3 . A Return To Extended Families
While
the nuclear family will certainly do in a pinch, it is far from being
the ideal social environment for youngsters to grow up in. The presence
of additional adult family members gives any youngsters in the family
additional sources of supervision, which can be very important if both
parents of those youngsters have full-time jobs outside of the home.
Also, the presence of additional adults in the household tends to act
as a "brake," or limiting force, on any disagreements between, and/or
abusive relationships between, members of the extended family. Finally,
the presence of additional adults will also tend to reduce
proportionally the expense associated with each household member as the
cost of many so-called "fixed" expenses will be amortized over a larger
number of income producing individuals.
For the last several decades,
various groups have experimented with very large extended families,
usually calling them "communes" or similar names.92
Virtually all of those experiments were carried out in rural
environments. Part of the reason for this is that building codes and
other laws are somewhat hostile towards individuals and nuclear
families who choose to group themselves into extended families by
choice, rather than by blood or marriage. An example of such hostility
is the placing of lower population limits on residential units which
are inhabited by "unrelated" individuals, as opposed to related
individuals, and the failure to produce low-cost housing which in any
way provides for the possibility of having more than two adults in a
single residential unit (roughly ninety percent or more of all
apartment units have two or fewer bedrooms, and most landlords of such
units would be hostile towards renting any such unit to a family unit
which had more than two adults, and where any adult was unrelated to
the remainder93).
But one of the principal
functions of the family is the socialization of youngsters so that they
become integrated with society as a whole. Dividing our society up into
a group of nuclear families which have little contact with one another
actually contributes to an anti-social atmosphere that, in turn, tends
to produce anti-social individuals.
The contributing factors to
the nuclearization of our families have been: a) the great wealth
which Western Civilization has produced in the masses, which wealth has
led to a financial ability for each couple and many individuals to
afford to maintain households which are independent of one another;
b) the high mobility of these nuclear families, where moving every
few years tends to destroy relationships with neighbors on a
semi-regular basis; c) the increasing state of fear in which our
nuclear families live, contributing a motive for enhancing the natural
reticence of most of us, which leads in turn to a failure for most of
us to even establish any relationship at all with the majority of our
nearest neighbors; and d) an attitude of not wanting to get
involved, which attitude infects our society with a great sickness of
not caring for our fellow man, a sickness which in turn allows the evil
elements in our society to operate with virtually no fear that they
will be caught or otherwise called to answer for their crimes, except
quite by accident. Each of these factors deserves some further
discussion.
a. Wealth Priorities
It is quite
natural for young people to wish to be independent of their parents at
some point in time. The old Roman patriarchy went too far against that
natural force by making the younger generation(s) into virtual slaves
of the patriarch.
But society ought to ask
itself if the maintenance of separate households for nuclear families
does not have enough negative side effects that society ought to
develop some alternatives. Roughly 40 percent of income is allocated to
housing and other extra expenses associated with maintaining an
independent household for each nuclear family. In other words, it is
very expensive for society as a whole to encourage independent living
arrangements for its population.
The United States is currently
grappling with a peripheral part of this issue in the context of the
welfare debate. Present law makes it very advantageous for young girls
with children to set up an independent household. We have discovered
numerous ill effects which are caused by encouraging the formation of
such independent households. As I write this, a welfare reform bill is
working its way through Congress which will require under-age women to
live with a parent in order to be eligible for welfare. This is
definitely a step in the right direction, and if anything, it validates
my overall thesis.
But this book is designed to
look at larger social issues. One of those issues is the allocation of
the wealth which our society produces. Why is it necessarily true that
the ill effects which we have identified for young welfare mothers
automatically cease when that young mother reaches the age of eighteen?
The truth is, that there is no reason at all to believe that they would.
So, the larger question should
be, is society actually causing many of its own ills by encouraging the
use of such a large percentage of its wealth for the formation of those
independent households for all of its nuclear families? I believe that
it is.
Think of any great things
which society ought to accomplish: better education for the young; a
reduction in homelessness and poverty; increasing the accomplishments
of our space program; or whatever. Each of those great ideals is
limited by the availability of funding. At its most fundamental level,
this becomes a question of the allocation of some additional portion of
the wealth of our society towards the accomplishment of societal goals,
as opposed to allocating it for the day-to-day living expenses
(including any savings) of individual citizens. That is what is really
at issue when tax rates are being discussed.94
So, if society wishes to
accomplish any of the great ideals which presently are short of
funding, it must somehow re-allocate its wealth to do so. One obvious
source of wealth is the present fixation that every nuclear family is
entitled, almost by right, to own their own home. Clearly, there are
lower cost ways for a nuclear family to live, and those ways clearly
include the combining of resources with other nuclear families to live
much more cheaply than if each such family has totally independent
living accommodations. If this reduction in spending by the family is
encouraged, it could be accompanied by an increase in taxes to
contribute funds to whatever social goals that our society sees as most
desirable to have met.
b. Mobility Practices
Business has
always encouraged mobility, as the natural flows of the business cycle
tend to cause jobs to appear and disappear with great regularity. Some
regions will have an excess of jobs while others will have an excess of
unemployed workers. The overall economy balances itself by encouraging
unemployed workers to move. Also, the natural career path for many
people frequently involves relocating on a regular basis, almost as a
matter of policy for many employers. Anything associated with the
military is usually subject to that sort of dislocation on a
semi-regular basis.
What we have never considered
is the effect which a high degree of mobility has on our social
structures. Moving tends to be very disruptive of social contacts. You
leave one residence where you had some degree of contact with at least
some of your neighbors and you enter another residence where none of
those contacts exist.
The frequency of moving which
is prevalent in our current society has naturally destroyed its former
novelty. In the past of a century ago, a family might move once in a
lifetime, and it was usually the biggest event of one's life. Whether
you are getting into a covered wagon to migrate across the plains or
getting on a ship to migrate across the ocean, you are undergoing a
major change in lifestyle with the move, and it is not likely that you
will ever choose to do it again. Because moving was formerly a rare
event, our social structures were naturally oriented towards making any
new arrivals welcome and quickly integrating them into the community at
large. This is the traditional concept behind such organizations as the
so-called "welcome wagon," which in its present form is nothing more
than a way for local businesses to extract excess funds from the new
arrivals.
Because the novelty of moving
no longer exists, there is no longer any automatic reaction to new
arrivals that motivates the existing population to do anything special
for any new arrivals. Society now basically leaves new arrivals alone
to form whatever friendships or other contacts occur naturally through
such required exercises as beginning a new job, enrolling your kids in
school, or finding a compatible church. If none of those activities
produce any friendships or new contacts, for whatever reason, then the
act of moving will contribute to the overall isolation of the relocated
nuclear family.
By making communal living
relationships a more natural part of our social order, we will quite
naturally encourage the formation of contacts with the existing
population in the new residence and its surrounding community. In other
words, this will to some degree amount to a re-socialization of the
nuclear family.
Just as we now recognize the
need to socialize our young children, I believe we must also recognize
the need to socialize our nuclear families. It is psychologically
unhealthy to promote living in a private universe. While basic survival
is possible in such an environment, the overall result tends towards a
return to our own animal tendencies (i.e., the Law of the Jungle). To
the extent which we now fear the animals living among us, we must to
some degree blame ourselves for raising those animals by failing to
socialize them properly. This also extends to a failure to socialize
nuclear families, particularly when they relocate.
c. Fear Of Contact
xxx.
d. Fear Of Involvement
Probably the most
insidious change which our modern society has undergone is the
promotion of a fear of getting involved in the affairs of other
individuals. My own "worst example" of this fear is the stabbing death
several decades ago of Kitty Genovese. She was killed while many in her
own neighborhood heard her screams; but nobody wanted to get involved,
so nobody even bothered to call the police. I guess they were happy
when her screaming stopped. Of course, that meant she was dead, or at
least near death.
As shocking as that story
still is, it is merely symptomatic of what our society has trained us
all to know, deep in our gut: if we get involved, we are more likely
than not to regret our involvement. There are many more aspects to
this. If we report a parent for investigation of child abuse, we could
find ourselves sued for making a "false" accusation of abuse. If we
help out someone who appears to need help, we can later discover that
we have been conned, and that the person we helped was a professional
scam artist.
92 The Israeli kibbutzim fall into this pattern, so it is erroneous to only picture hippie communes.
93 This may have as much to do with the perceived need for landlord profits as anything else.
94 For the purposes of this discussion, I am ignoring the effect of governmental debt, which is merely an inter-generational transfer payment. In other words, if you assume that the debt will be paid eventually, it is our descendants who will be stuck with the bill, plus a great deal of interest. On the other hand, if you assume an eventual default, it is our descendants who will be stuck with whatever consequences might accompany a default, which may well include the total destruction of society as we know it. In either case, debt is merely a postponement of consequences.
