Family and Society

[dazzleman]

Another loaded question.

On the whole, traditional families are better than alternative families. 

Is every traditional family better than every alternative family?  No.  But on average, traditional families get better results.

[dazzleman]

On the whole, traditional families are better than alternative families. 

Is every traditional family better than every alternative family?  No.  But on average, traditional families get better results.

I would agree with this, mainly just because traditional families just tend to have more stable environments. Stability is a very important factor in raising a child, and the reason many non-traditional family units gain their structure is because of some largely destabilizing factor.

You don't think love is more important than having a "traditional" family, and what makes you think that a traditional family creates a more stable children? There could be no love in a traditional family, and don't tell me traditional families are more loving.

You're in denial of reality, and simply mouthing politically correct propaganda.

Is every traditional family better than every alternative family?  No, of course not.  But we're talking trends here.  Traditional families, with a mother and father happily married to each other, are the most stable environment for raising kids.  Other types of families are generally not as good.

Are you familiar with the statistics on the outcomes of raising kids in alternative families?  Children from single parent homes perform worse in school, girls from these homes are more likely to get pregnant as teenagers, and about 75% of those in prison are from single parent homes.

The explosion of single parent homes is a calamity, and the segments of society that have had the greatest explosion have also fared the worst socially and economically.

These are simply undeniable facts that no amount of political correctness can cover up.

[dazzleman]

Would a family where the mother worked and the father stayed home be considered "traditional".

I can understand the advantages of a family where only one parent worked over other less-"traditional" structures, but I don't see why it matters which parent this is.

I'm a BIG supporter of the "traditional" family but I define "traditionally" more broadly than either J.R. or NickG, to include a two-parent family where both parents work. Besides the mere structure of the family, however, it should also be a "functional" family, and let us not confuse functionality with structure when the two are not inherently tied to one another.

My definition of a traditional family is a mother and father, married to each other, raising their children together.

Whether both parents work, or one or the other works, is irrelevant in my opinion.  Therefore, I would include families where both parents work under my definition of traditional families, as long as the family consists of the children's mother and father married to each other.

Non-working mothers are not necessarily traditional, unless you don't go back more than 70 or 80 years.  As far as work is concerned, we have gone through a cycle in which work and home were at first closely connected (during the agricultural era), then became highly separated (during the industrial era), but now are becoming more closely connected again, with better communication and more work-at-home arrangements that make it less necessary to physically be in a certain place to do your job.

What all this means is that during the agricultural era, everybody in the family "worked" in what amounted to the family business.  Back then, before modern conveniences, it took a huge amount of work just to deal with the necessities of keeping clothes clean (without washing machines), food prepared (without refrigeration), etc.  All these things were the mother's job, though she often had help with them, and they kept the family going so that the father could work in the fields, something that the mother sometimes helped with also.  There was little separation between work and family life in these circumstances, and the children were under the supervision of either parent while the parents worked.

As the industrial era dawned, and people left farming in large numbers, work began to require people to leave their homes for many hours a day, and to be away from their children.  There were still many things to be done around the home, so the arrangement of father works/mother stays home was born.  The mother did not stay at home necessarily to take care of the kids, primarily, but to do the heavy work necessary to keep the home functioning, though being home made the mother available to look after the kids.

By the middle of the 20th century, it was becoming easier and easier, with the development of labor saving machines and refrigeration, to do the work necessary to run a home.  This shifted the focus of mothers who stayed at home, from performing the work necessary to run the home to looking after her children.  Children became the focus of the stay-at-home mother for the first time.  While previously, the mother was around the children, and the children when old enough were expected to help the mother with the work around the house, at this point it shifted so that the mother was more working for the children. 
This is how it remains today, incidentally, whether or not the mother works outside the home.  Rather than being an asset to help with the farmwork, as children were during the agricultural era, they became a large burden and expense, both in terms of money and parental attention.

As women who were staying home acquired more free time, they started to think a lot about their position in society vis-a-vis the men, and found their position wanting.  Not having had the responsibility of going to work every day in a more structured and formally demanding environment, they were unable to reasonably evaluate the disadvantages that came with that role, and overly glamorized the idea of having a "career" as men supposedly have (though not every man has a "career," some only have jobs).

At the same time, feminist women devalued the contributions that women were making at home, and urged women to leave the home without making any real provision for how the work women did in the home would be completed in a mother's absence.  In addition, they encouraged the notion that a woman should be able, at the same time, to work, singlehandedly support her children, and singlehandedly raise her children.

Women who followed this feminist advice fully are generally miserable, and the results of it are deadly.  The reality is that one person really can't work and have the whole job for raising kids, and the kids raised in such circumstances are lacking in parental guidance and attention, as well as on the financial side usually.  Predictably, feminists blame men for this situation, and while men play a role in individual situations, it was feminist women who advanced this model of family life on a broad basis.  They effectively want the man's support for a family without him actually being present, something which is not really possible.

More recently, things have started to come full circle, with the growth of less traditional work arrangements.  With better communication and looser organizational structures, it is now less important to physically be present in an office to do a job.  Many people are working from home, at least some of the time, and these people are disproportionately women.  Many women are starting up businesses from the home to allow them to be around their kids more.  The difference from agricultural times is that these arrangements don't allow women to involve their children in their work, but they at least allow the mother to be nearby, and get rid of commuting and things like that that take up additional time.

So I guess this was the long was of saying a family can be a traditional family if both parents work.  It is up to each family to establish a work-family balance, and most two-parent families do, usually but not always opting to have the woman participate to a lesser degree in the labor force than the man.  This explains the wage gap for women; it is largely voluntary and related to choices made in family life. 

With single parent families, all the balances and supports are missing, and it's very hard to do the job right.  Plus, even a single parent who was given an adequate income really couldn't do the job right, because it requires both a male and female perspective.

[dazzleman]

thefactor:

I strongly disagree with you that equality is the main goal of feminism.  It may have been at one time, but the goal of feminism now is to advantage women over men in every possible way, and therefore promote inequality for men.

I'm surprised you can say that you have only heard from other people about feminists encouraging single parent homes, implying that they don't really exist.  I can't believe you haven't heard various feminists say that women don't need a man to raise kids, and that society should somehow reinvent itself to provide all sorts of supports to women who choose to raise children outside of traditional families, and can't hack it as a result.

In a strictly mercenary and practical sense, you are right about financial self-determination.  But what you are saying is that a woman who doesn't work will as a matter of course have no power in her relationship with her husband.  I have seen too many examples to the contrary to really believe this; I think it depends on the sort of marriage a person has.

I also think you are way off when you talk about women being happier if they can live their lives "without undue burdens or expectations from society."  Feminism has simply replaced one set of burdens and expectations with a different set.  And men still labor under a large set of burdens and expectations, that feminists refuse to recognize even exist.  So I think your belief that feminism has really liberated women is very naive.

I also don't think you're correct in saying that feminism returns the mother-child relationship to what it was in the agricultural era.  The big difference is that while in the agricultural era, the child was not the focus of the mother's attention at all times, the mother was still in reasonable proximity to the child, while feminism in an industrial society context generally means that the mother is absent most of the time, and the child is mostly being raised by strangers, paid the minimum wage.

I also think you're way off in saying that previously, fathers had no responsibility for raising children, and were absolved of any blame for problems with children.  This is absolutely untrue, and I think you're buying a little too much into feminist propaganda here.  The father's role has always been different, as it should be, but fathers have always been expected to play some role in raising their kids, and have always been thought less of if their kids turned out poorly.  I would go so far to say that one of the most destructive effects of feminism itself has been to water down the responsibility of fatherhood through overemphasis on the idea that children belong only to the mother, as evidenced by the feminist position on abortion, child custody, etc.

When it comes to work-family balance, I think a lot of it comes down to personality.  Everybody has a different preference for how to raise their kids, and spend their time.  Some women find it very difficult to work and raise their kids properly, especially if they have a demanding job.  Others can't stand staying at home.  I think the decisions that a couple makes are their own business, as long as they don't ask others to subsidize the results of their decisions.

And that is the problem I have with alternative families.  Almost by definition, they are unable to stand on their own and require extra support.  Even their supporters tacitly admit this.  I think it's bad social policy to encourage the creation of families that are not self-sustaining.

[dazzleman]

dazzleman,

Overall I think we've identified our points of agreement and disagreement. Simply, society as a whole, including women, have benefitted from allowing women greater freedom and equality to pursue financial independence and contribute to society outside the home. Children have also benefitted through a bettering of their family's financial situation. While there are exceptions, such as the unfortunate single-parent home, I would argue that a type of feminism that tries to tie the number of parents to the theory is wrong, so we would be in agreement here. Mostly, the single parent home is a separate problem caused by lack of social capital. In addition, most variables of family success are determined by functionality and not structure. There are even successful single-parent families, so functionality, which is usually highlyed tied to SES status and contextual/educational quality of the parents, is the final variable here. Religiousity and strength of culture are also important.

With regard to families standing on their own, I see no problem to government aid to families, no matter what type, as long as it does not encourage breakdowns in functionality. For example, social security and medicaid have done a great deal of good. However I do not support government propping up single parenthood.

I'm not convinced that working mothers have improved family finances.  Two-income families have driven up the prices of expensive budget items like housing.  I'd also say that a minimal amount of parental attention is more important than a lot of material goods.  Kids today have too many material goods, and not enough positive attention from their parents.

I think that family functionality is tied to structure.  While there can be dysfunctionality with any structure, certain structures make functionality more difficult.

I think much of government "aid" to families has contributed to a breakdown in functionality.  In addition, I don't think we should encourage the formation of family units that can't stand on their own.  If everybody needs aid, who is going to provide it?  We sometimes punish people who do the right thing, in order to reward those who do not.  That is how most government programs work in practice, whatever their good intentions may be out the outset.

I think society needs a certain percentage of stay-at-home parents, who make contributions to society through the extra time that they have.  This includes volunteering in the community, doing work for the school, etc.  These parents often do the things that working parents don't have time to do, things that need to be done but are not economically rewarding and never can be.

[dazzleman]

I thought I had meant sole head of household is a female of any age, but just in case...

I could go on to qualify myself further--an original two-parent household becoming a single-mother household through divorce, widowhood, separation and mutual hatred, etc.--but that seems to me to fall more under the "dysfunctional parents" catagory.

All the same, a woman, teenage or otherwise, who has a child with no intentions of including the father as a responsible parent (i.e., the "baby daddy") is almost condemning her child to poverty

My mother has been the sole head of the household since I was 12 or so; we haven't had any financial problems because of it.  I would agree that it is perhaps detrimental to the child's upbringing not to have a father figure to balance the mother (although it wasn't in my case), but I don't see how there's any correlation between the female being the head of the household and the family having financial troubles.

Mine since my dad died when I was 10. Female head of household, single or otherwise, does not in my experience in of itself cause poverty.

Generally, it does.  Those are the statistics.  I don't know the particulars of your family's finances, but most likely your father left behind some life insurance, plus your mother probably got social security for you, and maybe even herself.  That's a lot different from a family which never had a father.

The typical single parent household is a never-married mother who had her children too young, before she was able to establish herself, acquire skills,etc.  She has no shot of being able to support her kids decently, and once she has the kids, the difficulty of getting an education, starting a career, etc., increases exponentially.

People who are saddled with sole responsibility for raising children generally don't do well in the workplace because they don't have the time and energy to commit to making themselves successful.  It doesn't happen on its own.  Women can make more than men, but they are usually not the women who are heading single parent households.

In terms of the non-financial aspects of raising children, while Jake overstated the case, it is far more difficult for one person to raise children than two.  It is also the case that kids who are raised in single parent homes due to death of a parent fare much better than those raised in a single parent home because one of the parents chose to be absent.  Children of never-married parents who lack a stable relationship with one of their parents fare the worst financially, emotionally, and educationally.

There will always be exceptions to these generalities, but the statistics on one-parent homes are damning, and there's no getting around that.

[dazzleman]

Aspects of the nontraditional family that are essential ingredients for poverty:

1. Head of household is a female, of any age
2. The head of household is a teenager, of either sex
3. The parents (one or two..or ) are high-school dropouts
4. English is not the first language spoken at home

What a narrow and deluded view!  You forgot the most important requirements for poverty -

1) Lack of unionization
2) Lack of meaningful minimum wages ($15/hour)
3) Lack of a comfortable welfare state
4) Lack of State services such as medical care and free education

To sum up, a lack of the political will to prevent poverty - a thing which can only be prevented by political action, as it is a normal and integral part of our economic heirarchy. 

To blame some poor person for being poor is assinine.  They had nothing to do with it.

Did you ever think that Storebought, having grown up poor, may know a little more about the causes of poverty than a rich kid sponging off a trust fund from the parents he dislikes?

[dazzleman]

What my prime family value is concerns acceptance, love, and trust.  I have a hard time believing that the members of the Christian Coalition don't feel the same way, despite what their agenda-driven talking heads might say.

Acceptance, love, and trust?!  Have you ever observed any actual families in operation?  They are almost entirely the opposite of that.

I always assume folks can tell when I'm being serious and when I'm being a troll, but I'm afraid I can't always return the favor.  Surely you're kidding.  If so, it's kinda funny.  If not, you poor bastard, this explains quite a lot of your philosophy.  Anyway, both my immediate family of my childhood and my current immediate family love and trust each other.  I think that's common.  At least I hope it is.

I don't think he's kidding.  That's the sad part.  It does explain a lot about his hateful philosophy.  Poor little rich kid....