The Family in the Modern Age

More Than a Lifestyle Choice

Brigitte Berger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351482882
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

"Many argue that the modern family is an anachronistic institution whose demise is only a question of time. Looking to the family's future, the eminent sociologist Brigitte Berger argues that despite being weakened and embattled, the family will survive as a fundamental social institution. The family has been the cradle of the modern social order for some three hundred years, and will remain the basis for any society concerned with happiness, liberty, equality, and prosperity for all its members. Rather than being condemned to the dust heap of history, or becoming a simple lifestyle choice, the modern family has a number of enduring strengths that will ensure its survival. In The Family in the Modern Age, Berger focuses on four major areas of concern. First, she demonstrates that the short shrift given to the institutional dimension of the family misrepresents the importance and the role of the family today. Second, she documents the close cognitive fit between core elements of the modern family and the stability of modern society, and argues that any society that ignores this connection does so at its own peril. Third, Berger investigates the degree to which currently identified problems may endanger the modern family's vital individual and social functions. And finally, she develops reasonable projections of the future of the family that will be core elements contributing to the creation of a politically democratic and economically prosperous world. Berger takes a long-range view of ""the career"" of the conventional family in the twentieth century. Her perspective is distinctly different from that widespread in scholarly literature today. She takes account of recent demographic shifts in behavior relating to sexuality, marriage, family structure and values, relationships, and family functions. Berger considers hotly contested contemporary issues relating to the family-gay marriage, divorce, abortion, women and work, issues of child-care, among others. Bu"

Part 1
The Assault on the Family

1
The Family: From Basic Institution to “Just Another Lifestyle” Choice

Until a few decades ago most people almost intuitively knew what the term “the family” meant, a father and a mother and their children living together, tied to each other by mutual bonds of love and obligation. While there may have existed a tendency to look at “the family” through rose-tinted glasses and surround it with romanticized notions of marital bliss, no one doubted that this is what a family looks like and, what is more, should look like. If by force of circumstance individuals were compelled to live in different arrangements—as was the case with orphans and widows—they were to be pitied and deemed to be in need of help.

Social scientists, for their part, always recognized that reality frequently falls short of the ideal. Ethnographers, in particular, took great pleasure in impressing upon us that there exist a great variety of ways in which life is organized in cultures different from our own. Nonetheless, all agreed that today, as in the past, some social arrangement one may call a “family” could be recognized in all societies across the globe. Wherever they turned they discovered regularized patterns of conduct that were expressed in more or less enduring forms passed on from one generation to the next. Despite a multitude of intercultural variations, these forms, or structures in technical parlance, were found to be strangely similar. On the basis of a very large number of cases—more than two hundred at the time—ethnographers went on to identify six bedrock features characteristic of the family:¹

1. the organization of human sexuality by means of some form of marriage that serves to socially legitimize the sexual union, regardless whether manifested in the form of monogamy or polygamy and its subcategories;
2. a taken-for-granted acceptance that the core function of this union revolves around the procreation and protection of children;
3. an acknowledgment of the rights and duties between the spouses as well as those of the spouses to their children;
4. some clearly-designated residential arrangement for husband, wife, and children commonly called a household;
5. a set of more or less precisely established reciprocal economic obligations between husband and wife and of both to their children; and finally
6. a socially-legitimated system of reckoning descent.

While in modern societies these bedrock features were found to be encoded in the law, in pre-modern societies seemingly immutable traditions served to secure the fundamental features constitutive of the family perhaps even more forcibly. In all instances these regularized patterns of human life were defined by more or less cogently expressed value systems that revolved around the family regardless of its particular structural manifestation. In every case, family values not only provided shape and meaning to individual behavior but they also equipped domestic behavior patterns with normative, and, at times, even coercive powers. Because in all societies ethnographers encountered it was taken for granted that individuals would organize their behavior along socially-sanctioned familistic lines, they concluded that the family is a massive social unit in which human nature and human needs are indelibly intertwined with the basic requirements of social life. In the shorthand fashion of academics, social scientists dubbed these enduring structures of conduct and their corresponding social expectations and symbolic meanings “the institution of the family.”

To be sure, in their research in the far corners of the globe, ethnographers also came across some borderline cases that led them to question the universality of the institution of the family (the Nayars of the Malabar Coast of India are probably the most frequently cited example). Yet for a long time social analysts agreed that if the institution of the family is not universal, it is probably almost universal and the just-listed features are its recurrent constituent parts. It was full well recognized that human groups differ in many ways: in the forms of marriage and the ways mates are selected; in the types of restrictions imposed on sexuality (such as those governing premarital sex, adultery, incest, and homosexuality); in the social roles assigned to husbands and wives as well as the power and deference accorded to each; in the different structures of kinship and residence; as well as in the different ways children are reared. Yet considering the many ways in which human life differs in almost every other respect, scholars were amazed by the lack of variation in the fundamental characteristics defining the institution of the family. Everywhere, or almost everywhere, these firmly ensconced institutionalized patterns were found to run through human societies like a scarlet thread. Until very recently then, ethnographers celebrated “the family of man” and there existed little disagreement among them that this family-based thread served to tie human life together regardless of race, ethnicity, and differences in time and place.

The Western “Nuclear” Family under Pressure

The family patterns of Western societies, and in particular those of the societies of North-Western Europe and the United States, were found to differ from other family patterns in that the organization of individual and social life revolved around the family in its nuclear form. As pointed out earlier, the term “nuclear” family in the language of the social sciences refers to a family pattern that typically consists of a married couple—husband and wife—and their children, living together in a common or “conjugal” household, that is to say, separate from the wider kinship group. In this nuclear unit individuals are tied to each other by mutual bonds of affection and obligation, and they are dependent upon one other in many ways.

The origin of the conjugal nuclear family is shrouded in mystery. Historically we encounter some variant already in the Hebrew Bible and social historians are able to trace its “career” and permutations through the centuries down to our own time. As we shall see in a later chapter, the behavioral and normative requirements of the nuclear family became the conventional way for the organization of individual and social life in the course of a few centuries. At this point in our argument, however, it is important to appreciate that the nuclear family of Northwest European origin is of long historical standing and the record shows that it antedates the Industrial Revolution by centuries. Though the onset of industrialization in the societies of the West transformed the ways in which people live, work, and consume with cataclysmic speed, the most distinctive structural features of the conventional family long remained unchanged. Neither the progressively declining economic role of the household nor the “sentimental revolution” of the nineteenth century were able to challenge the esteem this type of family enjoyed; and inside and outside of the academy scholars were intrigued by its extraordinary staying power. By the late nineteenth century a sizable literature on the uniqueness of the nuclear family filled the libraries of Western countries. When one reads through this literature today, one is impressed by the degree to which academics, like the vast majority of the population, were convinced that this type of family was not only based on facts of nature but that it was also held to be superior to any other family form.² Long into the early decades of the twentieth century it was taken for granted in all societies of the West that the family in its conventional nuclear form was the central institution of modern life. Neither symptoms attesting to the existence of internal tensions nor the rising tide of all sorts of problematic behaviors in the society at large did much to undermine the persisting faith in its superiority. By and large such symptoms were held to be an inevitable, and perhaps temporary, consequence of the modernization process and, with the notable exceptions of conservatives and radical Marxists, they were expected to abate with the maturation of the industrial order.

As the twentieth century progressed, however, personal and social problems seemed to multiply rather than decrease. As a consequence, fears about the conventional family’s capacity to handle its many functions began to mount. Nowhere were such fears more strongly expressed than in the United States. Here in “the first new nation,” where the forces of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration—the “triple revolution” of modernity—intersected in visibly dramatic ways, the conventional family appeared to have lost its “functional utility” to a special degree. With masses of immigrants streaming into America’s rapidly growing industrial urban centers, social observers feared that families bereft of the traditional support of kin and community were ill-equipped to adequately meet their central functions and it became customary to tacitly assume that the social isolation of migrants in the exploding cities was responsible for the soaring rates in crime, delinquency, alcoholism, drug addiction, and an increase in family breakup. The newly-established discipline of sociology, in particular, seemed to be able to document with a fair measure of certainty that the conventional family was ill-suited to absorb the fallout from the broad changes sweeping through the industrializing world. Confronted with such empirical data, progressive intellectuals began to argue ever more forcibly that it fell upon the modern state—both for moral as well as economic reasons—to design and provide public mechanisms to compensate for the conventional nuclear family’s inferred shortcomings.³ The Aid to Dependent Children and the Social Security legislation of the l930s may be cited as the most outstanding public policy achievement motivated by this new understanding of the role of the state. Other public measures ranging from the establishment of child guidance clinics to an assortment of family support programs were enacted as well for the purpose of shoring up a family increasingly held to be in need of support. Proliferating numbers of trained experts who made the family their vocation and profession, the “friendly intruders” in the language of the time, set out to bring individual behavior held to be problematic under control by getting involved in the inner workings of the family.

It is of some importance to realize that the policy model developed during the first part of the twentieth century focused, in the main, on the behavior of the individual rather than on the family as a social unit. Though America’s individualistically-based political philosophy undoubtedly promoted this particular mode of intervention, it also reflected the country’s peculiar propensity for quasi-psychotherapeutic explanatory approaches. That is to say, all individual deviations from idealized behavioral norms tended to be reduced to psychological malfunctions that were held to have their origin in defective family interaction. In this manner untested and often competing psychologistic notions about the factors shaping individual behavior were introduced into the public discourse. Without fail this modus operandi made for a situation in which professionals increasingly came to understand their services as rescue missions designed to extricate individuals from destructive family relationships, however vaguely defined. In the relevant literature of the time one reads a lot about the problems caused by authoritarian fathers and overbearing mothers—or, in a competing reading, about the noncaring father and the overindulgent mother. Unintentionally, though perhaps inevitably, the doors were thereby opened to what the sociologist Philip Rieff has called the “triumph of the therapeutic.” Increasingly individuals were no longer held to be responsible for their own behavior, they now were seen to be hapless victims of destructive family dynamics. In short order it became accepted practice to blame the family for all manifestations of individual behavior that gave cause for concern. The growing trend fueled not only a phenomenal rise in the prestige and discretionary power of the growing legions of family professionals; it also promoted the expansion of governmental authority to intervene in intimate matters of personal and familial life. This deep-seated predisposition for individual-centered psychologistic explanations contributed in no small measure to the way in which the conventional family came to be viewed in subsequent decades.

By the time the l960s came around it had become increasingly evident to policymakers that many of the well-intentioned public measures designed to upgrade the functions of families held to be in distress remained elusive. Their failure manifested itself to a palpable degree in the attempt to integrate minority groupings into the economic and cultural mainstream of American society. With this recognition something akin to a “paradigm shift” a la Thomas Kuhn occurred in that the focus switched from the individual to factors of social life. Though the psychologistic mode of intervention was never fully abandoned, a trend established itself to attribute individual problematic behavior to the persistence of racial discrimination and the unequal distribution of political and economic power. Poverty and inequality, rather than faulty family interactions, were now identified as the “root cause” of all personal and social ills.

The “paradigm shift” progressed in distinctive stages, with one phase replacing the next in rapid succession. With the enactment of the Johnson administration’s “Great Society” programs, the policy focus shifted from viewing problematic individual behavior as a consequence of family shortcomings to viewing it as a product of long-entrenched discriminatory practices racial minority groups had experienced in the past. As many politicians and policymakers became increasingly convinced that only greater governmental involvement could provide a solution to mounting problems, a rousing call for national action issued forth and a “war on poverty” was declared. All that was needed to make social dysfunctional behavior, racial discrimination, and persisting poverty a thing of the past was a combination of national will, money, and good old American know-how meted out by credentialed experts. Was America not the richest and the most caring nation in the world, and the smartest one to boot? Or so the argument went. Far-reaching legislation was introduced to do away with the most egregious discriminatory practices that had plagued the American political system for all too long. Using the powers of the federal government, racial segregation—which subsequently was extended to include segregation by gender, age, and the sexual propensities of individuals—was outlawed and mechanisms were put into place that aimed to make up for the most damaging consequences of past discrimination. Soon a large network of programs began to span the country from coast to coast and the courts set out to hold individuals and organizations transgressing against the new laws legally responsible.

There can be little doubt that the civil rights legislations of 1964 targeting discrimination and the lack of access to opportunities and resources succeeded in many ways. A number of Great Society cornerstone programs—such as the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid—must even be seen as genuine and long overdue achievements. Yet in other important areas of social life the well-intentioned legislations failed to achieve its goals. So for instance, it did not take long for it to become evident that few of the antipoverty and antidiscrimination policies had the desired effect on the ways in which individuals conducted their personal lives. Poverty rates, despite minor fluctuations, persisted and the climbing rates of delinquency, crime, alcoholism, drug addiction, truancy, divorce, desertion, illegitimacy, and so forth, signaled to any one who had eyes to see that the link between poverty and destructive personal behavior was not as clear-cut as had been assumed. Some prescient policymakers soon recognized that it was an altogether different thing to declare war on poverty through legislation that outlawed discriminatory practices in employment, politics, and housing, from bringing about actual and lasting changes in individual behavior. More importantly, however, few at the time were inclined to link the de facto growth of worrisome behavioral trends to the ambivalent role the new public policy had assigned to the conventional family. In fact, it was to take more than two decades, some major social upheavals, and two further phases in the paradigm shift, until it became admissible to give voice once more to the inherent linkage between the two.

While it was self-evident for most ordinary people that the family plays an indispensable role in the socialization of children and their preparation for a productive role in society, the creeping disillusionment with the effectiveness of Great Society programs motivated idealistic poverty warriors to look for remedies in an altogether different direction. By coincidence rather than design, a number of adversary cultural and political movements jumped onto the public stage precisely at the time when their ineffectiveness could no longer be denied. In a fateful confluence of countercultural sentiments and New-Left politics the public discourse was swiftly radicalized and in an amazingly brief span of time a point was reached in the late 1960s when an all-out war against the conventional family became the agenda of the day.

Under the influence of theoretical perspectives meted out in academic disputes it became customary in progressively-inclined elite circles to portray the old liberal domestic policy approach of the first part of the twentieth century as one dominated by a set of policies and mechanisms concocted by the ruling classes—the powerful and the rich—for the purpose of controlling the lower classes and those deviating from the cultural mainstream. With energy and resolve a slew of studies was conducted to uncover class-based social controls in education, social work, medicine, psychiatry, the criminal justice system, and the juvenile courts. So, for instance, it was argued that public welfare programs, far from being motivated by humanitarian impulses, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1 The Assault on the Family
• Part 2 The Modern Family: Its Nature and History
• Part 3 The Conventional Family Today and Its Future
• Subject Index
• Author Index