A paradox has developed: Homosexuals want to establish families
and to have them acknowledged by society. Adults who have
children choose to avoid the family contract. Well over 30% of
the children born in the USA are born out of wedlock. In the
pragmatic equation of human self-constitution, these facts bear
deeper signification.
Commenting before a television camera after a celebrity divorce
trial, an onlooker remarked that there is more communication in
preparing a pre-nuptial agreement than during a marriage. As
exaggerated and imprecise (communication between whom-the couple
or their representatives?) as this remark probably is, it
nevertheless captures some traits of family life in our age.
Indeed, families are constituted on the basis of economic
agreements, mediated by lawyers and financial consultants. The
risk of family breakdown is carefully integrated in the
calculations establishing the viability of the marriage.
Children are part of the calculation-minus the long-lasting
emotional effects-as are the odds for illness, disability, and
liabilities, such as living parents and siblings who might need
assistance, or obligations due to previous marriages. The curves
registering amount of time the recently married spend together
reveals that once the agreement is signed, dialogue shrinks to
less than eight hours a week, which is well below the time spent
watching television-almost seven hours a day-or devoted to
physical exercise. If surfing the Net is part of the newlyweds'
life, there is even less dialogue.
Typically, both partners in the marriage work, and this affects
other aspects of family life besides dialogue. When children
arrive, the time parents spend with them decreases progressively
from the days following birth through the critical years of high
school. It is reported that on the average, youngsters in the USA
get their parents' attention for less than four hours a week. In
some European countries, this time can reach eight to ten hours.
On the Asian sub-continent, many children lose contact with
their parents before the age of six. Statistics show that over a
quarter of the American student population planning to enroll in
college never discuss their high school programs, or necessary
preparation courses, with their fathers. Close to half this
amount never discuss their plans with their mothers (single or
not). The same holds true for students in Italy, France, and
Belgium.
Divorce percentages, abortion rates, number of partners over
one's lifetime, and hours spent with the family in meaningful
exchange of ideas or in common tasks express a condition of the
family that reflects the dynamics of today's human practical
experiences. Over 16 million children under the age of eighteen
years live with one parent (mainly the mother). Economics
(income level, joblessness, opportunity) plays a critical role
in the life of the young and of their progenitors.
All the changes leading to the civilization of illiteracy affect
the experience of family life, and result in radical changes of
the family model itself. Faster rhythms of experiences leading
to casual relationships and to forming a family are on record.
Shorter cycles during which the experience is exhausted result in
increasingly unstable relations and families. Permanence is no
longer the expectation in marriage. Throughout society,
clear-cut distinctions between morally right and wrong are being
replaced by situation ethics. Increased mediation, through
counselors, lawyers, doctors, and financial planners, explains
the new efficiency of the family as short-lived interaction and
cooperation. The factors mentioned characterize the new pragmatic
framework of human existence in which a new kind of
interpersonal commitment is made and a new type of family is
established, not unlike the short-lived corporations that are
exhausted as soon as their product's potential has been reached.
In this pragmatic framework, family-like interactions harking
back to the civilization of literacy, with its hierarchy and
central authority and the promise of stability and security, are
considered the only alternative to the new situation of the
family. The people who consciously seek this alternative
discover that the family is bound by relatively loose
connections and that reciprocally advantageous distributed tasks
replace family unity. Mediated and segmented experiences and
vague commitments, which evolve into a frame of vague morality,
dominate family life today. Marriages of expediency, undertaken
to solve some difficulty-such as resident status in some
countries, health insurance, care for one's old age, better
chances at a career- illustrate the tendency.
Once the conditions for the perpetuation and dissemination of
values associated with literacy are no longer granted, at the
current globally integrated scale of humankind, family life
changes fundamentally. Even the notion of family is questioned.
Family unity, reflected in the coherent pragmatic framework
afforded by literacy, is replaced by individual autonomy and
competition. An array of options greater than the one feasible
at the scale characteristic of agricultural or industrial
economy, presents itself to adults and children in their
practical experiences of self-constitution. Nobody escapes the
temptation of trying and testing in the multiple of choices that
are characteristic of the civilization of illiteracy.
There are many facets to what is called family. The concept
displays ample variety in its perceived or construed meaning.
Sexual instincts manifested as attraction, associated with the
awareness of the consequence of reproduction, might lead the list
in defining what it took to establish a family. At the same level
of importance is the need to establish a viable unity of
economic, cultural, and psychological significance, a framework,
sanctioned by religious and political entities, for carrying out
obligations significant to the community. These, and a number of
additional elements, such as morality based on the pragmatics of
health, inter-generational exchange of information and aid,
social functions ensuring survival and continuity through
cooperation and understanding with other families, are tightly
connected. The nature of this interconnectedness is probably a
much better identifier of what, under given socio- historical
circumstances, is considered and experienced as family.