It’s funny the thoughts that come to you at seemingly random times. Yesterday, while driving with my beautiful wife, our conversation happened to turn to the increasingly broad concept of family and the impacts said broadening is having and will have on our society as a whole.
Yes, it’s fun times when you’re in the car with me I can tell you! 
We were heading to a family Christmas function and my lovely wife was explaining some of the relationships in her wider extended family. Basically, I started to ponder on just how complex things are getting since The Change – i.e. that moment when the nuclear family unit of Dad + Mum + a number of Kids started to disintegrate. I’m not saying that that model doesn’t exist today (of course it does), but there are now many more variables to the equation of a “family”.
A family today can consist of children from different marriages/partnerships, potentially children of children that are now being looked after by grandparents instead of the parents, de facto relationships, same-sex civil union partners – the list goes on. So, instead of D + M + nK, you could have (D1 + M1)K + (D1 + M2)K + (M2 + Partner1)K + (M2K4k)….and then the maths just gets hard. 
And all of this before you starting talking about surrogates and IVF and open-ended adoption and child sponsorship and baby goats (get it? Kids? ) Look, I’m not saying all of this is a bad thing, and no doubt that some of the aforementioned variables are good things (who doesn’t like baby goats?). But there are some really interesting practical implications to all of this that I think our laws and society are just really struggling to deal with. And I’m not just talking about when two children with double-barrelled names get married and have kids (seriously though, how-many-barrels-are-we-allowed? ).
When the family unit is the smallest building block of society, and when the vast majority follow the tried and true D + M + nK model, I would think you have something pretty stable to build your society upon there. Kinda like a brick. Simple. Understandable. Strong. Sure, some crumble, and some even break, but when you have them all in a house, you’ve got combined strength.
But what of these modern concepts of family? How brick-like a structure are we talking? How understandable is it when conventions like surnames are no longer valid indicators of relationships? Or how strong is it when the parents at the head of said unit aren’t bound by anything but an informal “see how it goes” type relationship?
Look, I’m not living in a dream world where all the 1950’s style families were perfect happy fun times without any problems. But I do think that, as a percentage of Western society, we seem to be seeing more experimentation in family models than less. When I was a kid (old man talking!), I had one friend in my social circle who’s parents were divorced and re-married. One. All the others were married…just like my Mum and Dad. If I was to take a random schoolchild today and ask them to name how many of their friends came from…what was the term my former-teacher wife used?…ah yes, “blended families”, I would put decent change on it being a lot more than one.
Not exactly scientific data I know, but I just think that we should take a look at where our increasing divorce rates, decreasing marriage rates, decreasing birth rates, and increasing pre-marital sex rates are taking us as a society. If we don’t have any bricks to build the houses of future society, what are we going to be left with? The loosely spread out particles of bricks?
I don’t know how happy I am about my grandchildren living in a sandcastle society…
Nice post James. I have a few passing comments on the matter.
If one wants to get an indicator of the direction New Zealand and Western society in general is headed, look no further then the Scandinavian countries. In Sweden, the large majority of the dwindling numbers of children born are out-of-wedlock.
The breakdown of parental responsibility and a solid familial nucleus is partly, if not predominantly, due to the failure of modern society to distinguish between the role of the state in relation to the family. State-run sex education, government-initiated social engineering on a myriad of issues, and now the anti-smacking legislation is all indicative of, and conducive to, a society of people who continually skip their responsibilities as parents.
The gay marriage debate, and perhaps more pertinent to the Kiwi context, the issue over adopting children to homosexual parents, evidence a distinct lack of understanding of love, sexuality and the common good of society. In my opinion, if a country, indeed a civilisation, can’t get even one of those three, then its destined for social collapse.
cheers
The focus on families as an important unit and the sanctity of marriage as a ‘until death do us part’ union are my fav things about Christianity (probably more accurately Catholicism). What I like about the utility of religion in this area is that it provides a structure/system and reason to aim for this type of behaviour (solid family, no divorce). I think on a society level, this is a ‘good thing’, even if I would wish it could be accomplished without appeals to the supernatural.
However, personally, for whatever reason, I don’t feel the need to have this structure/system. Possibly because I don’t believe I should be performing the behaviour for any reasons to do with a deity/faith. I can rationalise the immense benefits of a solid family and having two loving & together parents.
What I don’t like is the negative flipside of the coin: the views towards non-traditional unions, homosexuals etc. I think it’s unnecessary in promoting the positive side. Take for example the argument popular by the American fundies that gay marriage is somehow damaging the traditional heterosexual marriage/union – I find this to be bigoted rubbish.
Also, I’m not so convinced the societal factors you mention veritas have such a significant impact on the issue. I would need to do more thinking on why I think this though and what are more likely issues to explain myself properly.
veritas and fishe,
Thanks for your comments. Vertias – I didn’t know of those stats, and that the shift from large minority to majority has already taken place!
fishe, I look forward to hearing more from you on this as your thoughts develop. I do have a couple of extra thoughts on your thoughts though:
I heard mentioned the other day that teen abstinence programmes don’t work. I got to thinking – why is that? I love hearing from pundits that say it is “impossible”. Either they need to get a dictionary or meet more people because I know plenty for whom abstinence worked just fine through their teenage years, and who successfully saved themselves for marriage. So it is far from impossible, but it is increasingly difficult in a climate where such behaviour is not the norm.
Similar arguments are put forward for people remaining faithful in marriage. So, I ask you, how do we take these “difficult” (not impossible) goals and ideals and realise them, if not by focusing on the supernatural? For it seems that relying purely on the natural doesn’t work. How many times have you heard a comparison between us and any other mammals?
I also have a broader question for you – I understand that you don’t believe in God or the Flying-Spaghetti-Monster or whatever, but do you believe in objective right and wrong? Do you believe that there is a clear-cut distinction between the two, and that there is at the basest level a good and bad, right and wrong?
I ask because your comments seem to lean towards moral relativism quite heavily. i.e. What is right is really defined by the perspective of the belief holder, and what I think is right may not be the same as what you think is right.
Is this what you believe?
Take for example the argument popular by the American fundies that gay marriage is somehow damaging the traditional heterosexual marriage/union – I find this to be bigoted rubbish.
I think that from the point of view of an individual heterosexual marriage, Fishe is probably right that legalising homosexual marriage does little immediate damage to most existing marriages.
But that isn’t really the argument against legalising homosexual marriage : the argument is not a religious argument at all, but an argument from social justice, based on the Common Good, not on religious ideas about marriage.
The state has an interest in children (because she has an interest in her future) and therefore has a interest in the well being of children, which is best found in stable monogamous one man one woman lifetime marriage. Homosexual marriages, whatever their other merits may be, do not naturally procreate children within the marriage and they do not provide both a mother and a father (which children need for proper development).
This is why the state ought to give a special recognition to heterosexual marriage.
The Catholic Church We is not opposed to the state granting various rights to heterosexual couples along the same lines as say two friends living together, or, where children are involved, two friends raising children.
But we think that heterosexual marriage is sufficiently important for the Common Good, and for Social Justice (especially the needs of children) that it is necessary for the state to give heterosexual marriage the respect, recognition and support which is due heterosexual marriage in respect of its proper social role.
There are other negative consequences of legalising homosexual marriage which are also damaging to the Common Good, for example in encouraging in young people the damaging idea, especially in the formative years, that homosexual relations are every bit as good and valid as heterosexual relations. This is likely to cause scandal (lead people into sin, ie into activities which are damaging to the human person).
God Bless
James, I’ll track down the exact reference for those statistics on Sweden. Needless to say, they are scary!
Thanks Chris, I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Fish, those are very interesting points you make and I’m glad to see you understand the relevance of marriage in our modern era.
sorry I cant add much to the discussion at the moment, I have to rush.
James,
First, abstinence programmes. I guess “impossible” is just used loosely
A few studies I’ve seen show them to be not effective at the population level in comparison to other methods – i.e. for the majority of teens they don’t stop sex or reduce sex-related problems.
But anyway, since this is just an example let’s forget the details. My take on them in principle is that they take a hard line against a significant biological drive, and hence are bound to fail. I see them roughly the same as drug policies in that they don’t stop drug use. Taking a page from the drug addiction research book, it has been shown that harm reduction approaches are typically more effective. The same reasoning could be, and is, applied to sex education. I guess this is taking the view that teens are highly likely to engage in sex regardless, and hence steps should be taken to reduce harm. I’m a fan of well-designed harm management strategies for many things, although they can be tough to do well.
Here we could talk about my reasoning that teens will have sex regardless. I think this based on biological changes during teenage years which re-focus the teen from a friend/group perspective to a procreative perspective. I don’t know much about this stuff – some random talks on relevant biochemical signalling changes (e.g. oxytocin) during teen years, and I read a book a while back about teenagers which outlines the idea. It makes good sense though, our bodies could be said to be all about procreation and continuation of the species/genome. Clearly sexual reproduction is one of the oldest and most important functions of our line of organisms.
Also very important here though, and like you touch on, is the environment. Our development and gene expression is obviously incredibly influenced by the environment, so therefore one can never say something like “we’re programmed to have sex and that’s just that!” The current cultural climate of “teenage sex is normal” is likely to have a significant impact – how much? Who knows…I don’t think it makes any sense to go down that old x% environment, x% genetic road – it’s far too complex.
I think we can take the ‘difficult ideals’ and realise them without religion. I believe the solution comes from education and awareness – of the self and the other. I mean, I think I am currently and can be a good person without believing in religion/god – so I am evidence it’s possible. And no you can’t test me
I also think though that an organising principle such as provided by Humanism can help a lot with the education and awareness, pretty much in the same way religions do it, just without the supernatural component.
OK, now for morality…big topic
I do not believe in an objective right or wrong – at least not in the way I think you’re thinking of it. I don’t believe it just like I don’t believe there is an objective/archetypical “cat” or “lamp”. Yes, I’m most probably a moral relativist. I’m however not enough of a philosopher to know the boundaries of such a classification well enough to claim it with certainty.
Where would any objective notion of right or wrong come from? The only answer I can come up with is God…and since I don’t believe in him I’m almost forced into moral relativism. I’m cool with that though. It appears that morality changes over time with development of societies and cultures as one would expect of a trait with its basis in the genes and its expression in the group.
I don’t agree with your comment that “What is right is really defined by the perspective of the belief holder”, as representative of my position at least. This implies that morality is refreshed anew for each individual, and discounts the massive influence of genetic and environmental forcing on moral decisions. I guess in a certain sense I believe in a loosely-defined semi-objective morality that changes over time – certainly not a morality where each individual is a blank slate with their own take on what’s right/wrong.
This is where you guys pull out all the philosophical quagmires that come with a moral relativist position
veritas, yeah, one hardly needs to carry out a study to see the issues caused in kids by unsavoury parental relationships (whether they end in divorce or not)…
Chris,
Well, that is exactly the argument the american religious right use in their ads.
But I agree with you, like I think we’ve discussed before on here. I don’t think the State should be in the marriage game at all…that should be a solely religious affair. The state should only issue “civil union” type legally binding unions between two people for legal/financial reasons…then they can go have whatever other ceremony they want.
I don’t like the idea of legally forcing a Catholic priest for instance to marry two gay guys.
fishe,
Thanks for your response.
On your points on teen abstinence etc., how do you explain the fact that the teen pregnancy rate is higher today than 50, 100, 500 years ago? Was the ability to resist these urges back then made easier by a society more focused on religion and religious moral codes?
On the morality bit, there’s an article in the NZ Herald (print edition) this morning talking about Queen Rania of Jordan starting to support the move to ban honour killing in Jordan. I assume you’re familiar with this practice – the killing of women, often by family members, who have brought shame on their family through various acts.
Now here’s my question: a moral relativist would state that I am not able to objectively say that what they are doing is wrong, because for their culture blah blah it is right. However, I am able to look at that practice and, bound by my moral code given to me by God, state categorically that that is wrong (and evil and just downright scary!)
Where does this leave someone like yourself I wonder? Do you think that such killing is objectively wrong? And, if so, how come? And, if not, even more so, how come?
Fishe,
I mostly agree re:8 and state butting out of marriage. But one has to recognise the inherent value to society of marriage – i.e. that of procreation and the furthering of society. Surely that deserves some special recognition?
James,
Re: history of teen pregnancy. Got a link? Are we talking large differences?
It seems that it would be a very complex issue, and I can think of something just off the bat that would also explain some of the variation: age of marriage. Perhaps a greater influence of religion did have an impact to reduce teen pregnancy, but so would have many other factors I’m sure. So then it’s a case of the size of the religion-induced reduction, and the cost-benefit of it.
Re: honour killing. Can’t you equally say that you find it wrong and evil based not on your moral code given by God, but by your moral code given by your genetic history and the culture you developed in?
Aren’t all those Muslims in Jordan who explicitly or implicitly support honour killings getting their morality from the same God as you? Are they just doing it wrong? A simpler explanation would just be that their culture condones it. One only has to look at any war to see the powerful effects environmental factors can have on so-called objective morality…certainly enculturation from birth would produce hugely powerful effects on moral decision making.
I think honour killing is wrong because of how I was raised and the ideas and thinking I have been exposed to over the years since. It has at once an instinctual developmental basis and a more rational conscious basis.
Side point: isn’t there honour killings in the bible? If not, there are certainly God-supported acts which today would be called evil atrocities. No?
Personally, I think the 1950s get a bad rap.
If I’d just survived World War 2 and currently had the specter of the great Hydrogen bomb sausage sizzle parked on the front lawn, then I and I think my neighbors too would be a tad anxious and attempting to conserve what we nominally fought for 10 years previous.
Fishe,
One can build a consistent moral ethic based on what is good and what is bad for the human person.
The Catholic notion of sin does not define sin as sin simply because God said not to do it, but rather defines sin as something bad for the human person which God, for our own good, asks us not to do. Like a parent will ask their child not to stick their hands in the fire etc.
Honour killing is wrong, not because of social factors, but because its obviously bad for the people being killed and for others involved too.
I think that chastity is a lot harder today because of many social factors.
God Bless
Christopher 13
“I think that chastity is a lot harder today because of many social factors.”
and driven by pressure to contracept and rely on safe sex message that is anything but!
but the tide is turning as especially woman, wake up to the dangers and pitfalls of hormonal interference inherent in artificial chemicals and failures of other methods.
James nice blog as usual. I was at a secular wedding once where the couple vowed to ‘do their best’ to remain faithful. Not a good start in my book, but apparently not unusual.
posted by Ro’s brother:
JtL, I get the feeling that if you took your nuclear family idea to many figures in Biblical history that they would not really understand what you’re going on about – surely the Biblical vision of family most widely presented is Old Testament: Jacob and Jesse’s model of a huge extended family all living and working together on one great agrarian homestead or New Testament: the abandonment of family (not hanging around to bury your father, per se) in favour of an inter-connected Christian community that shares all aspects of life together.
To me the nuclear family is a product of economics and the post-industrial age which 1) creates(ed) economic incentives for nuclear families to exist through urban housing and the need to be close to work 2) the promotion of the ego through advertising and the availability of disposable income which makes sharing harder (how much more readily would we seek to financially aid our brother or mother than our cousin or uncle?). The economy needs to be scrutinised for this because it also leads to the second problem:
The invention of the teenager. Teenagers came into being as the need for greater education prior to work and family responsibilities arose. Teenagers possess a huge amount of disposable income and advertisers are not going to let anyone take this market away. The result of fostering ego-centric consumers (not just of products like clothes and alcohol, but also of media, information technology and knowledge) is an environment where those young ones will have sex. Where once it may have been the norm to marry at fourteen, today’s Christians might even be waiting until their early thirties and the magnitude of that difference is not offset by any new outlet for the simple fact of sexual maturity.
God created a body to have sex starting from a certain age and man has created a society in which such an idea is abhorrent.
I was reading the book of Ruth yesterday and I found Naomi’s warning quite profound when she tells Ruth not to go into different fields to glean because she’s liable to be molested by the farm workers. The reality of sex between non-married persons has been contended with for a long time. While we may say there are many good examples to follow in Ruth, the church doesn’t support Levirate marriage (brothers, or male relatives marrying the widow of their male relative), a ‘moral’ good that supported the social justice of the time.
I short I think we’ve all been seduced by the capitalist world, we want things too much and we dream up this golden ideal of the nuclear family as a way in which we can justify privacy and possessiveness and feel secure with a house, wife and kids of our very own. Jesus had far more radical ideas. I am no less seduced. Perhaps a further corruption of that desire is that many people begin to discard the elements of the nuclear family that fail to satisfy this ego, divorce and remarriage and blended families may stem naturally from this.
@4 – It doesn’t seem like you account for “gay” 4, 8, 12 or 16 year olds. Where is the social justice for these young innocents? The suicide rate for gay teens should be an indicator of how external messages affect a young person’s psychology/spirit. If they are forbidden from ever knowing that two people of the same gender can live and love monogamously they will only be left with the ideas that gay people are always outside the church, always drug abusers, always promiscuous, always at nightclubs, always unhappy and always afflicted with AIDS/STD’s.
Ro’s brother,
Where once it may have been the norm to marry at fourteen, today’s Christians might even be waiting until their early thirties
I think that’s a VERY important contributing factor.
You raise a good point about good role models for young gays. But I don’t think that gay marriage is a good role model for young gays because it proposes a life style which is harmful to them.
I think a better role model is living and loving together chastely (ie no sex) and I know some gay couples who have found that a fulfilling life.
True friendship is a better model for young gays than marriage because marriage is ordered to sex and procreation but friendship isn’t.
I readily agree that such a model is not always easy to live up to (chastity isn’t easy for heterosexuals either, especially in today’s world) but it is possible and down the ages very many people of whatever sexuality have managed to live deeply fulfilling lives without sex.
I think we are doing our young people a disservice if we promote lifestyles which are actually harmful to them, as I think homosexual sex is.
God Bless