Nobody can characterize families of the past (monogamous or
polygamous) as unfailingly unified and showing exemplary concern
for offspring. Children, as much as wives and husbands, were
abused and neglected. Concern over education was at times
questionable. The projected ideal of authority and infallibility
resulted in the perpetuation of patterns of experiences from
which we are still fighting to free ourselves. Notwithstanding
these and other failures, we still have to acknowledge that a
shift, from individual and family responsibility to a diffuse
sense of social responsibility, characterizes the process
affecting the status of children. The family in the civilization
of illiteracy embodies expectations pertinent to progressively
mediated practical experiences: from childbirth-an almost
industrial experience-to education; from entering the family
agreement, mediated by so many experts-lawyers, priests, tax
consultants, psychologists-to maintaining a sense of commonalty
among family members; from embodying direct interaction and a
sense of immediacy to becoming instances of segmentation,
change, and interaction, and instances of competition and
outright conflict. The institution of the family must also
counteract sequentiality and linearity with a sense of
relativity that allows for more choices, which the new human
scale makes possible. This new pragmatic framework also allows
for higher expectations.
Like any other institution, the institution of marriage (and the
bureaucracy it has generated) has its own inertia and drive to
survive, even when the conditions of its necessity, at least in
the forms ascertained in the past, are no longer in place. In
short, the breakdown of the family, even if equated with the
failure of the individuals constituting it-children included-is
related to the new structural foundation of a pragmatic
framework for which it is not suited as a universal model, or to
which it is only partially acceptable. This does not exclude the
continuation of family. Rather, it means that alternative forms
of cooperation and interaction substituting the family will
continue to emerge. Just as literacy maintains a presence among
many other literacies, the family is present among many forms of
reciprocal interdependence, some expanding beyond the man-woman
nucleus. To understand the dynamics of this change, a closer
look at how the new pragmatic framework of the civilization of
illiteracy affects experiences pertinent to family is necessary
here.
The history of the family, independent of its various embodiments
(matriarchal, patriarchal, polygamous, monogamous, restricted or
extended, heterosexual or homosexual), is in many respects the
history of the appropriation of the individual by society. The
offspring of primitive humans belonged to nobody. If they
survived to puberty, they continued life on their own, or as
members of the group in which they were born, as nameless as
their parents. Children and parents were amoral and competed for
the same resources. The offspring of the humans constituting
their own identity, and their own universe parallel to that of
nature, belonged more and more to what emerged as the family,
and by extension to the community (tribe, village, parish). The
child was marked, named, nurtured, and educated, as limited as
this education might have been. It was given language and,
through the experience of work, a sense of belonging. In all
known practical experiences-work, language, religion, market,
politics-the succession of generations was specifically
acknowledged. Rules, some pertaining to the preservation of
biological integrity, others to property and social life, were
established in order to accommodate relations between
generations.
Over centuries, family ownership of children decreased while that
of society increased. This is reflected in the various ways
church, school, social institutions, and especially the market
claim each new generation. In this process, mediation becomes
part of family life: the priest, the teacher, the counselor, the
language of advertisement, direct marketing, and much, much more
is insinuated between children and their parents. The process
intensifies as expectancies of better life for less effort become
predominant. Responsibilities, procreation included, are
distributed from the parents to the practical experiences of
genetics. Test tube production of babies is an alternative to
natural procreation. More to come. As a matter of fact, both
procreation and adoption are dominated by strong selective
methods and design procedures. Genetic traits are identified and
matched in the genetic banks of adoptable children. Surrogate
mothers are selected and contracted based on expectations of
behavior and heredity. Sperm banks offer selections from high IQ
or high physical performance bulls. Other mediators specify
ideal cows, surrogate mothers whose offspring are treated like
any other commodity-"satisfaction guaranteed." If the product is
somehow unsatisfactory, the dissatisfied parents get rid of it.
Obviously, the language and literacy expected for the success of
the biochemical reaction in the test tube is different from that
involved in the constitution of the family. It is also different
from the literacy involved in the change from instinctual sexual
encounters to love, procreation, and child rearing. In each of
the procedures mentioned, new languages-of genetics, for
example-introduce levels of mediation that finally affect the
efficiency of procreation. As nightmarish as some of these
avenues might seem, they are in line with the entire development
towards the new pragmatics: segmentation-the task is divided
into sub-tasks-networking-to identify the desired components and
strategies for synthesis-and task distribution. Children are not
yet made on the Internet, but if the distinction between matter
and information suggested by some geneticists is carried
through, it would not be impossible to conceive of procreation
on networks.