents. (When I say "single" here, I mean childless singles. For singles with children, see above.) A society without singles can survive into the next generation, a society without parents cannot. Singles are de facto secondary to society, simply by reproductive biology.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not convinced by your assertion that socialized medicine or old age pensions or whatever it is that you consider "the nanny state" is such a terrible bane to the family.
Since I simply didn't assert that, I don't really need to defend it. My actual point was quite simply that the modern state has taken over many "support jobs" that an extended family was good for, from the cradle to the grave. Hence the state has assumed a central role in our lives, and therewith much of the social power that the family used to have. The modern nuclear (and often transient patchwork) family certainly is unthinkable without that state support as well. When the modern state fails, people will for the most part revert to the family as their support system.

(Actually, it is not really just the "state" that has stepped in. It's more complicated, with for example young child care being at least partly commercialised. But the state at least tends to be the accepted regulator for such "family-replacing" commercial activity.)

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Isn't this analysis somewhat flawed regarding democratic societies, where adult members of families are also (theoretically) the controllers of the state? There seems to be the underlying assumption that voters will support policies against the interests of their own families. Or that modern democracy is a sham where the state can enact policies contrary to the wished of its electorate.
I would consider modern representative "democracy" basically as a useful political mass delusion. It certainly is not the rule of the people in any straightforward sense. But that's a different discussion. Suffice to say that I agree that we are largely getting what we are asking for. But it is hardly realistic to consider what we are asking for as a totally free choice across many widely different options, readily available and presented fairly to us. For the most part, social decisions are necessarily incremental so as to not disrupt. And a thousand steps along one path one does not have the ability to simply teleport to the place where one would have been, had one taken a thousand steps along a different path.
 
Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The modern West has turned the state into everybody's family. For better, singles / single parents can pretend to be equal members of society. For worse, David Cameron will be our elected foster mum. It's a trade-off we have come to accept as normal, demonstrating once more the flexibility of human behaviour. The nanny state is as far as the "divide and conquer" approach against the family will go, but it is inherently unstable and requires continuous economic success to finance its tremendous upkeep. When (not if, there is no end to history) the current social structure crumbles, the natural unit of human autarky - the family - will reassert itself near instantly.

The claim "marriage and the family is the basis of a strong society" is a kind of mantra in support of an ancient truce between the power of the state and the power of the family. Modern society has broken that truce through a relentless power grab of the state, turning this mantra into mockery in the mouths of its politicians. The other extreme, the total rule of families amidst a weak state, is however no particular fun either. Whether the future will find some balance without wild swings of the pendulum is anybody's guess. Let's hope so...
[Killing me]

What arrant nonsense! Dear me, have you ever looked at what the left actually advocated? I am a card carrying member of the NDP, the modern form of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which brought the Welfare State to Canada. The legacy of the CCF is succinctly summarized thus:


quote:
Perhaps that is why literary theorist Northrop Frye once said that the CCF was the most conservative party conceived in Canada and it died not knowing that it was.

....While Communists were perishing on barricades around the world in the first half of the 20th century, Canada's answer to revolution was the democratic socialist CCF -- a group of quiet (sometimes they were Protestant ministers) moderate politicians. In contrast to the often violent response of the left in the rest of the world, the CCF tried to preserve the family, the most conservative and basic building unit in society. And how did it defend the family? Through advocating pensions, family allowances, and universal health care.
Tension, what tension? Source

[ 21. April 2015, 01:35: Message edited by: Sober Preacher's Kid ]
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
Though, I think IngoB has been skating around an important point.

In pre-modern and early-modern societies (ie for the majority of people who have ever lived) the fundamental unit of society has been some form of extended family/household. That extended family/household has been the primary source of help in maintaining the family, including it's connections to the wider society, within the family providing care for children and elderly, nursing for the sick, etc. Only at times of extreme need would they seek help beyond that extended family unit.

In the modern west, we have broken apart that traditional family unit into much smaller units, the nuclear family rather than the extended family. That has only worked (if it has) because society has provided a surrogate for many of the roles that the extended family previously provided. Whether childcare, schooling, care for the sick and elderly etc are provided by the state, through commercial businesses or a combination of these is largely irrelevant - the effect of providing a replacement for the extended family is the same.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

In pre-modern and early-modern societies (ie for the majority of people who have ever lived) the fundamental unit of society has been some form of extended family/household.
Consider also the political use of marriage. How do you seal a treaty between your city / country / whatever? Your kid marries the other guy's kid. How do you conquer a country / city / whatever? Kill their leader, marry his daughter. Now think about why that happened, and why people thought it was important.

[ 21. April 2015, 05:49: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
What arrant nonsense! Dear me, have you ever looked at what the left actually advocated?
You seem to think that I am a social conservative in an American sense. Hardly. And what "nonsense" are you talking about? Your reply does not address anything I was talking about. Alan on the other hand got my point just fine... For example, this:
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
And how did it defend the family? Through advocating pensions, family allowances, and universal health care.
is not "defending" the family. All of it is replacing the family. Children were to support their parents in their old age, directly. Now the state does. Either by instituting and controlling saving schemes, or by collecting taxes and thus anonymising the support of the elderly. The wider family used to support young families, often by support in kind (directly taking care of the kids, supplying food, supplying opportunities for work, etc.). Now the state throws various tax breaks and direct payments at them. It was the family's job to deal with failing health of a member (taking care of medical expenses, standing in for the work that the sick person could not do, literally nursing family members through their sickness). Now the state is doing this through an institutionalised system of health care professionals, financed either by contributions to state-controlled organisations or directly by taxes. Etc. The modern state pretty much tries to be the "universal family" to its citizens. And as far as it has succeeded, it has replaced the natural family.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Though, I think IngoB has been skating around an important point.
I don't think that I have been "skating around" anything here, but you certainly have understood the point I've been making.

The only thing I would add is that the idea that history has ended is a delusion that is universal throughout history. The current social arrangement will fall, the question is only when. And at times when the state and other supra-individual organisations crumble, invariably the family rises. You can see that in every failed state across the world. I get those stories somewhat regularly first hand, due to dealing with PhD students from many places. If your world comes crashing down, the family as basic unit of human autarky is what remains standing last, and is what people devote their efforts to. It is this feature of the human family that makes it the core unit of any society. One can certainly take over from the family with other institutions, and the modern Western state is a demonstration just how far one can go with that. But only by applying constant "social force". Release that force, and social organisation will snap right back to its base state, "social lego blocks" of families interacting.

[ 21. April 2015, 08:02: Message edited by: IngoB ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
We should also extend the extended family to the tribe and the clan; in some parts of the world, these are still important, see the Middle East.

I think it's OK to say that the family is a foundation of society, but it's also possible to exaggerate this. For example, when societies go through upheaval - for example, the wars, revolutions, and civil wars that Europe has been through since the 18th cetury, are we going to say that these were caused by family breakdown? Society has many foundations, which shift and move.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Put it another way- is there a qualitative difference between the experience of societies which suffer war, revolution, etc, but where the family does not on the whole break down, and those where families do break down as a result of all these troubles? I suspect there is but I don't know.
 
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :
 
When we extend the extended family to the tribe etc we need to look at the way power is used (the technology of power). The family is not a democracy, it is an oligarchy based on seniority*.

Jengie

*chosen deliberately; the tribe normally defines seniority not by age, but by status which is often based on a combination of familial ties, gender, popularity and physical strength as well as age.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Put it another way- is there a qualitative difference between the experience of societies which suffer war, revolution, etc, but where the family does not on the whole break down, and those where families do break down as a result of all these troubles? I suspect there is but I don't know.
Well, you are reversing my point. Is there evidence that events such as the French revolution and the American civil war were partly caused by shifts in family dynamics? It's possible, and I would be interested in any historical analysis that has been done.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
I think society works at various levels and changes happen at various levels. Of course changes in family dynamics are not at the root of all change, and where there is a connection it can be hard to see whether we are talking about causes or consequences. But if- if- families are 'base units', then they may mitigate changes at national or regional or international social levels. There may, too, be a real difference between changes that fracture the stability of the family institution, and those which the family can absorb or, though shaken, withstand.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I think there is some analysis of the English civil war in terms of shifts in the bourgeois family, or maybe the creation of it, which was part of an ongoing shift in socio-economic structure. There are always these younger sons as well, who are spare pricks at a wedding, and need some action, military, colonial, sexual, it's all one. Primogeniture and its socio-economic impacts, a thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy at the university of Lower Caldicote.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The current social arrangement will fall, the question is only when. And at times when the state and other supra-individual organisations crumble, invariably the family rises. You can see that in every failed state across the world. I get those stories somewhat regularly first hand, due to dealing with PhD students from many places. If your world comes crashing down, the family as basic unit of human autarky is what remains standing last, and is what people devote their efforts to. It is this feature of the human family that makes it the core unit of any society. One can certainly take over from the family with other institutions, and the modern Western state is a demonstration just how far one can go with that. But only by applying constant "social force". Release that force, and social organisation will snap right back to its base state, "social lego blocks" of families interacting.
The interesting question for me is whether the Western family as we know it today would be able to respond quickly enough to the collapse of the state. How would people feel able to offer mutual support to relatives in times of extreme crisis if they hardly know each other, live far apart and have grown used to placing personal autonomy above family loyalty?

I'm going to suggest that family bonds were already fairly strong in the failed states you mention here, so it was easy for society to 'snap back to its base state' after some major collapse. I think the process would be less straightforward in many parts of the UK.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
I think you're spot on there, Svitlana. The real enemy of the family is (certain varieties of) liberalism, whether of the left or the right - and it's right-wing neo-liberalism that calls the shots in our soiciety at the moment. Neo-liberalism hates the family in the same way that it hates all non-marketised, non-contractual institutions, especially those which provide resilience and therefore get in the way of the free play of market forces aand the commodification of human beings.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I'm going to suggest that family bonds were already fairly strong in the failed states you mention here, so it was easy for society to 'snap back to its base state' after some major collapse. I think the process would be less straightforward in many parts of the UK.
Perhaps. I think though that there is a curious self-organisation to this. In some sense it does not matter how much you actually have to do with your family right now, because then the action of others will soon force you back into the family mould. When social certainties dissolve, it becomes really difficult to know who is your reliable ally, and who will turn on you. But if in a crisis I observe a bunch of people and know that they are a guy with elderly parents, wife, children and a brother, then in my mental evaluation I will probably see the elderly parents and children as the "liabilities" I will get if I ally this guy, and the wife and brother as the "opposition" I will face in addition if I attack this guy. It's sort of an instinctive grouping, and since I don't know what is what any longer (since I do not have stable social information), that's what I will fall back on. Now imagine that guy says to me "Never mind all these people, I couldn't care less about them. Just take me along, let's go." Will I be comfortable with that? No. In some sense sticking to his role in this instinctive grouping I have in my head precisely establishes a kind of trustworthiness. It makes this person "predictable" in a social sense, which is really important if there is social chaos. Basically, if this guy is happy enough to throw his own family under the bus, how can I trust him to be reliable to me, a stranger? One's family quickly becomes a kind of minimal social calling card, one will be under expectation pressure to deal properly with "one's own".

A more interesting aspect is the physical separation that now often lies between members of a natural family. I think that this "spatial" issue might disrupt the rise of families in severe crisis more than our current social system. I think social bonds are quite elastic and changeable under pressure. But if your family quite literally is not reachable, then that will throw a spanner into the works. For example, if Berlin were to erupt in anarchy and civil war by tomorrow, just what would I do to help my brother who lives there with his daughter? I think if we lived in close proximity, then even a decade of estrangement might be overcome in a matter of hours, as we seek reliable defence and escape for our families, and mutually need somebody who has our respective backs. But we live far apart, so I would probably mostly stare at the TV in horror (and desperately try to "get through" on the phone etc.).
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
I think that probably the collapse of the current social structures is already happening in a lot of places. In some countries where the norm is for "surrogate extended family" to be provided by the State there are moves for those with financial means to find private sector alternatives, and those without the financial means to become increasingly isolated from society - which may be a factor in increasing radicalisation of young people (which has been going on for years, in gangs, the inner city riots of the 80s, more recently with many of those people for whom the state has failed to be a surrogate being from immigrant communities that has led to religious radicalisation). Where there was nothing more than the most basic of state safety nets then the loss of a real replacement for the extended family has led to serious destitution and break down of society - inner cities where it is genuinely dangerous to be an outsider, where law and order is barely maintained.

It's my guess that often those that survive the collapse around them will do so because they have a genuine, strong support network. That may be extended family, in a lot of cases it's going to be something else - that may be churches, mosques or other religious groups, it may be the local community realising that they need the people who live next door and people unite around a place. It doesn't have to be an extended family of blood relatives.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It doesn't have to be an extended family of blood relatives.
Agreed. But I think it is no accident that many religions have distinctly "family-like" structures deeply embedded into their social organisation. If I may say so here, dear brothers and sisters in the faith, as we are all adopted children of God united under the leadership of the Firstborn Son of Man.

And furthermore, the bonds of blood must be replaced by something strong, by something that will make people risk it all. If you want to have family-like security from your religious group, then you need lots of "family building" exercises, and you and the others must be emotionally engaged by them.

Frankly, I doubt that most Christian groups in the West operate at a level where they would function as family substitute in the time of real crisis. (Though if the crisis is itself an attack on their religion, then external pressure can fuse communities into a unity that they never established themselves.)
 
Posted by Komensky (# 8675) on :
 
I would think that a strong family unit (whatever shape that might take) is beneficial to success and survival of the species—including happiness and well-being.

K.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
I think you're spot on there, Svitlana. The real enemy of the family is (certain varieties of) liberalism, whether of the left or the right - and it's right-wing neo-liberalism that calls the shots in our soiciety at the moment. Neo-liberalism hates the family in the same way that it hates all non-marketised, non-contractual institutions, especially those which provide resilience and therefore get in the way of the free play of market forces aand the commodification of human beings.
Excellent points. It amazes me that right-wing politicians simultaneously extol the family, yet pursue policies which pulverize it - and get people to vote for that! Turkeys, votes, Christmas, etc.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
I have acquaintances who cannot rely on their families, when they are homeless or struggling to get medical care it's friends, not family, who take them in.

Many nuclear families live on the financial edge and feel they can't afford to take in another person. Back on the farm, you can always put a stray sister or uncle or cousin to work and find a spot for them to sleep. But in the city there's not that flexibility of living arrangement.

[ 21. April 2015, 13:33: Message edited by: Belle Ringer ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
What arrant nonsense! Dear me, have you ever looked at what the left actually advocated?
You seem to think that I am a social conservative in an American sense. Hardly. And what "nonsense" are you talking about? Your reply does not address anything I was talking about. Alan on the other hand got my point just fine... For example, this:
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
And how did it defend the family? Through advocating pensions, family allowances, and universal health care.
is not "defending" the family. All of it is replacing the family. Children were to support their parents in their old age, directly. Now the state does. Either by instituting and controlling saving schemes, or by collecting taxes and thus anonymising the support of the elderly.
Which is pure revisionist nonsense. The main reason for the existence of old age pensions (and similar programs) is that even though there was the expectation that "[c]hildren were to support their parents in their old age", very often they weren't (or had been inconsiderate enough to predecease their parents). Old age and poverty were usually very closely linked prior to such programs being implemented. You've reversed cause and effect.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It was the family's job to deal with failing health of a member (taking care of medical expenses, standing in for the work that the sick person could not do, literally nursing family members through their sickness). Now the state is doing this through an institutionalised system of health care professionals, financed either by contributions to state-controlled organisations or directly by taxes.
Again, systems of socialized medicine arose not to replace a functional system of family-based care but because that system had obviously failed. It could even be argued that modern medicine is expensive to a degree insupportable without a risk pool larger than any family unit. While it may be philosophically satisfying to chuck modern medicine and go back to mustard patches and leeches (or whatever level of medical expertise a family can provide/afford on its own) it seems both individually and socially desstructive.

What baffles me is your insistence that using the state to fix these rather obvious failures of the family system is pernicious to families; that it's more stabilizing to families for mom to go out an turn tricks to raise extra money for little Billy's chemotherapy than to participate in a state-regulated risk pool. If the modern state has replaced the family, it's done so to fill gaps the family wasn't covering (and perhaps may not be able to cover).

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The only thing I would add is that the idea that history has ended is a delusion that is universal throughout history. The current social arrangement will fall, the question is only when. And at times when the state and other supra-individual organisations crumble, invariably the family rises. You can see that in every failed state across the world.
Can anyone think of an example of a state collapsing due to extravagantly generous social spending? I can't. Granted the kind of mixed economies we're talking about (somewhat regulated market economies with a social safety net) are only about a century or so old, but surely there should be some example of a state with an industrialized economy along those lines collapsing into the kind of post-apocalyptic anarchy IngoB describes. I can think of a couple that have, but none of them due primarily to overly extravagant social programs, which is something we'd expect to see if social spending is so corrosive to social cohesion.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
This reminds me of the similar cry that it was historically the job of the church to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc. But without significant monetary resources it is not clear how this is to be done, unless the miracle of the loaves and the fishes is worked on a daily basis. The state took over because the church could not do it.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
I think that in England it was a little more complex than that. The early C17 Poor Law placed a stautory responsibility on families to support their indigent members but if they could not do that the responsibility fell on the parish- a civil as well as ecclesiatical unit- drawing on funds from the Poor rate- local taxation- administered by the Churchwardens (so again, effectively civil as well as ecclesiastical officers, fitting the understanding of what was meant by an established church at that time). The wardens could, and did, reclaim the cost of support from family members who were considered able to afford it.
What happened by the early C19 was that parishes - local communities- were becoming unable to meet the costs of poor relief in a very much changed society, and while everyone remembers the New Poor Law of 1834 for its deterrent principles, what was equally controversial at the time was that it reduced local control and discretion by amalgamating poor law authorities into larger more sustainable groups (generally accepted) and giving much more power to central government to prescribe rates of support and workhouse regimes (wideely contested, especially by old-fashioned paternalists who believed that they should have discretion to err on the side of generosity).
The early C20 welfare innovations in Britain- from the first (British) old age pensions to the Beveridge report of 1942- were definitely aimed aat supporting the family unit. Just read anything by Beveridge from about 1909 to 1949: he is in no doubt that the family is an essential social and ecconomic unit and that the aim of the state should be to help it work well.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
The early C20 welfare innovations in Britain- from the first (British) old age pensions to the Beveridge report of 1942- were definitely aimed at supporting the family unit. Just read anything by Beveridge from about 1909 to 1949: he is in no doubt that the family is an essential social and economic unit and that the aim of the state should be to help it work well.
This seems to be the position IngoB is arguing against. His position, as near as I understand it, is that however well intentioned the aims of such programs are they do not actually "help [the family] work well" but rather subvert the family and replace it with the state.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
The early C20 welfare innovations in Britain- from the first (British) old age pensions to the Beveridge report of 1942- were definitely aimed at supporting the family unit. Just read anything by Beveridge from about 1909 to 1949: he is in no doubt that the family is an essential social and economic unit and that the aim of the state should be to help it work well.
This seems to be the position IngoB is arguing against. His position, as near as I understand it, is that however well intentioned the aims of such programs are they do not actually "help [the family] work well" but rather subvert the family and replace it with the state.
That's a traditional Catholic position, isn't it? It seems to say that the family is 'natural' and should not be tampered with, although my impression is that working class Catholics have often voted Labour, and for the welfare state.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Which is pure revisionist nonsense.
Of course, if to you "history" sort of starts around the time of the industrial revolution, and "pre-history" is then perhaps the renaissance, then you might have some semblance of a point. But since history has been around just a tad longer, you are the one who is talking nonsense here. People for the most part did support their elderly parents sufficiently across many millennia of human history - for the most part they did not send them into the wilderness to die at the age of fifty. And just as an aside, poverty of the elderly hasn't magically disappeared in our societies, best I can tell. Nor is it so clear that modern arrangements guarantee "quality of life" to the elderly, beyond bare survival.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Again, systems of socialized medicine arose not to replace a functional system of family-based care but because that system had obviously failed.
That basically just confuses scientific progress in medicine with the social setting of medical provision, and once more pretends that "history" is what has happened since roughly the industrial revolution. But you do manage to make a sensible point here:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
It could even be argued that modern medicine is expensive to a degree insupportable without a risk pool larger than any family unit.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how modern medicine could exist without its "professional setting". But this is not just about the expense. It is also specialised behaviour of those in the medical profession, in specialised locations like hospitals, which really leads to a kind of quarantining of sick people.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
While it may be philosophically satisfying to chuck modern medicine and go back to mustard patches and leeches (or whatever level of medical expertise a family can provide/afford on its own) it seems both individually and socially desstructive.
Presumably you think that this somehow addresses something I have said. Who knows why...

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
What baffles me is your insistence that using the state to fix these rather obvious failures of the family system is pernicious to families
You clearly have a hard time understanding what I have actually said. As is, you are baffled by your own imagination here, which reads all manner of wild and wonderful things into our discussion.

Here's a handy hint: saying "it is good that the state has replaced the family concerning X" is not actually in any disagreement with the statement "the state has replaced the family concerning X".

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Can anyone think of an example of a state collapsing due to extravagantly generous social spending?
Who knows. But more importantly, who cares? The existence of such a state, or its non-existence, or if you wish its Schrödinger's cat like indeterminate existence, has nothing to do with anything I have said.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
which is something we'd expect to see if social spending is so corrosive to social cohesion.
Good man, what are you talking about? Seriously.

Saying "without the state maintaining a social support system at considerable expense, people will revert to their families as their support system" is not actually saying anything remotely like "social spending corrodes social cohesion."
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Yes, I think that's right, quetzalcoatl. AIUI it's why ++ JC McQuaid (who I sometimes suspect Ingo thinks was a slippery liberal [Smile] ) put the kybosh on the Mother and Child Scheme.
But what Esping-Anderson called the Conservative-Corporatist model of welfare does fairly haappily with RC, or at least Christian Democratic, teaching.

[ 21. April 2015, 16:56: Message edited by: Albertus ]
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That's a traditional Catholic position, isn't it?
It hasn't anything to do with "Catholicism". That the modern state has taken over much of the previous role of the family is simple historical fact. That family bonds will reassert themselves if the state stops doing so is my own reasonable speculation. Whether the state is "helping" families depends on your definition of "helping", really. It certainly is true that modern nuclear families, like for example my own, could not live as they do without the state provisions we all have become accustomed to. I have already affirmed that above.

What Crœsos is desperately fishing for is some conservative programme he can unload his sophistical polemics on. But I have not actually offered any particular opinion on what we all should do now, or what Catholicism should teach, or whatever. I have certainly not proposed that we should switch off our social systems, and then will live happily ever after in familial bliss. Heck, I have no family (but for my very nuclear one) within a 500 mile radius.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
AIUI it's why ++ JC McQuaid (who I sometimes suspect Ingo thinks was a slippery liberal [Smile] ) put the kybosh on the Mother and Child Scheme.
Up to this moment I had never heard of ++McQuaid or the "Mother and Child Scheme". FWIW, I consider NHS-style "universal health care" to be much preferable in our societies to any sort of private / commercial scheme. Though I reckon that it may be necessary to allow the rich to pay through their noses for non-essential "premium care" (like say a single bed room in hospital) in order to finance a good standard of general health care.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Which is pure revisionist nonsense.
Of course, if to you "history" sort of starts around the time of the industrial revolution, and "pre-history" is then perhaps the renaissance, then you might have some semblance of a point.
Since I'm addressing your criticisms of widespread government social programs (or "the nanny state" in your terminology) I am naturally discussing the historical period in which such programs have existed. If you think prior eras had comparable systems which would profitably be discussed in this context, go ahead and give the specifics.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Here's a handy hint: saying "it is good that the state has replaced the family concerning X" is not actually in any disagreement with the statement "the state has replaced the family concerning X".
But "it is good that the state has replaced the family concerning X" is incompatible with statements like "The nanny state is as far as the "divide and conquer" approach against the family will go", which posits that the nanny state is divisive, comparable to conquest, and "against the family".

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Can anyone think of an example of a state collapsing due to extravagantly generous social spending?
Who knows. But more importantly, who cares? The existence of such a state, or its non-existence, or if you wish its Schrödinger's cat like indeterminate existence, has nothing to do with anything I have said.
Well, nothing except "The nanny state is as far as the "divide and conquer" approach against the family will go, but it is inherently unstable and requires continuous economic success to finance its tremendous upkeep". If you're going to posit the inherent instability of such systems, you'd think at least a couple would have collapsed in the decades that they've been in existence, especially since the condition you posit for their continuation ("continuous economic success") doesn't seem to hold. If, as you suggest, the social welfare state is just one economic downturn away from total collapse, why haven't we seen the abandonment of such systems during the various economic downturns that have occurred since their formation? In fact, one could argue that it was the Great Depression that provided the greatest impetus for the formation of the various social welfare states that exist today, which seems the exact opposite of your hypothesis on the subject.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Since I'm addressing your criticisms of widespread government social programs (or "the nanny state" in your terminology) I am naturally discussing the historical period in which such programs have existed. If you think prior eras had comparable systems which would profitably be discussed in this context, go ahead and give the specifics.
I have right from the start discussed all this in the context of the entire history of mankind, indeed, including pre-history as far as we can include that. Certainly I have been comparing the modern state and its associated family structure with the family system of antiquity to medieval times (and probably beyond, till roughly the industrial age), or indeed with "primitive" contemporary settings as far as they still exist. Others, like Alan, did get perfectly what I have been talking about, so I cannot have been that opaque in my writings.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
But "it is good that the state has replaced the family concerning X" is incompatible with statements like "The nanny state is as far as the "divide and conquer" approach against the family will go", which posits that the nanny state is divisive, comparable to conquest, and "against the family".
But that's simply dealing with a totally different level. I'm basically talking about socio-political power there, not about "welfare outcomes". If you lived in ancient Greece, then it was your "oikos" (roughly, extended household) that was the primary socio-political factor in your life. Yes, there was a king, or perhaps a direct democracy, but for everyday life they were marginal. For young men, those external "players" might be an unfortunate, occasional source of sudden death (through warfare...), but for the most part your "oikos" determined the circumstances of your life. In the 21stC Western civilisation, that is very much not the case. To a very large extent, your daily life is shaped by the state, from tax over health care to traffic law. How we get from one to the other is basically through an extended power grab of the state from the family. What else? Power does not simply shift randomly. Of course, every step of the way may well have been motivated by real or imagined advantages. That's a different question. My point is quite simply that the "patriarch" who determines much of my life is not my dad, or my uncle, or some other blood relation, or even some tribal associate. It is one David Cameron, who has fuck all to do with my family other than having lots of power over it through the agency of the state.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
If you're going to posit the inherent instability of such systems, you'd think at least a couple would have collapsed in the decades that they've been in existence, especially since the condition you posit for their continuation ("continuous economic success") doesn't seem to hold.
I don't think that the modern West has had a crisis yet that made the state sufficiently dysfunctional for long enough. Well, at least not in the last two centuries and not across multiple nations. I would assume that say Germany after the Thirty Years War was about as functional as say Syria now, and that you wouldn't have put your hope in the state in either. But there hasn't been an "end of the Roman empire" sort of crash that would have wiped out our entire mode of living across most of its domain.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In fact, one could argue that it was the Great Depression that provided the greatest impetus for the formation of the various social welfare states that exist today, which seems the exact opposite of your hypothesis on the subject.
Not really. If your grip gets loosened until you almost fumble, it's a common reaction to tighten your grip more than ever before in response.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
A good specific example of a necessary social program is Workers' Compensation, which provided for income replacement benefits and medical costs. This needed to happen because no-one was actually meeting either costs for workers injured on the job; this ain't speculation, the fact was that injured workers who could no longer work could only sue for their injuries, and if they hadn't the resources to sue, they were out of luck.

The idea that family could provide this was simply false of the basis of the Canadian Royal Commission established to investigate it, commonly known as the Meredith Commission. Here's a PDF with easy read history.

One things that is curious about some of the argument in this thread is that some posters seem to assume that the ideas came before the need. Which is manifestly false and illogical. In this specific WC example, the fact of injured workers in poverty created the need. And no, their families weren't either willing or capable of helping.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
But that's simply dealing with a totally different level. I'm basically talking about socio-political power there, not about "welfare outcomes".
I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction. Very few people want power for power's sake. Most who seek power do so in order to use it to achieve some end, like "welfare outcomes".

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
To a very large extent, your daily life is shaped by the state, from tax over health care to traffic law. How we get from one to the other is basically through an extended power grab of the state from the family. What else? Power does not simply shift randomly.
This seems a false dichotomy, assuming that agents of the state do not have families and that members of families are not also citizens of the state. Theoretically they're controllers of the state in democratic systems. It seems much more plausible to posit that families and the state are two means by which people attempt to achieve various ends, not competing and incompatible power blocs. Characterizing a shift from one method to the other as "power grab", with all its implications of illegitimacy, misses the real underlying dynamics. It should also be fairly obvious that these aren't the only two power centers in society and that a lot of what can be characterized as "the nanny state" was put in place to curb the influence of entities that are neither families nor states. (See npfiss' previous post for an obvious example.)

It might help if you could be a bit clearer on what it is you mean by "the nanny state". It's a term which has alternately been applied to the regulatory state (the folks who implemented stuff like workplace safety regulations, the minimum wage, clean air standards, etc.) or the social welfare state (socialized medicine, old age pension, public education, etc.). Which of these do you mean, or do you include both? And why is it families specifically that you claim have suffered diminishment under such systems.
 
Posted by tomsk (# 15370) on :
 
In the UK the 'nanny state' is connected with the idea of the 'cradle to grave' welfare state, which was the vision of the post-WWII founders.

Putting aside the rough and the smooth, I think it's right to say that western society requires a pumping operation in terms of resources to maintain it (in Europe it's showing signs of strain, such as the formerly key element of housing slipping back into the open market).

The question was posed above how western families would rise out of the ashes of a society collapse. Sadly, lots of people would starve, particularly townies like me. I guess the kind of families that would do best would be those who may be not at the top of the pile now but already have strong families (e.g. gypsies, or, in America people living in bunkers waiting for Armageddon).

Maggie Thatcher said there's no such thing as society, only individuals and families.
 
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 
Part of the Soldier's Covenant which all members of The Salvation Army sign is this undertaking:


quote:
I will maintain Christian ideals in all my relationships with others; my family and neighbours, my colleagues and fellow Salvationists, those to whom and for whom I am responsible, and the wider community.

I will uphold the sanctity of marriage and of family life.
I stand by that.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction.
I am.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Very few people want power for power's sake. Most who seek power do so in order to use it to achieve some end, like "welfare outcomes".
Very few people want power to achieve some specific end, like "welfare outcomes". Most who seek power do so in order to have power. (Oh, and assertion is fairly dealt with by counter-assertion.)

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
This seems a false dichotomy, assuming that agents of the state do not have families and that members of families are not also citizens of the state.
For those who are in power through the state, a gain of power for the state through diminishing the power of the family is still a net gain in power.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
It should also be fairly obvious that these aren't the only two power centers in society and that a lot of what can be characterized as "the nanny state" was put in place to curb the influence of entities that are neither families nor states.
True enough. Though "business" is once more a power that has largely grown out of, and ultimately at the expense of, families.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
It might help if you could be a bit clearer on what it is you mean by "the nanny state". It's a term which has alternately been applied to the regulatory state (the folks who implemented stuff like workplace safety regulations, the minimum wage, clean air standards, etc.) or the social welfare state (socialized medicine, old age pension, public education, etc.). Which of these do you mean, or do you include both? And why is it families specifically that you claim have suffered diminishment under such systems.
It's not a term I'm wedded to, in particular if it keeps misleading the discussion. I would generally use it more for the latter (social welfare) than the former (regulation), though I don't think that these aspects are neatly distinct.

And I'm bemused that you don't seem to grasp my simple point here. The social unit that helps you survive your childhood, educates you, provides you with work opportunities, secures your young family, protects your children, insures you against loss of work or other financial disasters, helps you in sickness, provides and cares for you in your old age, and lays your remains to rest - that social unit will be rather important to you, because it shapes your life. Largely, this is now the state. Largely, this used to be your family. Consequently, social importance has shifted from the family to the state. This is then a kind of diminishment of the family, even if you would argue that every single person involved is doing better in the state system than in the family system. The point is not the net individual outcome, the point is that social power clearly has shifted.
 
Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :
 
IngoB
quote:
If you lived in ancient Greece, then it was your "oikos" (roughly, extended household) that was the primary socio-political factor in your life.
Could that have been said of Sparta?
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Could that have been said of Sparta?
I'm not a scholar of Greek history, but AFAIK - yes, in spite of the obvious attempts of the Spartan state to militarise society and organise in particular the men into communities of soldiers, the oikoi retained their social importance in Sparta. In fact, IIRC in some ways they remained more "publicly important" than for example in Athens. For example, the necessity for a foreigner to be "registered" with some oikos during his stay persisted longer in Sparta, whereas in Athens dealing with foreigners became more a matter of the polis. But it has been many years since I last read about this, somewhere...
 
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
How largely?
 
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nicolemr:
Personally I would say that marriage and the family are one of the basis of society, but that doesn't mean they are the only basis of society. Or that if you aren't part of a marriage or a family you're not part of society. It seems to me that society is the interlocking of individuals to form increasingly greater units, and certainly one of those units can be a marriage and family. But that doesn't mean it's the only unit.
this
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Part of the Soldier's Covenant which all members of The Salvation Army sign is this undertaking:


quote:
I will maintain Christian ideals in all my relationships with others; my family and neighbours, my colleagues and fellow Salvationists, those to whom and for whom I am responsible, and the wider community.

I will uphold the sanctity of marriage and of family life.
I stand by that.
Nobody has questioned that marriage and family life is good, just that family might not necessarily be blood relatives.

You still haven't answered my question as to why you assume people here are anti-family and why I as a single person am not as valuable to society.
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
As for the extended family, in Europe it only really came into its own from the Industrial Revolution onwards. Prior to this, people didn't live long enough to have a family unit including grandparents, though aunts/uncles and cousins would have helped. Certainly grandparents providing childcare wasn't the norm. Childhood was much shorter, don't forget, and working-class children would have helped parents in the field - there was less need for childcare anyway.

So the so-called 'traditional family' is really not very traditional. Sending your child to be a ward of a nearby noble is much more traditional!
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As for the extended family, in Europe it only really came into its own from the Industrial Revolution onwards. Prior to this, people didn't live long enough to have a family unit including grandparents, though aunts/uncles and cousins would have helped.
This is a very contentious assertion. If - a big if - you made it past your fifth birthday, it was likely that you were going to live until your mid-forties, which is easily old enough to be a grandparent. Living until fifty or sixty wasn't exceptional, and neither did you have to be one of the landed gentry to attain such an age.
 
Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 
The history of treatment of people with significant disabilities suggests that institutions (initially often private, then usually turned over to government as they became too expensive) arose in response to the failures of families to deal with their disabled members humanely.

These failures, though far from universal, were fairly spectacular when they arose. Safe and humane handling of people with severe mental retardation and chronic mental illness takes resources -- money, information, technology, and technique.

In the US, institutional care arose in response to finding individuals chained, beaten, locked up, starved, and otherwise mistreated by their families because the families lacked resources to deal with them. The "natural order" from earlier times was that such individuals often did not survive infancy / childhood. As human progress improved general health for many, more such individuals survived into adulthood, where they could not take on the roles required of them by both family and society -- economic and familial contributions which constituted "normal" life.

Massachusetts, as far as I know, became the first US state to establish, in the 1850s, a publicly-funded institution for the care of what were then termed "imbeciles" and the "feeble-minded."

The original aim of this institution was to rescue these folks from the abuse suffered at the hands of their families and train them in some simple-but-useful repetitive task, render them somewhat more "normal" and “useful” and return them to their families of origin.

There was one little hiccup in this grand design: families frequently refused to take their disabled member back. Freed temporarily of the often burdensome supervision (and sometimes outright danger from) the disabled person in their midst, they were more than happy to maintain that freedom.

Where families have the capacities needed to provide proper care – adequate money to hire extra help, adequate education to understand and provide the specialized care required, adequate psychological stability to weather the necessary changes involved as infant becomes youth becomes full-sized adult while remaining socially and vocationally unable to contribute to family welfare, adequate social standing to weather the stigma attaching to having a disabled member, etc. – it’s possible to rely on them for this care.

Families without these resources, however, frequently fall apart even in today’s so-called “nanny state” under the extreme strain of trying to care for a family member with significant disabilities.

What IngoB says about the cyclical nature of these phenomena is also true. It didn’t take much time after the founding of Fernald, Wrentham, and Belchertown State Schools in Massachusetts for abuses to begin appearing in institutional care. By the 1970s, we had a movement in New Hampshire to close institutions and return folks to their families and “communities” – often where they had never lived – where, guess what? We now find they are preyed upon and abused there.

I don't claim to know what forms the "basis" for a strong society, but one thing is certain: the relationship between society and family has to be capable of being understood by both parties as a partnership, and not as a potentially mortal contest.

I think we've lost that plot in the US.

[ 22. April 2015, 13:16: Message edited by: Porridge ]
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As for the extended family, in Europe it only really came into its own from the Industrial Revolution onwards. Prior to this, people didn't live long enough to have a family unit including grandparents, though aunts/uncles and cousins would have helped.
This is a very contentious assertion. If - a big if - you made it past your fifth birthday, it was likely that you were going to live until your mid-forties, which is easily old enough to be a grandparent. Living until fifty or sixty wasn't exceptional, and neither did you have to be one of the landed gentry to attain such an age.
Sorry, I realise I was thinking primarily of working-class families and the childcare issue. For people with servants it wasn't an issue anyway.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
quote:
Originally posted by Nicolemr:
Personally I would say that marriage and the family are one of the basis of society, but that doesn't mean they are the only basis of society. Or that if you aren't part of a marriage or a family you're not part of society. It seems to me that society is the interlocking of individuals to form increasingly greater units, and certainly one of those units can be a marriage and family. But that doesn't mean it's the only unit.
this
But the above paragraph gives the impression that single people aren't part of families. Of course they are! They may have parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, etc. still living, and still helping them. In other words, even single people benefit from strong families, if they're lucky.

There are quite a few single, youngish people in my extended family. All of us are benefiting from our parents and the wider family.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The social unit that helps you survive your childhood, educates you, provides you with work opportunities, secures your young family, protects your children, insures you against loss of work or other financial disasters, helps you in sickness, provides and cares for you in your old age, and lays your remains to rest - that social unit will be rather important to you, because it shapes your life. Largely, this is now the state. Largely, this used to be your family. Consequently, social importance has shifted from the family to the state.
The problem is that this doesn't really track your earlier assertion that the "nanny state" is the result of a power grab against the family. It's like claiming the Hollande government exercised a power grab against the Roman Empire and, when asked to justify this, pointing out that the piece of land now called "France" is controlled by the Hollande government but that it used to be controlled by the Roman Empire.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
This is then a kind of diminishment of the family, even if you would argue that every single person involved is doing better in the state system than in the family system. The point is not the net individual outcome, the point is that social power clearly has shifted.
That's one of the things that's always bothered me about those claiming to be "pro-family". Usually this means supporting the idea of The Family™ while being indifferent or hostile to actual families, particularly families that don't match up very well to The Family™. The indifference to the well-being of the individual family members in the face of preserving the power of The Family™ can lead to some perverse outcomes.

For example, if a man needs heart bypass surgery the options seem to be to let the "nanny state" handle it through socialized medicine or some other risk-pooling system, or to let his wife handle it, either performing the surgery herself of by having enough money on hand to hire a fully trained surgical team and hospital facility. Note that this second option is an almost certain death sentence for anyone who isn't incredibly wealthy or married to a cardiac surgeon. In other words, by ignoring the welfare of the individual members of a family in order to preserve the power dynamics of The Family™ leaves us where we have to destroy the family to save it. It seems perverse to establish a standard that saving a husband's life through state action weakens his family but widowing his wife doesn't.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Could that have been said of Sparta?
I'm not a scholar of Greek history, but AFAIK - yes, in spite of the obvious attempts of the Spartan state to militarise society and organise in particular the men into communities of soldiers, the oikoi retained their social importance in Sparta. In fact, IIRC in some ways they remained more "publicly important" than for example in Athens.
Not surprisingly, I disagree. The "attempts of the Spartan state to militarise society" isn't something that can just be handwaved away. Particularly in the case of male citizens, things like the agoge system (military education in common barracks from age 7 onward) or the mess groups all male citizens were expected to join were in direct conflict with the oikos system. From Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.

quote:
For a long time this custom of eating at common mess-tables was rigidly observed. For instance, when King Agis, on returning from an expedition in which he had been victorious over the Athenians, wished to dine at home with his wife, and sent for his rations, the Polemarchs refused to send them to him; and when on the following day his anger led him to omit the customary sacrifice, they laid a fine on him.
A fairly clear example where the oikos system comes out on the losing end of a conflict, despite royalty being on its side.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
quote:
Originally posted by Nicolemr:
Personally I would say that marriage and the family are one of the basis of society, but that doesn't mean they are the only basis of society. Or that if you aren't part of a marriage or a family you're not part of society. It seems to me that society is the interlocking of individuals to form increasingly greater units, and certainly one of those units can be a marriage and family. But that doesn't mean it's the only unit.
this
But the above paragraph gives the impression that single people aren't part of families. Of course they are! They may have parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, etc. still living, and still helping them. In other words, even single people benefit from strong families, if they're lucky.

There are quite a few single, youngish people in my extended family. All of us are benefiting from our parents and the wider family.
A lot of singles have no functional family.

When a sibling does the "leave and cleave" thing, the church tells them to leave behind their birth families and start a new one, and many do exactly that, not seeing more than once every few years, much less helping, their former family members with possible exception of parents.

Throwaway kids sure don't get family help!

Widows are often family-less, I know several whose one child died in a car wreck and husband is dead.

Assuming singles each have a caring helping family - often no, not at all.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
I wasn't assuming that all singles have a functioning family. My point was simply that singles and families aren't necessarily two different categories in society, but are often overlapping categories.

As I've agreed above, though, modern western society does have less use for the family now than in the past. Perhaps the 'leave and cleave' churches you mention are actually a symptom of a more fractured modernising culture, in which the family is coming under increasing pressure. For some people, abandoning the family for much tighter unit is preferable. Others may have hardly any kind of functioning family network of their own, as you say, so I suppose such churches would be particularly attractive to them.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As for the extended family, in Europe it only really came into its own from the Industrial Revolution onwards. Prior to this, people didn't live long enough to have a family unit including grandparents, though aunts/uncles and cousins would have helped.
This is a very contentious assertion. If - a big if - you made it past your fifth birthday, it was likely that you were going to live until your mid-forties, which is easily old enough to be a grandparent. Living until fifty or sixty wasn't exceptional, and neither did you have to be one of the landed gentry to attain such an age.
There have always been old people. It's common to read "average life expectancy 35" and misread it as saying living to 40 was rare, but with half the kids dying in early childhood, life expectancy of 35 means lots lived to 65 or 70. My long dead father's grandfather lived to 100, long before geriatric medicine! My great great grandma on the prairie birthed ten, buried five, the other 5 all lived into their late 70s or 80s. "Life expectancy 40" because some died early and some lived long.

"1500 - 1800 A.D. From the 1500s to around the year 1800, life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between the ages of 30 and 40." [URL=1500 - 1800 A.D. From the 1500s to around the year 1800, life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between the ages of 30 and 40.]i.e. living to 70+ was pretty common, as was childhood death[/URL]
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
"The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow..." (ps 90:10)- and that was written, what, 2500, 3000 years ago?
 
Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
As I've agreed above, though, modern western society does have less use for the family now than in the past.
Less use or less need?

In my work, I see the extreme pressure placed on families by the presence in their midst of a single seriously-disabled child so detrimental to the family's well-being that the unit breaks up.

It is very much to society's benefit if that family remains intact. It is very much to the family's benefit if society steps in with support.
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
As I've agreed above, though, modern western society does have less use for the family now than in the past.
Less use or less need?

In my work, I see the extreme pressure placed on families by the presence in their midst of a single seriously-disabled child so detrimental to the family's well-being that the unit breaks up.

It is very much to society's benefit if that family remains intact. It is very much to the family's benefit if society steps in with support.
Indeed. And this might be the insidious dark side of this nonbliblical "just so" saying that "marriage and family are the basis of the strong society." It sounds so positive, so affirming-- who could possibly object? (as another poster said). But in reality, it's placing an obscene burden on families they were never intended to carry alone. Some will break under the pressure. Others will struggle along heroically, but without the support systems that would help them to not just "manage" but thrive. Far better to think of society as a community-- where we care and support one another-- rather than all these independent fragmented family units.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
And most totalitarian regimes will argue that family is the basis for a strong society. Kinder, Kirche, Kuche!

Or if you are really over-dosing, Kammer, Kinder, Kirche, Keller, Kuche! Chamber, children, church, cellar, kitchen.

[ 22. April 2015, 17:09: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
In the US there is also the steady co-opting of the 'family the best social unit' meme as a cloak for anti-gay rhetoric. Family in this parlance is always defined as man/woman, which means that homosexuals are defined right of society. That the single or solitary are also tossed over the side is less important.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I think somebody earlier made the point that right-wing politicians often extol the family, while actually shitting on it, especially poor ones. Oh damn, was it me?
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The problem is that this doesn't really track your earlier assertion that the "nanny state" is the result of a power grab against the family. It's like claiming the Hollande government exercised a power grab against the Roman Empire and, when asked to justify this, pointing out that the piece of land now called "France" is controlled by the Hollande government but that it used to be controlled by the Roman Empire.
That comparison does not work at all, since political entities like the Roman Empire come and go (if in the specific case of the Roman Empire extraordinarily slowly), whereas human biology and its immediate social consequences remain the same (at least on historical time scales). The family as a general entity is basically realised human reproductive biology with some fairly "hard-coded" behaviours, and consequently can be identified essentially universally across cultures and times. (Yes, with variations like polygamy vs. monogamy etc. But concepts like "mother" or "brother" are about as universal as it gets.) Hence we can at any point in time and in every culture ask just how socially important the family is, and compare that meaningfully to other times and cultures.

It is just not a particularly bold claim that the family ("blood relations") in ancient Greece played a bigger social role than in say contemporary Britain. I have no idea why you feel obliged to make contrary noises about that.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
That's one of the things that's always bothered me about those claiming to be "pro-family". Usually this means supporting the idea of The Family™ while being indifferent or hostile to actual families, particularly families that don't match up very well to The Family™. The indifference to the well-being of the individual family members in the face of preserving the power of The Family™ can lead to some perverse outcomes.
I have not proposed any sort of contemporary American political agenda that presumably corresponds to the "pro family" label in your head. I have simply stated that the modern state has taken over much of the social support role that ancient families used to have, and thereby also taken over the social importance that providing such support has in the minds of people looking for support. That really isn't a particularly controversial claim. "Blindingly obvious" is more like it.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For example, if a man needs heart bypass surgery the options seem to be to let the "nanny state" handle it through socialized medicine or some other risk-pooling system, or to let his wife handle it, either performing the surgery herself of by having enough money on hand to hire a fully trained surgical team and hospital facility.
I'm sure that's terribly relevant for something, say the medical policies of some political party in the contemporary USA. But it is not particularly relevant to anything I have said. Maybe you can successfully argue that a family support system cannot possibly work for modern medicine. Fine. Find somebody who cares about that discussion, and have it with them. But do realise that it is just not what I have been discussing, and that it is not something that I particularly care about in what I have been discussing. Please?

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Not surprisingly, I disagree. The "attempts of the Spartan state to militarise society" isn't something that can just be handwaved away.
I didn't wave anything away, but rather gave an explicit example of the practical, social importance that the oikos retained in Sparta. If you feel like making a further study of this, go ahead. It will not however have much relevance, given that Sparta pretty much is known for its exceptional militaristic society. Whether Sparta is a bit more or a bit less exceptional concerning some aspect really does not tell us much about the normal run of things in antiquity...
 
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
]I have not proposed any sort of contemporary American political agenda that presumably corresponds to the "pro family" label in your head. I have simply stated that the modern state has taken over much of the social support role that ancient families used to have, and thereby also taken over the social importance that providing such support has in the minds of people looking for support. That really isn't a particularly controversial claim. "Blindingly obvious" is more like it.
I think it's rather the opposite-- that ancient large, complex, inter-related tribal units with some extended biological "family" connection functioned much like the modern state-- i.e. like communities. As one still sees in many parts of the world. Which is far different from what our modern (or at least American) ears hear when you say "family as the basis of society" since, as we have seen, we hear that as a very small nuclear family.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The problem is that this doesn't really track your earlier assertion that the "nanny state" is the result of a power grab against the family. It's like claiming the Hollande government exercised a power grab against the Roman Empire and, when asked to justify this, pointing out that the piece of land now called "France" is controlled by the Hollande government but that it used to be controlled by the Roman Empire.
That comparison does not work at all, since political entities like the Roman Empire come and go (if in the specific case of the Roman Empire extraordinarily slowly), whereas human biology and its immediate social consequences remain the same (at least on historical time scales).
It's meant to illustrate the major, gaping hole in your "proof" that the state has expanded itself at the expense of the family. Your assertion that because state power is larger it necessarily follows that family power has diminished depends on the premise that there are only two influences in human societies (the family and the state) and if one has greater authority now it can only be because it has stolen it from the other. The possibility that a state's expanded power is gained at the expense of some entity other than the family doesn't even seem to be considered by your analysis.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It is just not a particularly bold claim that the family ("blood relations") in ancient Greece played a bigger social role than in say contemporary Britain.
Except you went well beyond that to claim that this situation arose because of a deliberate "power grab" on the part of the state, intentionally designed to "divide and conquer" the family. I find it hard to believe that the folks who implemented the NHS sat around saying "this'll really destroy the family as a social unit!"

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For example, if a man needs heart bypass surgery the options seem to be to let the "nanny state" handle it through socialized medicine or some other risk-pooling system, or to let his wife handle it, either performing the surgery herself of by having enough money on hand to hire a fully trained surgical team and hospital facility.
I'm sure that's terribly relevant for something, say the medical policies of some political party in the contemporary USA. But it is not particularly relevant to anything I have said.
I picked the example because you claimed your criticisms of the "divide and conquer" nanny state were more geared towards its social welfare aspects than its regulatory ones and social medicine is kind of the hallmark example of the social welfare state. If you prefer I can craft another analogy involving pollution controls.

At any rate, the point is simply that by implementing some kind of risk-pool medical policy the state is not "diminishing" the power of families to set up their own cardiac surgical units, largely because that's not something families ever really did. If you dislike the analogy, it's just as true to say that the state enforcing industrial emissions standards doesn't diminish the power of families to do likewise for more or less the exact same reason.

To me these seem fairly clear examples of the state expanding its power without diminishing the power of families, which undermines your bipolar theory of family-state power relations. In fact, very often these standards can enhance families. If a husband/wife can avoid dying because of state-provided medical intervention (or workplace safety regulations, or emission standards, or whatever example of "nanny state" intervention you won't consider hopelessly American), doesn't that prevent their wife/husband from becoming single parent, a type of family you consider "subpar"? I know you claim that the well being of a family is independent of the well being of its individual members, but this would seem to contradict that by your own asserted standards.
 
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :
 
Reacting to the original post: It seems to me that there have been societies not based on marriage and blood ties. I am thinking of convents, monasteries, expatriate communities, some academic institutions and perhaps military units. These are societies one joins rather than into which one is born, and membership may be less than permanent.

I guess there is a question here of what constitutes a society. If a band goes on tour for a year or two, visiting many places, during which time none of the company sees any blood relatives, isn't the band arguably a society? Does a Boy Scout troop on a week-long camping trip constitute a society?
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
And we are all many-faceted. We are members of many subgroups, some of which are surely societies. Churches, neighborhood groups, artistic communities, choirs, soccer teams, school associations -- the list is endless. Some of these are very elaborate, offering many services.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The possibility that a state's expanded power is gained at the expense of some entity other than the family doesn't even seem to be considered by your analysis.
What other entity would that be then? The family was the clearly dominant entity concerning "social welfare", it isn't now. Case closed.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Except you went well beyond that to claim that this situation arose because of a deliberate "power grab" on the part of the state, intentionally designed to "divide and conquer" the family. I find it hard to believe that the folks who implemented the NHS sat around saying "this'll really destroy the family as a social unit!"
So all your tedious off-topic repetition stems from an obsession with that one sentence? It was really more a "post hoc" analysis of what they ended up doing, than any specific attribution of intentional policy. Consider it simply retracted, if that is so important to you.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
At any rate, the point is simply that by implementing some kind of risk-pool medical policy the state is not "diminishing" the power of families to set up their own cardiac surgical units, largely because that's not something families ever really did. If you dislike the analogy, it's just as true to say that the state enforcing industrial emissions standards doesn't diminish the power of families to do likewise for more or less the exact same reason.
You keep repeating this as if it is something that should concern me. It doesn't, at all. Perhaps it even provides a partial explanation why we have moved from familial to state-sponsored welfare. But that does not change that we have done so. Which happens to be what I've been saying. Can we move on now?

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
To me these seem fairly clear examples of the state expanding its power without diminishing the power of families, which undermines your bipolar theory of family-state power relations.
Not at all, what are you talking about? In antiquity you would have been cared for by your family when sick, and if your family was influential / rich it might have brought in a shaman / physician. In modernity, you get cared for by professional staff in a setting entirely organised by the state, where practically no family could afford to finance this even if they wanted to. Clearly the social power and status that I attribute due to "caring for me when I'm sick" has to a large extent moved from my family (where it would have been in antiquity) to the state (where it is now). You have simply illustrated what I'm saying with a specific example here.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In fact, very often these standards can enhance families.
Sigh. Which is entirely irrelevant, since it simply talks about something else. You say the family is "enhanced" because it ends up being "healthier". Maybe so. I say it is "diminished", because it has lost its status as primary health care provider. Can you really not see that these statements do not contradict each other, can be true at the very same time?

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I know you claim that the well being of a family is independent of the well being of its individual members, but this would seem to contradict that by your own asserted standards.
I have not claimed that at all... and it would be a stupid thing to claim.

How about we just agree that for all intents and purposes I speak gibberish to your ears. I have my own opinions why that may be so, and I'm sure you have yours. But I really feel that this discussion here is an utter, bloody waste of time. I at least gain nothing from it but aggravation.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Another interesting point is that many people at the age of 18 or thereabouts, flee the family in fear and loathing. Of course, I jest, and it happens less now with rising house prices. I still remember the massive guilt and relief with which I left. Of course, we go back with our dirty laundry.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:


It is very much to society's benefit if that family remains intact. It is very much to the family's benefit if society steps in with support.
I'm sure you're right, but the I think modern society works in a way that makes family life harder to sustain, while also providing the very stresses and strains that make a strong family background a very useful thing to have. IMO this paradox provides a real tension in the culture.

Is it possible to have it all?

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
And most totalitarian regimes will argue that family is the basis for a strong society. Kinder, Kirche, Kuche!

Or if you are really over-dosing, Kammer, Kinder, Kirche, Keller, Kuche! Chamber, children, church, cellar, kitchen.
Perhaps your comment was not mean to be taken seriously, but even so, it sounds more like a recipe for keeping women busy than a promotion of the family as such. What about the role of fathers, grandmas, uncles, and the duties of children towards elderly parents, etc? Can 'totalitarian regimes' realistically reduce family to what youngish women with small children are supposed to do?

Besides which, 'Kirche' seems less easy to co-opt into the programme these days. Many of today's totalitarian regimes are not Christian. In extremist Islam the business of conducting public religious duties is expected to be carried out by the men, not the women. And even in the most devoutly Christian of countries women have to go out to work. The stay-at-home sectarian mothers with large families still rely on other women (and men) in the society to go out to work and pay the taxes that they rely on.
 
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :
 
I find the "power gap" issue quite interesting - have families conceded power or has it been inveigled from them? The difficulty is that a few subjective experiences do not give an average picture of trends. I see a lot of families who are unwilling to give their children adequate boundaries, and that is possibly the biggest change. Which seems to be a societal shift, with facebook et al also providing a route to a less bounded life. To what extent that trend is encouraged by government policy - I am unsure. In some ways the families are taking more power by refusing to have their children disciplioned at school... Though it's a bit of a no-win strategy.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Svitlana, good points about Kinder, Kirche. I know very little about how fathers, husbands etc. were treated in such regimes. It would be interesting to look at the Soviets, where early liberalization seems to have been followed by the Stalinist conservatism, for example, my memory is that abortion became harder to get.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
To me these seem fairly clear examples of the state expanding its power without diminishing the power of families, which undermines your bipolar theory of family-state power relations.
Not at all, what are you talking about? In antiquity you would have been cared for by your family when sick, and if your family was influential / rich it might have brought in a shaman / physician. In modernity, you get cared for by professional staff in a setting entirely organised by the state, where practically no family could afford to finance this even if they wanted to.
I'm talking about your implication that there was a direct transition from family care and shamans to the modern social welfare state with no intermediate steps. That it was the state seizing control of health care directly from families, not the various insurers, company doctors, religious institutions, etc. that cropped up in that vast wasteland of time between Antiquity and the twentieth century. Nope, it was the state expanding at the expense of the family, not any of these other entities.

The other problem with the idea that the state replaced families caring for their sick members is the fact that families still provide care for their sick or injured family members. (Unless you consider the enforcement of modern drug standard on over-the-counter remedies to be state encroachment on families). It would be more accurate to say that families still provide the same level of care available to your ideal late Bronze/early Iron Age standard of medical care (if not slightly better) but that the state provides additional resources for medical issues that require greater knowledge/resources.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I know you claim that the well being of a family is independent of the well being of its individual members, but this would seem to contradict that by your own asserted standards.
I have not claimed that at all... and it would be a stupid thing to claim.
If you say so.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Consequently, social importance has shifted from the family to the state. This is then a kind of diminishment of the family, even if you would argue that every single person involved is doing better in the state system than in the family system. The point is not the net individual outcome, the point is that social power clearly has shifted.

 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quetzalcoatl

Actually, I'm watching a video at the moment which states that abortion was functionally the only means of contraception in Russia during the Cold War period, and that the high rate of abortion has continued today.

Russia is apparently experiencing a serious decline in population, and a crisis in the condition of the family.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNbUSBhOmys
(9 mins +).

[ 22. April 2015, 21:37: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Part of the Soldier's Covenant which all members of The Salvation Army sign is this undertaking:


quote:
I will maintain Christian ideals in all my relationships with others; my family and neighbours, my colleagues and fellow Salvationists, those to whom and for whom I am responsible, and the wider community.

I will uphold the sanctity of marriage and of family life.
I stand by that.
Nobody has questioned that marriage and family life is good, just that family might not necessarily be blood relatives.

You still haven't answered my question as to why you assume people here are anti-family and why I as a single person am not as valuable to society.
I'm not sure why you have equated me with Enoch in your question - and I'd like to know where I have accused you of being anti-family and suggested that you as a single person are not as valuable to society. It would be very strange if I had done that, seeing that I specifically mentioned my unmarried sister in my post about my family.
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Part of the Soldier's Covenant which all members of The Salvation Army sign is this undertaking:


quote:
I will maintain Christian ideals in all my relationships with others; my family and neighbours, my colleagues and fellow Salvationists, those to whom and for whom I am responsible, and the wider community.

I will uphold the sanctity of marriage and of family life.
I stand by that.
Nobody has questioned that marriage and family life is good, just that family might not necessarily be blood relatives.

You still haven't answered my question as to why you assume people here are anti-family and why I as a single person am not as valuable to society.
I'm not sure why you have equated me with Enoch in your question - and I'd like to know where I have accused you of being anti-family and suggested that you as a single person are not as valuable to society. It would be very strange if I had done that, seeing that I specifically mentioned my unmarried sister in my post about my family.
I grouped you and Enoch together because he commented saying he agreed with you - I was addressing you both. You also said (generally) that people were wanting to 'denigrate' the family when that's not the case. However you didn't say that single people don't contribute and I apologise for saying you did.

I think to speak of blood relatives only in terms of family is a mistake - what about those in say, religious communities? Surely our churches, friendship groups etc can count as families just as much? Also I disagree with the idea that solitaries must be in a family, as if it should be forced - some people are called by God to be hermits and not in a family.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
If you say so.
Indeed. What you quoted shows clearly and explicitly that I said nothing like what you claimed that I have said. However, that you quote it suggests that you still think it does. At which point it's pretty much game over as far as communication goes.

[ 23. April 2015, 00:06: Message edited by: IngoB ]
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Also I disagree with the idea that solitaries must be in a family
I got the impression that most people here were acknowledging that 'family' needs to be understood in a broader sense than the nuclear family that so many politicians want to talk about exclusively (and, unfortunately some churches have tagged along behind the politicians). What we seem to be disagreeing with is the automatic assumption that someone who does not have a spouse therefore doesn't have a family - as though their parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins don't count as family.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Also I disagree with the idea that solitaries must be in a family
I got the impression that most people here were acknowledging that 'family' needs to be understood in a broader sense than the nuclear family that so many politicians want to talk about exclusively (and, unfortunately some churches have tagged along behind the politicians). What we seem to be disagreeing with is the automatic assumption that someone who does not have a spouse therefore doesn't have a family - as though their parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins don't count as family.
I guess there is a valid distinction to be made between what one could call one's "up" family, and one's "down" family. Where by the direction I mean the first motion one has to take in an imagined family tree. Children, and their relations, are all "down" from oneself in the first step, whereas for example for a nephew I have to go "up (towards my parents) - sideways (to my sibling) - and down (to their offspring)", so the first motion there is "up" even though I end a generation down from myself.

When people say that they have no family, or are single, they mean that they have no "down" family. Everybody has necessarily an "up" family, even though some may not know theirs. Of course, there may be occasions where one does not need or want that distinction, but it can be made. I guess a nuclear family viewed from the parents' side is then a currently active "one step down only" family unit.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
P. S.: Make that "up - sideways - down - down" for the nephew, I guess. Or something... I hope the concept is clear since it only depends on the first motion, even though frankly the overall graphical picture in my head is still fairly muddled (I don't deal much with actual family trees, and I'm not trying to say something about their proper graphical design...).
 
Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :
 
There's a lot of evidence (listed in Odent's Scientification of Love) that high quality bonding and support and stability is critical for babies so that they grow up with a sense of self-worth, and are capable of socialising in a way that nurtures themselves and others. For instance there is a very large incidence of addiction, self-harming and other dysfunctional behaviours in adults whose mothers were left by the father during the pregnancy or soon after the birth. So in that sense, society is TOTALLY dependent on the family as its basis. Having said that, the definition of family for these purposes is not necessarily based on formal marriage (though marriage does provide some additional glue) - but rather on mutually supportive, loving, and well bounded relationships being present around the pregnant mother and particularly in the first few years of the childs life, and some stable role models as it passes through teenage years.

In modern times, for some reason a large proportion of parents seem to have transferred their emotional needs to their children - it is the children that are looked to by the adults to provide companionship and love - which is a seriously unbounded, and invasive and unsupportive situation for the children. There is a difference between loving a child and expecting a child to provide emotional comfort. I suspect this is a result of the gradual infantilisation of teenagers over the past few generations, partly driven by an excessively protective state. But it's a really complex issue.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Very interesting points, itsarumdo, about possible reversals in parent child relations. I think there are all manner of complications like this, which go on, for example, the 'family romance', whereby a child is shown limited seductive behaviour by parents. A degree of stuff like this seems important, even the dependency of parent on child.

I suppose these are variations on a theme; you need that close bond, so that these can be explored. Whether this produces a strong society, I don't know. If you deny them, you might end up with a rigid and repressive one.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
What we seem to be disagreeing with is the automatic assumption that someone who does not have a spouse therefore doesn't have a family - as though their parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins don't count as family.
...
When people say that they have no family, or are single, they mean that they have no "down" family. Everybody has necessarily an "up" family, even though some may not know theirs.
There seem to be two contrasting definitions on "family" on this thread.

Those who say they have no family are telling the truth - they have no functional family. There may (or may not) be some living 2nd cousins address unknown, but that isn't family in any functional sense like some of this thread are talking about families helping each other.

It may be academically correct in a genealogical sense to say my friend Doris (parents dead, no siblings, husband dead, only child dead) has "family," but whatever "family" some ancestry site could come up with on paper, she is unaware of them and they of her, so there sure isn't any family in the sense of mutually supportive community, backbone of society!

Functionally, she has no family, and that is what people mean when they say they have no family. A throwaway kid has no family even if he has living parents in the same town.

Parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins aren't functioning as family when they don't accept you as part of their community.

Various posts upthread speak of families taking care of each other when sick, for example. For many singles, there is no such family even if they have living parents, siblings, cousins etc.

It's not just about having no "down" family.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
Here is an article that addresses relationships versus family:
Atlantic Magazine on Relationships
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Functionally, she has no family, and that is what people mean when they say they have no family. A throwaway kid has no family even if he has living parents in the same town. ...

It's not just about having no "down" family.
I do not really disagree with this. I guess it simply depends on context. I can well imagine a single saying "I have no family" in the narrow sense of not living with a partner and having no offspring, or in a wider sense of not having any living relatives (at least no "reasonably close" ones), or in an even wider sense of not having any functional relationship with any living relatives.

But I do think that usually there is a significant psychological difference between one's "up" and "down" family, to use my terminology. To put it differently, I think it is no accident that the "nuclear family" is what remains when family ties overall become less important.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I got the impression that most people here were acknowledging that 'family' needs to be understood in a broader sense than the nuclear family that so many politicians want to talk about exclusively (and, unfortunately some churches have tagged along behind the politicians). What we seem to be disagreeing with is the automatic assumption that someone who does not have a spouse therefore doesn't have a family - as though their parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins don't count as family.
That's an easy conflation to make given both the thread title and the framing of the OP.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
It was a more general comment about the use of the word 'family' in modern society generally. Take any political statement or newspaper article (at least from the US, UK and western Europe) from the last 20 years that mentions 'family' and it's almost guaranteed to be about the nuclear family. The OP and thread title is just another example of that pattern.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
As in "the next politician to talk about 'hard-working families' gets punched"?
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I guess it simply depends on context. I can well imagine a single saying "I have no family" in the narrow sense of not living with a partner and having no offspring, or in a wider sense of not having any living relatives (at least no "reasonably close" ones), or in an even wider sense of not having any functional relationship with any living relatives.

But I do think that usually there is a significant psychological difference between one's "up" and "down" family, to use my terminology. To put it differently, I think it is no accident that the "nuclear family" is what remains when family ties overall become less important.
Nuclear family is a dependency relationship, so that's a closer binding.

Many of my friends are considered "extended family" by their own kids once the kids are grown and have their own household. Note the conflict of expectations when parents consider themselves part of the nuclear family including their kids, but the kids consider their parents not part of their current nuclear family.

In any discussion of family, it's important to know which definition is meant. The responsibilities and expectations differ greatly as we move from nuclear to extended to genealogical.

That extended family are now often treated more like genealogical family than like nuclear family seems to be a huge historical change. I used to think it's because of mobility, grandkid can't cut grandma's grass nor get her help with homework if they live 1000 miles apart.

But last December a friend told me of course she's not visiting her Mom in assisted living nor bringing her to the Christmas gathering of the grands and great grandkids, ferrying Mom back and forth (in the same town) would ruin Christmas! Well, it's not just distances!
 
Posted by Erroneous Monk (# 10858) on :
 
Would it be controversial to say that loving communal living is the basis of a strong society? That is to say, that it is from our experience of communal living in the smallest units that we then extrapolate to find ways to live communally in parishes, villages, towns, cities, boroughs, countries?

If that is the case, then for the vast majority of us faulty humans, we will only make the effort to form and maintain those smaller communal units where there are already bonds of affection (marriage, those living as if married, nuclear family, extended family, long-term house-sharing friends). And then there are those very rare people who have a vocation to live in community with strangers, or live alone, as an act of faith.

Could a stable society be built of people, a majority of whom lived alone, against their wills? I would say not. In that scenario, the majority will be unhappy, and a society where the majority of people are unhappy will be unstable.

But returning to the first point, is it axiomatic that we learn how to be a larger community from living in smaller units? Or is it possible that we learn something (anything) about living in smaller units from our perception of ourselves as part of a larger community?

I'm not sure that is an open and shut question.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I wonder if some of these categories - a strong society, a stable society, a good society, loving families - are relevant to European and American society, but not to other kinds of societies. I don't know, owing to my ignorance about them, but are these generalizations appropriate for, say, ancient Roman society, or Chinese society, or Aztec society? Well, people tend to have kids in all societies, it's true!
 
Posted by Erroneous Monk (# 10858) on :
 
And what's the time line for strong/stable?
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I was also thinking about the treatment of women, which in some societies has been distinctly sub-par. It has improved in the West, so maybe we are moving toward an Omega point of blissful family life, <sarcasm>.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't know, owing to my ignorance about them, but are these generalizations appropriate for, say, ancient Roman society, or Chinese society, or Aztec society? Well, people tend to have kids in all societies, it's true!
Admittedly, I don't know anything about the Aztecs, but as for the ancient Romans and the Chinese ... surely you are joking?

It is rather difficult to think of a more dominant social "family unit" than the Roman pater familias and those under his reign. Roman politics pretty much was family politics. But Imperial China dominated by Confucian thinking does give the Romans a run for their money on just how important one can consider families to be. Mandarin for "country / nation" is guó jiā, which translated character by character means "state family".

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I was also thinking about the treatment of women, which in some societies has been distinctly sub-par. It has improved in the West, so maybe we are moving toward an Omega point of blissful family life, <sarcasm>.
Careful there, you are getting close to an uncomfortable insight...
 
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :
 
I recently came across a couple of comments from a hundred years ago which asserted that motherhood is the foundation of society.

You can't disagree with comments about the importance of such things. Friendship, neighbourliness and extended families, communities formed around location, workplace or school, and language, nationality, generational and cultural identity groups are all part of all our experience, and it's better that they should all be good.

So why concentrate on one? What's the agenda?

The comments about motherhood came from the suffragist and women's rights movement. I note that Jesus had negative things to say about family ties, and was keen on neighbourliness, especially when it crossed over cultural and religious boundaries. Paul is hugely keen on the breakdown of barriers and the creation of new communities.

The nuclear family is one near universal aspect of our intimate biological relationships, but it's the one that most closely parallels the concerns of patriarchy and hereditary capital.

It feels quite important in the UK today. It doesn't look as if the young adults of today have the opportunity or aspiration to become property owners. Meanwhile a government struggling to balance the books thinks it worthwhile to be generous to the dead by reducing inheritance tax.

I think family is controversial because it's part of the capitalism is broken debate.

[ 28. April 2015, 11:19: Message edited by: hatless ]
 
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
Would it be controversial to say that loving communal living is the basis of a strong society? That is to say, that it is from our experience of communal living in the smallest units that we then extrapolate to find ways to live communally in parishes, villages, towns, cities, boroughs, countries?

If that is the case, then for the vast majority of us faulty humans, we will only make the effort to form and maintain those smaller communal units where there are already bonds of affection (marriage, those living as if married, nuclear family, extended family, long-term house-sharing friends). And then there are those very rare people who have a vocation to live in community with strangers, or live alone, as an act of faith.

Could a stable society be built of people, a majority of whom lived alone, against their wills? I would say not. In that scenario, the majority will be unhappy, and a society where the majority of people are unhappy will be unstable.

But returning to the first point, is it axiomatic that we learn how to be a larger community from living in smaller units? Or is it possible that we learn something (anything) about living in smaller units from our perception of ourselves as part of a larger community?

I'm not sure that is an open and shut question.
I think this is a good point. I personally am an introvert to the extent that living alone is definitely my preference, though living with animals - and to me that's a source of company. However most people are not introverted to my extent....
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't know, owing to my ignorance about them, but are these generalizations appropriate for, say, ancient Roman society, or Chinese society, or Aztec society? Well, people tend to have kids in all societies, it's true!
Admittedly, I don't know anything about the Aztecs, but as for the ancient Romans and the Chinese ... surely you are joking?

It is rather difficult to think of a more dominant social "family unit" than the Roman pater familias and those under his reign. Roman politics pretty much was family politics. But Imperial China dominated by Confucian thinking does give the Romans a run for their money on just how important one can consider families to be. Mandarin for "country / nation" is guó jiā, which translated character by character means "state family".

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I was also thinking about the treatment of women, which in some societies has been distinctly sub-par. It has improved in the West, so maybe we are moving toward an Omega point of blissful family life, <sarcasm>.
Careful there, you are getting close to an uncomfortable insight...
So you are saying that Roman and Chinese societies were good ones, because they had strong family structure?

I guess the uncomfortable insight might be that with the decline of Christianity, women's position has improved considerably?
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
The briefest tour through history would reveal to nearly all of us that we would not want to live in ancient Rome or China. If you were not male, a property owner, or born of the right family, you were SOL. All of us, probably without exception, would be working in agriculture with the status of slaves.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
So you are saying that Roman and Chinese societies were good ones, because they had strong family structure?
Define "good" in this context?! Certainly they had strong societies, if we go by the political / military success and longevity of their respective empires.

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I guess the uncomfortable insight might be that with the decline of Christianity, women's position has improved considerably?
Hahaha. Nope.
 
Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 
That depends.

If you think that "women's position" should be that of someone slightly feeble-minded, generally too naïve and/or emotion-driven to make sensible, practical decisions, in need of protection from life's harsher realities, and useful primarily in species-propagation, mate-tending, home-keeping, and arm-candying, why, then women's position has deteriorated. Somewhat.

If, on the other hand, you think that "women's position" should be that of someone capable of independent thought and action, with access to the same human rights and responsibilities as her brothers, why, then women's position has room for improvement.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It is rather difficult to think of a more dominant social "family unit" than the Roman pater familias and those under his reign. Roman politics pretty much was family politics.
You seem to be equating family "strength" with authoritarian hierarchy; considering families "strong" by the degree to which power is both concentrated and unchecked. As a measure of social stability this is dubious. Roman families, to use the historical example, seem to have been fairly brittle and weak in a political context, as demonstrated by the relative paucity of dynasties during Rome's Imperial period. The strongest that comes to mind is the Antonines, and their strength as a dynasty came from their habit of adopting talented adult males as heirs, which is hardly a typical family dynamic. Shouldn't we expect more dynastic successions if the Roman family was as robust as you claim and that "Roman politics pretty much was family politics"?

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
But Imperial China dominated by Confucian thinking does give the Romans a run for their money on just how important one can consider families to be.
Like Imperial Rome, the actual exercise of state power in Imperial China was in the hands of the bureaucracy, which was at least nominally meritocratic. This may have been a "meritocracy" in the same sense of getting in to Oxford or the Ivy League (a lot easier to have 'merit' if past generations of your family have done so), but there was the idea that family connections were an inadequate basis for exercising government power.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Like Imperial Rome, the actual exercise of state power in Imperial China was in the hands of the bureaucracy, which was at least nominally meritocratic. This may have been a "meritocracy" in the same sense of getting in to Oxford or the Ivy League (a lot easier to have 'merit' if past generations of your family have done so), but there was the idea that family connections were an inadequate basis for exercising government power.
If an official fouled up (read: ended up on the wrong side of a power struggle), they were executed. Their family was also executed. Out to four or five degrees of separation in some cases.
It appears that the Chinese power structure thought family loyalty was an important motivating factor.
It is possible that may not be an aspect of Imperial Chinese society that the individualistic west would be better off imitating.
 
Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :
 
There are lots of families who's politics actively harm society so probably not.
 
Posted by Erroneous Monk (# 10858) on :
 
On the subject of China, I was told recently that there are a fair number of adoptions of adult men in China. This is to deal with the family business quandary ie what do you do if the heir to the family business isn't the right person to run a business? Which is more important? The "family" bit, or the "business" bit?

The Chinese have the answer: you identify the best successor CEO in the usual way. Then you adopt him!

I have no idea if this is true, but I think it's a powerful point. If family is such a good thing, why should it exclude anyone? We can and should open the net to people who can bring in the skills we need.

e.g "adopting" grandparents, if the original ones are no longer with you.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
I was listening on the radio today about an adoption nonprofit in NYC. They specialize in artistic older kids, and their motto is, you cannot age out. They will work to get you adopted even if you are over 21.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
On the subject of China, I was told recently that there are a fair number of adoptions of adult men in China. This is to deal with the family business quandary ie what do you do if the heir to the family business isn't the right person to run a business? Which is more important? The "family" bit, or the "business" bit?

The Chinese have the answer: you identify the best successor CEO in the usual way. Then you adopt him!
The WW2 Japanese admiral Yamamoto was adopted as an adult by a family that wanted a successful son.

Moo
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You seem to ... yadda yadda
No. My actual point was simple. Both the ancient Romans and the Imperial Chinese valued family very highly. Both formed strong societies, at least "strong" as in kicking everybody else's ass for a long, long time. So this can count as some evidence for the family being the basis of a "strong" society.

If you want to argue that Roman politics wasn't dominated by families (and their continuous struggles with each other for power), and that Imperial China was really an administrative meritocracy (ignoring that candidates for this administration weren't exactly "democratically" sourced), knock yourself out. I think you are wrong, but that doesn't touch the simple point I've made.

The case of "adoption bring talent into the family" is very interesting indeed. But it only highlights the importance of the family in the cultures that do it regularly, of course. We are bemused by this, precisely because we would not bring the family into this but simply hire the talent. It seems to me though that the real interest would be to compare that to other phases in the West were families were dominant in business, politics, military, ... Basically, in the high middle ages, did the nobles have similar strategies to source "the best" for their family enterprises. And if not, why not?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The case of "adoption bring talent into the family" is very interesting indeed. But it only highlights the importance of the family in the cultures that do it regularly, of course. We are bemused by this, precisely because we would not bring the family into this but simply hire the talent.
There's a interesting fusion of "hir[ing] the talent" and "bring[ing] the family into this" at the lower end of the social scale, if you consider the Greek oikos and Roman familia to be families. Specifically the buying of slaves, who were considered somewhere between family members (albeit ones with no autonomy) and family property. In other words, a combination of family and commerce.

Of course, slavery on that kind of scale required a certain amount of state enforcement apparatus, which brings us back to the conundrum of whether state action always diminishes the family or can enhance and support it. It seems difficult to argue that state actions like legal adult adoption or fugitive slave laws "highlights the importance of the family" while socialized medicine or food safety laws diminish or replace families. It's just as easy to argue that instead of enhancing the family, legal adoption is another example where the state replaces and undermines one of the family's traditional functions, the creation of new family members.
 
Posted by Erroneous Monk (# 10858) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It seems to me though that the real interest would be to compare that to other phases in the West were families were dominant in business, politics, military, ... Basically, in the high middle ages, did the nobles have similar strategies to source "the best" for their family enterprises. And if not, why not?
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's award winning fictionalised account of the life of Thomas Cromwell (Tudor, not Middle Ages, though) depicts him unofficially adopting various waifs and strays - some with a family connection, some not, on the basis of their talents, and then integrating them into his organisation. He had only one legitimate son, I think.

I would also guess that marriage (of one's daughters to promising men) was another way of "adopting" talent.
 
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
We're called to a stronger family than Corleone ones:

Matthew 12:46–50

While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

And as for marriage, yes, the more the merrier, therefore especially for same sex couples.

[ 02. May 2015, 17:44: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
 


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