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"The family, with its narrow privacy
-s
and tawdry secrets, is the source of
~
all our discontents," declares Cam-
·~
bridge anthropo logist Edmund
~
Leach. "The bourgeois family unit,"
g
adds a British psychiatrist, "is the
8
ultimate and most lethal gas cham-
~
ber in our society."
0
California psychologist Richard
Farson has also concluded that the
family "is now often without func–
tion.
lt
is no longer necessarily the
basic unit in our society."
If you're married, what has been
your experience? Would you agree
with these statements? Here are a
few reasons why those men and
other sociologists have come to
question the value of the family.
Chances are, they are the same is–
sues which affect your family life.
The greatest single issue concerns
the happiness of wives. Renowned
sociologist Jessie Bernard comments
in an analysis of women's needs in
marriage, "Once men have known
marriage, they can hardly live with–
out it." But while "the story of the
husband's marriage can be short
and simple; not so, however, the
story of the wife's"
(The Future of
Marriage,
pp. 18, 24-25). Marriage,
she shows, needlessly has an adverse
effect on the mental health of many
women. They experience a great
lack of fulfillment in marriage, lead–
ing to nervous breakdowns, feelings
of anxiety and inadequacy, depres–
sion and phobic reactions. Mar–
riage, for them, brings a lowering of
status. "For, despite all of the cli–
chés about the high status of mar–
riage, it is for women a downward
status step"
(ibid.,
p. 38).
Why do so many marriages in–
volve a lowering of status? " 'The
housewife is a nobody,' "says Philip
Slater , and almost everyone agrees.
"Her work is menial labour. Even
more status-degrading is the unpaid
nature of ber job .... Housework is
a dead-end job; there is no chance
of promotion .... Not only does the
wife not grow, but the non-special–
ized and detailed nature of house–
work may actually have a
deteriorating effect on her
4
DR. MARGARET MEAD
" Students in rebellion ,
the young people living
in communes, unmarried
couples living together
call into question the very
meaning and structure of
the stable family unit as
our society has known
it ."
mind ... rendering her incapable of
prolonged concentration on any
single task. No wonder that after
hours of passive, often solitary, ab–
sorption in television and radio soap
operas, she comes to seem dumb
as well as dull "
(ibid.,
pp.
43-44).
The housewife syndrome is, of
course, the basic reason that
women's liberation became a major
issue in the latter part of the sixties.
Germain Greer's
The Female Eu–
nuch
sought to smash the syndrome
and bring to light the growing dis–
enchantment with the wife's tradi–
tional role.
A Look at the Nuclear
Family
It wasn't so long ago that the fam–
ily played a vital role in everyday
life.
The family wasn't just husband,
wife and children.
It
was a society
within a society, an extended family
in which parents and children were
surrounded by grandparents, broth–
ers, sisters, uncles and aunts. Most
of the family's relatives lived next
door, on the next farm, or within a
ten- or twenty-mile radius. This ex-
tended family provided psychologi–
cal support , and tbere was a
togetherness that butfered the indi–
vidual against crises which might
have threatened break-up.
But with the industrial revolution
and, later , the advent of the auto–
mobile, families began to drift apart
geographically. Children left home
for the big city. The nation became
70 percent urban, and families now
comprised parents and children
alone in a hostile environment.
Thus was boro the "nuclear fam–
ily."
The warmth and togetherness of
previous generations tended to fade.
Dad, no longer able to work along–
side bis children in the field , often
became a visitor who saw the
youngsters only briefly before they
were ushered to bed.
With the move to the cities, fam–
ilies had to face increasing financia!
burdeos which brought employment
for 40 percent of the women, thus
fu rther dividing the borne. Chi ldren
were farmed out while mother
worked.
In
those marriages where
the woman did remain at borne, the
husband was away at the office in–
stead of nearby in tbe fields. Wives
were isolated, and another awesome
nightmare loomed large -
suburban
neurosis.
To counteract growing dis–
contentment with isolation in the
home, women's liberation sprang
up. And the pendulum went to tbe
other extreme. The borne took a
giant leap closer to the brink of
oblivion. Today, in these early '70s,
the family is at a crisis point!
In a little over two generations we
have come from the expanded fam–
ily, witb all its reinforcements for
marriage, to a state where many
modero families are in a desperate
struggle to simply survive.
And Now - the Abolition
of the Family?
Because of the gigantic problems
posed by unhappy families, growing
numbers are seeking an alternative.
An altemative which sorne are ex–
perimenting with is the "arrange-
PLAIN TAUTH March 1974