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"The Future of Family and Tribe," a seminar of CLALs Jewish Public Forum held January 28-29, 2002 in New York City, brought together a dozen leading thinkers on gender, gay rights, adoption, reproductive law, bioethics, and aging. eCLAL is publishing a series of articles based on participants contributions to the seminar. To view other essays from "The Future of Family and Tribe" seminar, click here. This seminar was part of Exploring the Jewish Futures: A Multidimensional Project On the Future of Religion,Ethnicity and Civic Engagement. For more information about the project, click here. Arlene Skolnick participated in "The Future of Family and Tribe" seminar.
She is on the faculty of the Institute of Human Development, University of California in
Berkeley where she studies the impact of socio-economic change on family life and
individual development.
Towards a New Cultural Common SenseBy Arlene Skolnick
In
the first decade of the twenty-first century, it seems clear that we are passing through
one of those divides. Whether we call it globalization, the post- industrial
society, or the information age, we are speeding into a new world that is altering
virtually every aspect of life. Such unsettled periods can be interesting times, but
they also can take a severe toll on those who live through them. Some
time ago, the sociologist William Ogburn coined the term cultural lag to
describe the period between the onset of technological or economic change and the social
and cultural rearrangements that societies make to adapt to the new realities. As an
example, he pointed to the fact that large numbers of women had entered the paid
workforce, but there had not been a change in the dominant ideology that
womens place is in the home. Ogburns
essay appeared in 1950. And this was before the 1950s had blossomed into the
Ozzie and Harriet era that still engages American hearts and minds, and shapes
the public debate over the family. Half a century later, our ideas about
womens place lag even further behind reality. For example, about 70 per cent of
mothers are in the paid work force; and, for most families, two incomes are essential. But
public debate remains focused on whether or not mothers should work at all. This
is not the first time American families have found themselves struggling with a radically
transformed environment. We are living through a post- industrial reenactment of two
earlier such watershed periods. The first occurred as the United States moved
from an agrarian to an industrial, market society in the early decades of the nineteenth
century. The second was at the turn of the twentieth century, the era that has been called
the second industrial revolution. Our
own era most resembles the turbulent period when work first moved out of the home during
the industrial revolution. In pre-industrial times, work was a family business. The baker and the shoemaker, as well as the
farmer, depended on the labor of wives and children, and often of apprentices and hired
hands as well. The pattern most contemporary Americans assume to be traditional, the
breadwinner homemaker family, was in fact a creation of industrial society in its early
stages. Eventually, the separation of home and work became
the basis for a powerful new cultural system based on the doctrine of separate spheres for
men and women. In the pre-industrial family, mens and womens roles were
not seen as polar opposites. The man may have been the household patriarch, but the
members of the couple were economic partners and they both supervised the children.
Now men and women were seen as thoroughly different, biologically and psychologically, and
with contrasting missions in life. The world was divided into a private,
female sphere of home and family, and a male public sphere of the marketplace and
politics. Each
sphere was assumed to operate on different moral principles. The male sphere, based on
competition and self-interest, was cold, rational, impersonal. Womens mission was to
preserve the values that had no place in the market economy to selflessly make the home a haven in a heartless
world. This
vision of the family, which detached women from the workplace, was a middle class
creation, but the historical evidence suggests that it was widely accepted, as an
aspiration if not a reality, across class, racial and ethnic lines. The social
institutions and cultural norms of industrial society, from the law to the physical design
of the home, to individual identity, were organized around this sexual division of labor. The
transition into the separate spheres family was as traumatic as todays
transition away from it. The shift from one cultural model of family life to another
is a contentious process that moves through several stages. The first stage is a
period of individual and family stress. As the economy changes, everyday family life
departs from the existing cultural blueprints. Without new guidelines for family roles,
there is no right way to behave. Increasing numbers of individuals show signs of
psychological stress-personality disturbances, drinking and drug problems. Young people in
particular become a troubled and troublesome part of the population. The
second stage is a period of cultural and political struggle. Private troubles become
public issues. Political and religious leaders, journalists, social reformers and
others offer competing interpretations of the problem. Some denounce change as moral
breakdown and call for a return to traditional ways; other voices call for adaptation to
the new realities. Still others want to push change into radical new directions. Finally,
restabilization occurs. Controversy gives way to a new cultural blueprint for family life,
one that reconciles older values with new realities. New institutions and social
arrangements are developed to deal with the problems created by change. For example,
the first public schools were created early in the l9th century to prepare children to
make their own way in the world. At
the beginning of the twenty-first century, we seem to be stalled in Stage Two, the
uncomfortable in-between time when the old cultural blueprints no longer work, but there
is no consensus on what the new arrangements should be. The cultural warriors of the right
and left continue to do battle over the the sixties. The
right blames feminism and counterculture of that era for the decline of the
family, while the left celebrates diversity in family arrangements and the death of
patriarchy. But
as Ogburn pointed out, the old assumptions of womens place were coming undone even
before the sixties. In fact, demographic change and the beginnings of a service economy
had begun to erode the foundations of separate spheres even before the twentieth century
had begun. Unfortunately,
both sides in the culture war devote too much attention to the past while ignoring the
future. Engagement in a cultural battle distracts attention from the task of coming
to terms with a post-industrial, post-separate spheres future. That is why I believe the
notion of historical transition is useful. It enables us to acknowledge the
current stresses and disruptions of family life without calling for the clock to be turned
back to family arrangements that prevailed in a radically different world. Although
technology and economics are the driving forces of change, they do not determine precisely
how societies will rearrange themselves. During the unsettled, in-between stages of
transition, the future is up for grabs. Historically, political and cultural
conflicts over family change have been resolved in ways that disappoint activists and
intellectuals on both sides. Conservatives must accept much more change than they
would like, radical reformers, much less. In
fact, the outlines of a new family model are already emerging. Most Americans have
made peace between the liberal, egalitarian values of the 60s and the old values of
work and family. The information age has irrevocably blurred the distinctions the
industrial age drew sharply between male and female roles, between home and work, and
between public and private. The two-earner family is now modal. In numerous surveys,
the generation that succeeded the baby boom Gen X in pop culture terms is even more family centered than are the boomers. Members of Generation X seek balance
between home and work, and are even more disapproving of divorce. While the
traditionalists rail on about the collapse or abolition of
marriage, Americans go on marrying at rates only slightly below the peak of 95% in the
l950s. The
debate over the supposed decline of marriage and the nuclear family also overlooks one of
the major demographic trends of our time the emergence of the multigenerational family. The longevity
revolution is usually discussed as a crisis who is going to take care of all those old people?
But, in fact, the very nature of what it means to be 60 or 70 or even 80 has
changed. A new life stage has emerged, the third age, in which large
numbers of people lead healthy active lives well past the ages at which, in l900, they
would already have died. Thus,
intergenerational bonds are likely to be more rather than less important in the
twenty-first century for several reasons. First, there are more years available for
different generations to share their lives. Second, there is evidence that
todays younger generations have an even greater sense of obligation to close
kin than their predecessors had. Third, with marriage less stable than it was in
the past, grandparents and other kin are increasingly providing care and other kinds of
support to their children and grandchildren. Beyond
the bonds of blood kinship, families are becoming extended in diverse other ways.
Traditional family occasions such as weddings, bar mitzvahs and Thanksgiving are likely to
include, for example, a single cousin and her child, a couple with an adopted child of a
different race, a lesbian or gay relative with a partner and their child, members of the
grooms mothers first husbands family, etc., etc. So
if Americans havent abandoned marriage and family values in droves, why is there so
much stress and disruption? I would argue that the disruption and anxiety come from
the fact that we are living in a period when the cultural scripts that would
link our behavior to a system of values appropriate for our time have not yet been
written. In
addition, we havent been able to devise a new morality of care and family
responsibility to replace the old separate spheres version.
Conservatives speak to the uneasiness people feel about the fate of separate
sphere values in an increasingly gender-equal and market driven world. Yet the
idea of restoring women to their traditional roles offers no solutions
to the predicaments created by technological and economic change. It would take a
Taliban-like regime to repeal one of the major trends of the twentieth century and return
women to the home. Beyond
the dilemmas raised by the shift in the roles of men and women, there is also a profound
and unsustainable mismatch between the demands of the economy and the needs of
families. With its emphasis on maximum flexibility and efficiency, the new global economy
undermines the conditions that enable families to thrive. Yet the functions of the
family, functions that used to be womens special task, are more important in the 21st
century than ever before. To produce a workforce for a new economy that values
brains and interpersonal skills over brawn, parents must invest high levels of emotion,
attention, time and money into their children. And in a fast-paced and uncertain
post-industrial world, the intimacy and connectedness of home and family become even more
precious to adults. What
we need is a new family politics that is part of a still wider agenda for
sustainability. The term sustainablity suggests that our
self-interest in our personal security, well-being and prosperity gives us all a stake in
a reasonably cohesive society, with a stable and educated workforce. Families whatever their structure should be seen not only as a humanitarian concern, but as
an essential part of the economic system. After all, they create, nurture and sustain
societys social and human
capital. There
is an interesting parallel here to the environment. Before explicit concern with
environmental impact was written into the law, the market could take the environment for
granted, without having to work such things as pollution or endangered species into the
costs of doing business. As some economists are beginning to argue, we need to
include the social costs of business decisions as well as their impact on the natural
environment when we think about sustainability. An
increasing number of corporate leaders have begun to make the connection between the
family and personal lives of their employees and their businesss bottom line.
By offering family friendly policies, they enhance morale and retention as well as
productivity and creativity. But creating supportive infrastructure for families is a task
for the nation as a whole, not just for individual corporations. Because
it rests on pragmatic and economic grounds, the case for sustainable families and
communities bolsters moral and humanitarian arguments for a more caring society. We do not
yet have a blueprint for public and private policies that are both friendly to children
and families (whatever their form) and, at the same time, equitable for both men and
women. We will be grappling with these issues well into the new century.
Its all too easy to fall into apocalyptic pessimism or its utopian opposite.
What we must grapple with is imagining a world that is good enough, and a plan
for getting there.
To view other essays from "The Future of Family and Tribe" seminar, click here. To join the conversation at Jewish Public Forum Talk, click here.To access the Jewish Public Forum Archive, click here.To receive Jewish Public Forum columns by email on a regular basis, complete the box below: |
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