The Family continues

Family is an interesting concept now a days. There is the famous phrase: You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.

What is a family though? Nowadays they come in all shapes and sizes. We have step family, blended family, there use to be an extended family (kind of becoming less important over time), families that we choose, such as a child being closer to their friend’s parents than their own, you can be an adopted child, you can feel your friends are your family, skip generation families (grandparents raising grandkids), and some more iterations I cannot think of right now.

There is the concept of the traditional family: Mom, Dad, and children. So am I trying to argue we should only keep this type of family or is any/all types of families acceptable?

The key is what works. The traditional family is the best place to start or gives us the best framework. And yes this is the model the Christian right holds as the only model. I am a Christian, but I have a hard time with people trying to mold society by beating them over the head with a Bible. Yet I do agree there is great validity in this model. Why?

The traditional family gives us our foundation, our start in life. First of all, it is basic nature. We need the Dad and Mom to make us. Second it is the necessary structure to raise children since on most accounts we, as humans, aren’t ready to leave the nest as fast as the rest of nature. And this is good. To be successful in life and not just monetarily we need a foundation and if the family has strong values more than likely the children will develop them and pass them on.

Cultures throughout history thrive when the family is an integral part of the society. Once the family starts to decline as a centerpiece the country or culture starts to die off. Once a more self-centered way of life comes into play values decline, the fabric that binds the culture erodes, and a splintering of people begin. And a new country or culture arises and sometimes it is dominated by interests that over react to the moral or structural decay and rely on overly religious control to rebuild. This is an unfortunate consequence. Not because of the belief in God, but the fact they move backwards not forwards with their belief in God. Yet this is a discussion for another day.

Going back to nature. Nature gives us one of the strongest arguments to the value of the traditional family. This is observable within the mammal group. Even though some mammals do not always mate for life, enough come together long enough to raise the offspring to maturity which of course helps the offspring survive.

And not just in mammals. It is prevalent all over nature. A few years ago we lived in a two story house. The porch was very basic. A step up to a four by four area that was the entrance to the house. The covering to this porch was up to the top of the second story. For a couple of years some birds nested on the corner of the ledge. At first this was cute. After a while though the young birds started to learn to fly. Since we were coming in and out of the house the parent birds would dive bomb us to protect their young so they could fly back into the nest. We eventually learned to avoid walking outside at certain times of the day. This only lasted for a week or so and eventually the whole family moved on. They came back the second year and the same thing happened. I ticked off the kids when they left and got the ladder out and cleaned out the nesting area. Even for a week or so this dive bombing and constant chattering was a big pain in the back end.

For my point the parents raised the children till they were ready to fly on their own even to the point of risking their lives to take on us humans to protect their children. And another observation was both parents pretty much took on the same roles once the eggs were hatched. Both would take turns going out for food and both protected their young from us while they learned to fly. So one thing we can learn from nature is the role of the sexes is mostly, maybe not completely a human construct. Or is our way the correct way because of the way we are made? I think that some of it is, but mostly we have roles that can be interchanged between the sexes, but there is a need for both roles to be played out. Which is another reason the traditional family is important.

Does it work best when one person stays home to be a primary caregiver? And is this different from the birds, well actually it isn’t. The birds played both roles simultaneously. Does this mean humans cannot? Actually in this country over the last few decades we have been. The question I am trying to ask you to think about is this best for us. And is it best for us as humans, for our way of life, or can we remodel the family as times change to suit the times? Basically what do we need as family or to define family so we can keep our values, cherish them, and pass them on to the next generation?

Honestly I believe we still do need the traditional family. I feel this is the best way to preserve what we have and still be able to move forward in the future. Unfortunately I do not think it works for everyone. Or a failure happened and it didn’t work for some. Either way we need to preserve to two main aspects of what a traditional family offers us to continue to grow as a country, culture, and society.

We need to raise our children with the love and guidance parents should be offering. And we need to give our children stability in their lives so they have the best opportunity to succeed on their own and then pass it on to their children.

The way our politics and to hear some parts of our society you would think neither is important. Obviously I feel differently. So how do we keep the family in our society? Some of that is up to us as members of society. Our government cannot solve all problems, but in my next post about this topic I will propose some policy ideas our government can do to strengthen our ability to hold onto the value of family. Basically I will attempt to come up with secular reasoning to allow us in society to keep the family strong.