|
“The good old
days are now: What today's families are doing right” By Delores Curran School shootings, the movie American
Beauty, and scores of television documentaries have highlighted the
deplorable state of the American family. We are painfully aware of what
families are doing wrong, but who's talking about what our families are doing
right? We're led to believe that the
mythical happy family of the past led a life where major problems involved
squabbles over the car or Barbie's lack of a prom date. Not so. Never was. But for some perverse reason we want
to enshrine this image of the idealized family and use it as the yardstick
against which we measure the health of today's family. Whenever reality is
measured against the idealized, reality is going to come out the loser. "I'm glad I'm not raising kids
today" is a familiar refrain from the grandparent generation. Yet when
today's younger parents are asked if they would rather be parenting a
generation or two ago, they respond with an equally emphatic no. Why the
dichotomy? The family is a product of its time
and culture, so it is always changing to meet the challenges of rearing kids
in a childhood culture different from that of the parents' own. It's
understandable that grandparents throughout history have said, "I'm glad
I'm not raising kids today," because they're a culture or two away from
the skills needed today. Cultural shifts demand new attitudes
and skills. The skills required to cope with immigration differed
dramatically from those of the Great Depression, World War II, and Vietnam. Today's parents are blessedly free of
the stresses of such historic eras, but they face other challenges: drugs,
affluence, a sex-- and violence-laden media, political and religious
divisions and scandals, job insecurity, school shootings, and shifting gender
roles. And they're doing a pretty good job of meeting these challenges. In addition to
developing new parenting strategies, today's parents-children of an
introspective generation-are more honestly evaluating their own family of
origin and devising means of avoiding what they perceive as weaknesses in the
parenting they received. Paradoxically, many fault their
parents for the very skills required earlier in maintaining a strong family.
Shared parenting is one such example. Today's parents who are critical of
their parents' strict role divisions don't realize that if their parents had
stepped out of traditional roles, the family would have been ostracized and
isolated, the children exposed to censure and ridicule. Surely there were
couples who desired reverse roles in earlier eras but sacrificed them for the
sake of the children. We can't judge yesterday's parents with today's lenses. Nonetheless, empathetic or critical,
modern parents seem bent on not repeating attitudes and behaviors that
influenced their own childhood negatively. We're seeing the same reaction
toward schools, church, and other institutions. One family specialist sees the family
in a constant pendulum of parenting styles, so that each generation repeats
that of its grandparents. Children of rigidity often become permissive
parents whose children swing back to rigidity in parenting. I question such a
sweeping generalization, but we appear to be moving toward a healthier
balance between the two. While the final results of modern-day
parenting are not in, there are several obvious positives that vocal family
doomsayers ignore. Bent on pointing out what's wrong with today's family,
they fail to acknowledge what's right. Such a stance may get viewers and
votes but is hardly reassuring to parents who need society's affirmation for
what they're doing right. Let's examine a few of the positives. Two-parent families Recent census data show that 71
percent of today's children are being reared in two-- parent families.
Highlighting this figure, rather than the repeated statistic that one in four
children lives in a single-parent home, presents a different perspective. The irony is that this statistic
correlates with that of a hundred years ago, the difference being that single
parents then were widowed instead of divorced. The positive side is that today's
mothers are better equipped to parent alone than their equivalents a century
ago. They've been in the workplace. They can drive, manage money, and deal
with the myriad of red tape that's part of our lives today but was alien to
their predecessors. While it is not easy to juggle job
and single parenthood, millions of parents are accomplishing the feat
adequately. They aren't forced to put their kids in orphanages or with
relatives while they work in the mills or take in laundry, as were widows of
yore. Shared parenting Among parent educators, this is the
most significant change noted in just one generation. Because of changing
gender roles-and because of the pain men experienced with emotionally distant
fathers-- dads are becoming active parents, involved more intimately than
just playing with their sons. They recognize that good fathering involves
more than baseball and that their daughters need them, too. Today one finds men attending
parenting workshops, unheard of 30 years ago, and instead of being mocked for
caring for their children, they are widely respected and often envied by
women in more traditional-role marriages. The same older generations of women
who say they're glad they're not rearing kids today express envy at this
shared parenting, often adding a statement of gratitude that their
grandchildren have caring, involved dads. Communication When asked how they compare their
marriage and parenting with that of their parents, today's parents are apt to
reply that their communication and conflict resolution techniques are
superior. "My parents went into a
prolonged cold war, speaking to each other only through us kids when they
couldn't agree," one woman said. "It was frightening. My husband
and I have our disagreements-lots of them-but we talk until we work them out.
No long, cold silences permitted here." Many men report that their dad simply
walked out the door at the sign of conflict, an acceptable male way of
handling unpleasantness in earlier times. This behavior sent the message to a
wife that an issue was not to be discussed. In many families issues like
money disagreements were never satisfactorily settled. Today's healthy couples are not
content with such behavior. They work toward consensus, partnership, and a
balance of power. The highest divorce rate is among couples who do not
achieve this balance. Intimacy The explosion of books, workshops,
and movements like Marriage Encounter indicate the value today's couples
place on achieving intimacy over roles in their relationship. A family
researcher once studied 26 marriage manuals of the 1950s. He discovered that
while most of them carefully spelled out the roles of wives and husbands-cooking, mowing lawns, etc.-only two mentioned relationship
and intimacy. Many of today's couples who rate
their parents as good mothers and fathers have observed a loneliness in their
parents' marriage once the children leave home, a pattern they don't want to
repeat. Markedly this new generation of
parents, born during the sexual revolution, recognizes the fallacy of
equating sex with intimacy. In this area, in fact, they have been
instrumental in leading the church into an understanding of intimacy that is
broader than simply sex and procreation. And they are working hard to ensure
that their relationship endures during and after the child-rearing years. Institutional accountability While the above shifts take place
within families, parenting concerns have also manifested themselves publicly
in calls for changes in education, church, the marketplace, and the
workplace. No longer do parents mutely turn
children over to the schools. They monitor curriculum, methodology, and
environment, forcing districts to adopt open enrollment plans enabling
parents to choose schools best suited for their children. The explosion in
private and home schooling indicates widespread dissatisfaction with
available public education. Parents are also searching out
family-friendly parishes, those with preschools, supervised Sunday nurseries,
parenting support groups like MOMS, after-school care, good parochial and CCD
education, and active youth ministry. They're willing to step over
traditional parish boundaries to find such parishes. In spite of dire hand-wringing over
disaffiliation of boomer Catholics, today's parents make up the majority at
most large parishes. These parents are looking for a family spirituality that
meets the agendas and needs of their family life. The greatly increased sales
of books related to family faith indicate this interest, but they want more
than just a rehash of pre-Vatican II devotions. Evangelical megachurches
successfully target today's parents by offering a veritable university of
family support systems. One in our neighborhood no longer calls itself a
church but a "Family Worship Center." Today's parents have also become
savvy consumers in the marketplace, demanding safer toys, healthier foods,
and more wholesome video games, television, and activities for children.
Modern advertising, aware of this trend, makes a direct appeal to these
parents by promoting the safety and wholesomeness of its products. In the workplace, we find parents
turning down promotions if the new job carries a negative impact on the
family. In the spring of 2001 the Secretary of the Army issued the startling
command that, unless there's a national emergency, future
transfers of soldiers take place in the summer so the children's
schooling not be interrupted. He explained that highly trained soldiers are
leaving the service in droves because of family concerns, adding that many of
these stresses can be minimized if the Army takes some simple steps like
eliminating year-round transfers. Corporations and
businesses are likewise becoming more sensitive to family needs, recognizing
that this will allow them to retain loyal and productive workers. Thus, in just one generation, we have
seen the emergence of flex time so parents can stay home with a sick child or
attend an important school event, telecommuting, shared jobs, maternity
leave, and flexible work hours-all considered laughable in earlier times. These institutional shifts didn't
just happen but are the result of today's parents' determination to have a
voice in the institutions set up to serve them. The helpless acceptance of
past parents has given way to a generation of parents who exhibit
responsibility for assuming some control over cultural impacts on family
life. Who can argue that this is anything
but positive? In spite of these obvious strides in
healthy family life, the media, older generations, and, yes, even churches,
continue to portray today's family as pathological. Admittedly, we have
families with severe problems and we have problem families, but we've always
had them. The high number of elderly who admit to physical, emotional, and
sexual abuse in childhood attests to this well-concealed fact. Alcoholism, mental illness, spouse
abuse, and even tuberculosis were carefully hidden away in those
"good" families of the past-ironically the families we now idealize
and hope to reproduce. Returning to such good old days is a
foolish wish, captured in the remark of a disgruntled politician, "To
heck with the future. Let's get on with the past." Today's parents don't want to get on
with the past. They want to enjoy the present with their families while
preparing children to face the challenges of their future. Thus it has always
been and will be in strong families. They're glad they're raising their kids
today, just as their parents were glad a generation ago when the demise of
the family was also predicted. It seems to be God's plan, as Carl
Sandburg understood when he wrote, "A baby is God's idea that the world
should go on." MLA Citation ·
Curran, Dolores. "The Good Old Days are Now:
What Today's Families are Doing Right." U.S.Catholic
2002: 19. ProQuest. Web. 9 Feb. 2011. <http://search.proquest.com/docview/225347639?accountid=1169>.
|