For the Joy of the Journey

This post is concludes my series based on David Brooks’ article entitled “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake”. Previous posts can be read HERE and HERE and HERE .

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Hopefully, my previous posts expressed some legitimate questions and concerns about the nuclear family, particularly the church’s idolization of a “ideal nuclear family” as a Biblical model.
The latter portion of “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake” addresses the future of families and possible solutions to the disintegration of families in our society. One thing I’m relative sure about is that the “ideal nuclear family” will not return and any efforts to accomplish such are useless and counter-productive.
“We’ve left behind the nuclear-family paradigm of 1955. For most people it’s not coming back”. 
I am not suggesting abandonment of the core values of God ordained family but am arguing for understanding cultural realties and reimagining family. Because thinking out of the box is an oxymoron in my Christian experience, reimagining family is subject worthy of its own discussion. I hope some of you biblical scholars will pick up the mantle on that.
In my view, manyWestern Christians are faced with a clear choice… push our heads deeper into the sand and tighten our grip on a nostalgic and unrealistic image of family OR wake up to the need to reimagine and rethink family and its future and our response as Christ followers to that reality. This is no small matter, and, above my pay grade, but not an impediment to my voice of concern.

The remainder of this post will be directed at Brooks’ examination of the future of families, particularly the idea of forged families.

Resurgence of extended families

..recent signs suggest at least the possibility that a new family paradigm is emerging. Many of the statistics I’ve cited are dire. But they describe the past—what got us to …where we are now. In reaction to family chaos, accumulating evidence suggests, the prioritization of family is beginning to make a comeback. Americans are experimenting with new forms of kinship and extended family in search of stability.

…a new set of values, has emerged. That may be happening now—in part out of necessity but in part by choice. Since the 1970s, and especially since the 2008 recession, economic pressures have pushed Americans toward greater reliance on family. Starting around 2012, the share of children living with married parents began to inch up. And college students have more contact with their parents than they did a generation ago. We tend to deride this as helicopter parenting or a failure to launch, and it has its excesses. But the educational process is longer and more expensive these days, so it makes sense that young adults rely on their parents for longer than they used to.
In 1980, only 12 percent of Americans lived in multigenerational households. But the financial crisis of 2008 prompted a sharp rise in multigenerational homes. Today 20 percent of Americans—64 million people, an all-time high—live in multigenerational homes.
The revival of the extended family has largely been driven by young adults moving back home. In 2014, 35 percent of American men ages 18 to 34 lived with their parents. In time this shift might show itself to be mostly healthy, impelled not just by economic necessity but by beneficent social impulses; polling data suggest that many young people are already looking ahead to helping their parents in old age.
Another chunk of the revival is attributable to seniors moving in with their children. The percentage of seniors who live alone peaked around 1990. Now more than a fifth of Americans 65 and over live in multigenerational homes. This doesn’t count the large share of seniors who are moving to be close to their grandkids but not into the same household.

Resurgence of extended families is a promising aspect of a new family paradigm, especially for Christian communities. Extended family more closely resembles a biblical family model. From a covenant perspective, membership in the covenant community is more communal than individualistic.
“Extended families have two great strengths. The first is resilience. An extended family is one or more families in a supporting web. Your spouse and children come first, but there are also cousins, in-laws, grandparents—a complex web of relationships among, say, seven, 10, or 20 people. ”

Despite the positives of extended families, their re-emergence in today’s culture brings challenges. Beyond obvious changes such as residential requirements, there will be interesting challenges to Christian churches that have built their ministries on a nuclear family model. For example, structures that support the idea of nuclear families, such as separate teen ministries and worship which implicitly encourage separation and independence will be found to be impediments to support of extended families. Curriculums for family and child rearing will need to be reevaluated and revised.

Forged Families

Over the past several decades, the decline of the nuclear family has created an epidemic of trauma—millions have been set adrift because what should have been the most loving and secure relationship in their life broke. Slowly, but with increasing frequency, these drifting individuals are coming together to create forged families. These forged families have a feeling of determined commitment.  
….in at least one respect, the new families Americans are forming would look familiar to our hunter-gatherer ancestors from eons ago. That’s because they are chosen families—they transcend traditional kinship lines.

The forged family Brooks write about is both encouraging and frightening. I find it encouraging because it offers hope for redeeming family in the most idealistic ways.
“The scene is one many of us have somewhere in our family history: Dozens of people celebrating Thanksgiving or some other holiday around a makeshift stretch of family tables—siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, great-aunts. The grandparents are telling the old family stories for the 37th time. “It was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen in your life,”

Forged families can be frightening:

Perhaps a metaphor of forged family and the future American family may be, ironically, the TV series Modern Family. I have not watched any episodes, but the description that follows seems prescient.

Modern Family revolves around three different types of families (nuclear, step- and same-sex) living in the Los Angeles area, who are interrelated through Jay Pritchett and his children, daughter Claire and son Mitchell. Patriarch Jay is remarried to a much younger woman, Gloria Delgado Pritchett (née Ramirez), a passionate Colombian immigrant with whom he has a young son, Fulgencio Joseph “Joe” Pritchett, and a son from Gloria’s previous marriage, Manuel “Manny” Delgado.
Jay’s daughter Claire was a homemaker, but has returned to the business world. She is now the chief executive of her father’s business, Pritchett’s Closets and Blinds. She is married to Phil Dunphy, a realtor and a self-professed “cool dad”. They have three children: Haley Dunphy, a stereotypically ditzy teenage girl;Alex Dunphy, an intelligent but nerdy middle child; and Luke Dunphy, the off-beat only son.
Jay’s lawyer son Mitchell and his husband Cameron Tucker have one adopted daughter, Lily Tucker-Pritchett. As the name suggests, this family represents a modern-day family and episodes are comically based on situations that many families encounter in real life.

Emergence of forged families will require Christians to face cultural realities. Forged families as defined in “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake” implicitly include: unmarried partners, same-sex marriage, single parents, unwed mothers, and sundry other non-conforming relationships.
Americans are hungering to live in extended and forged families, in ways that are new and ancient at the same time. This is a significant opportunity, a chance to thicken and broaden family relationships, a chance to allow more adults and children to live and grow under the loving gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes, and be caught, when they fall, by a dozen pairs of arms. For decades we have been eating at smaller and smaller tables, with fewer and fewer kin. It’s time to find ways to bring back the big tables.

All the while we are finding hope and encouragement for family, we will have to reconcile those opportunities with faith and doctrine. It is not an option to continue sticking our head in the sand.

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In my previous post I introduced the idea that the Christian perception of the ideal family is the nuclear family, “a two-parent nuclear family, with one or two kids, probably living in some detached family home on some suburban street.”. It is my belief that perception has become an unhealthy reality which shapes ministry and outreach. A brief synopsis of the current state of family in our society from “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake” illustrated the stark contrast of a nostalgic perception of nuclear family to today’s reality.

This post will examine some implications of maintaining a perception of nuclear family as reality. It is not my purpose to demean the nuclear family, nor did I understand Brooks intent as such, despite his unfortunate title. I am saying it is a mistake to believe the nuclear family is reality. To do so is analogous to insisting that Blockbuster is an effective business model.

As the social structures that support the family have decayed, the debate about it has taken on a mythical quality. Social conservatives insist that we can bring the nuclear family back. But the conditions that made for stable nuclear families in the 1950s are never returning. Conservatives have nothing to say to the kid whose dad has split, whose mom has had three other kids with different dads; “go live in a nuclear family” is really not relevant advice. If only a minority of households are traditional nuclear families, that means the majority are something else: single parents, never-married parents, blended families, grandparent-headed families, serial partnerships, and so on. Conservative ideas have not caught up with this reality.

David Brooks

The core values of nuclear family are virtually undisputed as essential to a healthy society. As a result, in particular, Christians, properly concerned about attacks on marriage and traditional families have made the mistake of doubling down on the idea of a nuclear family as inviolable. However, even proponents of the sanctity of nuclear families recognize the problem: To be sure, the isolated nuclear family detached from all social support is simply not workable for most people. *

For Christians the nuclear family is a sacred cow, “which must be solicitously guarded so that it can die its agonizing death without any interference.” I reserve an opportunity to offer a eulogy for the nuclear family, but it is important to recognize and address the impacts of living under an illusion that somehow the nuclear family glory days can be restored.

Here are some thoughts I have regarding implications for churches holding the idealized nuclear family inviolable:

• When Christians insist the nuclear family is the ideal necessary to redeem the family and cure our social ills, there are some significant unintended consequences.
  “You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” (Ayn Rand)
• It is important to distinguish between a priority for God’s created order of a monogamous family pattern and the imposition of an idealized nuclear family cultural phenomenon. Jesus’ teaching on the Sabbath may be instructive in that regard.
• Imposing the idealized nuclear family as the model for Christian families inherently impedes outreach and diversity and gentrifies congregations. As Brooks’ article pointed out, “…In 1970, the family structures of the rich and poor did not differ that greatly. Now there is a chasm between them. As of 2005, 85 percent of children born to upper-middle-class families were living with both biological parents when the mom was 40. Among working-class families, only 30 percent were.  “It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged.”
  As the income gap in our society increases, the possibility of a successful nuclear family will continue to diminish except for the privileged.
  For many people, especially those with financial and social resources, it is a great way to live and raise children.
• Inherent child rearing philosophies of a nuclear family conflict with the ethos of Christ’s community. “People who grow up in a nuclear family tend to have a more individualistic mind-set than people who grow up in a multigenerational extended clan. People with an individualistic mind-set tend to be less willing to sacrifice self for the sake of the family, and the result is more family disruption.”
  Our culture is oddly stuck. We want stability and rootedness, but also mobility, dynamic capitalism, and the liberty to adopt the lifestyle we choose. We want close families, but not the legal, cultural, and sociological constraints that made them possible.
  My own experience as a father of a nuclear family illustrates the problem. My priority in raising my children, particularly sons, was for them to be independent, self-sufficient and depart the family to build their own nuclear family. Little did I realize that success would not allow for the fulfillment of dreams for extended family experiences.
  

At this point, I have no answers, only questions. I am intrigued by Brooks’ thoughts on forged families and will discuss them in another post. I am even more convinced of the importance of rethinking churches’ assumptions about family.

When we discuss the problems confronting the country, we don’t talk about family enough. It feels too judgmental. Too uncomfortable. Maybe even too religious. But the blunt fact is that the nuclear family has been crumbling in slow motion for decades, and many of our other problems—with education, mental health, addiction, the quality of the labor force—stem from that crumbling. We’ve left behind the nuclear-family paradigm of 1955. For most people it’s not coming back.

The Nuclear Family was a Mistake

Here is some positive news in the midst of distressing realities.

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/is-the-worst-of-the-sexual-revolution

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This post is the first of several generated by my encounter with David Brooks’ recent Atlantic article “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake”. I highly recommend that you read the entire article. Heads up: If your reading threshold is 288 characters or less, the article will be a challenge.This post employs local TV news program strategy of teasers, just enough to keep you tuned in until the next segment.

For me, David Brooks is a cogent voice in a largely incoherent media wilderness. For someone who holds tightly an assumption that a root cause of the disintegration of our society is the breakdown on the family, this article is a must read. The following quote sets the tone for the article.

If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.

As I read the article, I was reminded of how important family issues are, not only societally but personally. It seems any conversation of consequence ultimately will lead to some discussion of family brokenness or dysfunction. Our dreams, prayers and aspirations for our children and grandchildren reflect our vision of an “ideal family”. I suspect, for many, that vision is a mythical “nuclear family”
“…a certain family ideal … the two-parent nuclear family, with one or two kids, probably living in some detached family home on some suburban street.”
For that reason, “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake” was a challenge I couldn’t resist.

Additionally, family ideals, …”family values”, …”a Christian family” …”Focus on The Family… are familiar expressions in Christian churches. The following quote reflects the importance of an ideal family to Christian faith and success of society and the church:

…“The Ideal Christian Home” is a place where the perfect standard of the life of Jesus Christ is in place. If the society will be a habitable place for people to live together in peace and harmony, it must begin from a home. If a home produces Godly character, the society will be a safe haven for all to live in. WE CAN ONLY HAVE A BETTER SOCIETY with good character, good conduct, peaceful and loving atmosphere, when we have an ideal Christian Home.  Hence, without an ideal home, the society can only get worse and be thrown into chaos. As good children are raised from good homes, so also armed robbers, kidnappers, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc are raised from bad homes. If the home is correct, the society will be correct. Hence, if the home is correct, the Church will be as well.

https://guardian.ng/sunday-magazine/the-ideal-christian-home-part-1/

Albeit, the above quote is atypical for many Christian churches, I believe it reflects a deep impulse that shapes ministry and outreach in many, if not most Christian churches. It is not a huge leap to say that some would assert the answer to our moral and social ills is “Christian” families. This presumption can be seen in many mission, goals and values statements, implicitly and explicitly.
For me, the importance of healthy families in creating and sustaining healthy societies and churches is not disputable.
The rub comes with our understanding what exactly is an “ideal family”. It is my opinion, the prevailing “ideal family” is perceived as a “nuclear family” seen through nostalgic lens. In that regard, Brooks’ article presents a challenge that must not be ignored.

Consistent with the evening news, I will leave you with this quote:

…while social conservatives have a philosophy of family life they can’t operationalize, because it no longer is relevant, progressives have no philosophy of family life at all, because they don’t want to seem judgmental. The sexual revolution has come and gone, and it’s left us with no governing norms of family life, no guiding values, no articulated ideals. On this most central issue, our shared culture often has nothing relevant to say—and so for decades things have been falling apart.

Stay tuned for the next post…