A
sower
As times keep changing
American* family defies definition
By Michelle Paulman
Staff Reporter
Father, mother, sister, brother.
My family.
The nuclear family.
But not the American family.
I used to believe my situation — simi
lar to but not nearly as sugary as “Leave
It To Beaver" — was the norm.
As it turns out, there is no norm.
Just look at Webster’s definition of
"family":
1. All the people living fn the
same house; household; 2. (a) a
black American family settle down. After
the Civil War, many former slaves tried
to find their parents and grandparents.
A few did reclaim their old ties, but many
families had to start from scratch.
While divorce was rare, disruption of
the family was not. Until the 1900s,
Lingren said, many children could ex
pect to lose one or both parents to wars,
accidents, disease or childbirth. Often
the child was reared by a single parent,
relatives or someone in the community.
Until recent times, family roles stayed
the same generation after generation. But
the 20th
would not be hurt by divorce and that
they would even benefit from it. Even if
one support network was disrupted, kids
would find a better one with stepparents
or a single parent.
But 20 years down the road have
shown that unless the marriage is abu
sive, children have little to gain from fam
ily breakup.
Children in single-parent families are
more likely to be poor, and those who
aren’t have an uncertain economic future.
The child loses a close link to one par
ent, usually the father. If the parent re
But we’re working on it.
“As long as you think you’re
ready for this?”
Living together, unheard of before
;he 1970s, is now a frequent practice that
arosses economic, religious and cultural
Doundaries. And this trend will probably
grow in years to come.
Plus, people are waiting longer be
:ore tying the knot. In the 1950s, the av
arage age of marriage was 21 for men
and 19 for women, Lingren said. Now it’s
28 for men and 26 for women.
social unn consisting ot parents
and the children they rear... (b)
the children of the same parents
(c) one’s husband (or wife) and
children; 3. a group of people re
lated by ancestry or marriage;
relatives; 4. all those claiming
descent from a common ances
tor; tribe or clan ...
Whether it be a household or tribe,
the American family is simply a network,
shaped and reshaped by marriage,
childbirth, death and divorce.
Herb Lingren, a professor in the
family and consumer sciences depart
ment at the University of Nebraska-Lin
coln, defines a family as “people
who have undergone a social,
religious or legal connec
tion.” And the direction
the family will take is
determined one
connection at a
time.
Most Ameri
cans make that
connection with
two words: “I do."
since people are waning longer,
they are more likely to stay married.
They get an education and “find out
who they are" and what they want,
Lingren said, before they settle
down and start a family. Because
of this “waiting period," he predicts
the divorce rate will level off in fu
ture years.
On the economic front, busi
nesses are becoming more attuned
to family needs, not only to please
their employees but also to in
crease profits. Employers who of
fer parental leave, flexible hours,
job sharing and day care increase
productivity and command greater
L loyalty from their workers.
i ne government
is also taking a big
ger role in strength
px ening the American
family. The Family
fjf Support Act of 1988
jjj requires that both
E parents’ Social Secu
f rity numbers be put on
a. birth certificate, so the
wniie me woras
haven’t changed through history,
people’s expectations have. What the
American family was, is and will be de
pends on how each person finishes this
popular question: “Do you take this per
son to be your spouse ..."
“As long as you both shall
live?"
From colonial times through World
War II, when two people were married,
they stayed that way until one of them
died, Lingren said. Serious social and
religious sanctions held even the worst
of marriages together.
The family was the core unit of soci
ety, and anyone not in a network was a
“black sheep." Divorce was unheard of,
as was any sexual relation or childbirth
out of marriage.
Within the network, the father was the
central figure. His children inherited his
religion, his beliefs and his occupation,
Lingren said. The mother’s role was to
take care of the home and raise the chil
dren. Little changed in the white Ameri
can family from generation to generation.
The black American family was an
entirely different story.
As slaves, whatever had existed of
the African family structure was torn apart
on American shores, Lingren said. Hus
bands, wives, children and mothers were
separated and sold off the boat and on
the plantations. Marriages, performed
informally, held no merit with the land
owners.
Not until emancipation could the
has
m o
changes than any
other, and the family has not been ex
empt.
After World War II, the average life
expectancy improved dramatically, and
parents began living long enough to raise
their children and see them have kids of
their own. Plus, families stayed together
because social and religious sanctions
made divorce rare before the 1960s.
To sum it up, the nuclear family —
mom, dad, 2.5 kids and a dog under one
roof — is a phenomenon of the 1950s,
common mostly to white, middle-class
Americans.
MAs long as you both think it’s
a good idea?”
But in 1965, American values and
norms began to shift. Divorce, which had
been taboo, became not only acceptable
but desirable. By 1974, death was no
longer the leading cause of family dis
ruption.
In the 70s, people began to see di
vorce in a positive light for three reasons,
according to Barbara DaFoe Whitehead,
author of "Dan Quayle Was Right" in the
April 1993 issue of Atlantic magazine.
The first was economic. Women were
breaking into the workplace like never
before. They no longer needed or wanted
a husband’s income to support them.
Many also assumed that children
ent relationships
challenge traditional loy
*■ marries, steppar
alties, and the children may feel even
more alone than they did in a single-par
ent family.
The final assumption of the 70s was
that new family structures would
strengthen America by making it more
diverse. But Whitehead calls divorce "a
central cause of many of our most vex
ing social problems." The rise in child
poverty, juvenile crime and delinquent
behavior, she says, can be attributed to
the dissolution of the familial support net
work.
Teen-age girls are having babies so
someone will love them, but they are find
ing out that babies take much more than
they give. Schools are called upon to
meet children’s needs and teach them
values, because many families have
failed in these duties. And even if the bio
logical family is intact, often both parents
must work to make ends meet and can’t
give their kids the attention they need.
Abuse and neglect are on the rise.
The American family needs help.
So it’s fitting that 1994 is the United
Nations’ International Year of the Family.
As President Clinton writes in his
proclamation: “Families are fundamen
tal to the lifeblood and strength of our
world. ... We all must work toward the
goal of preserving these ties, society’s
most valuable resource."
In seeking freedom from traditional
constraints, we cracked the mold that
built our society, and then we found that
we had no ready substitute.
father cannot remain anonymous and
skip out on his responsibilities. Plus, the
faces of “deadbeat dads"—fathers who
constantly are negligent in their child
support payments — are plastered on
evening newscasts in Massachusetts.
While children still have few rights,
many judges are giving kids greater con
sideration in divorce cases. And youth
organizations are working harder to pull
kids off the streets and give them the di
rection they need but can’t find at home.
But more work needs to be done.
Since single moms and dads make up a
good percentage of American families,
they need as much support as they can
get from relatives, friends, the commu
nity, the government and their work
places — and their kids need support
too. New varieties of families, like gay
and lesbian couples and unmarried par
ents who live together, are gaining ac
ceptance but still have a long way to go.
The structure of the American family
is always changing with the times,
Lingren says, but the premise remains
the same. Family is where one finds sup
port and compassion — where people
share something in common.
This simple link is “the smallest de
mocracy at the heart of society," the Year
of the Family motto. While it’s nothing like
the Cleaver clan, the family is the place
where America begins. We need to
strengthen the ties that bind us all to
gether, because the home of today
builds tomorrow’s world.
And that will never change.
Illustration by Amy Schmidt