The Family Cycle: The Good Enough Family

Written by Sam Vaknin

The families of the not too distant past were orientated along four axes. These axes were not mutually exclusive. Some overlapped, all of them enhanced each other.

People got married for various reasons:

1. Because of social pressure and social norms (the Social Dyad)

2. To form a more efficient or synergetic economic unit (the Economic Dyad)

3. In pursuit of psychosexual fulfillment (the Psychosexual Dyad)

4. To secure long term companionship (the Companionship Dyad).

Thus, we can talk about the following four axes: Social-Economic, Emotional, Utilitarian (Rational), Private-Familial.

To illustrate how these axes were intertwined, let us consider the Emotional one.

Until very recently, people used to get married because they felt very strongly about living alone, partly due to social condemnation of reculsiveness.

In some countries, people still subscribe to ideologies which promote the family as a pillar of society, the basic cell of the national organism, a hothouse in which to breed children for the army, and so on. These collective ideologies call for personal contributions and sacrifices. They have a strong emotional dimension and provide impetus to a host of behavior patterns.

But the emotional investment in today's individualistic-capitalist ideologies is no smaller than it was in yesterday's nationalistic ones. True, technological developments rendered past thinking obsolete and dysfunctional but did not quench Man's thirst for guidance and a worldview.

Still, as technology evolved, it became more and more disruptive to the family. Increased mobility, a decentralization of information sources, the transfers of the traditional functions of the family to societal and private sector establishments, the increased incidence of interpersonal interactions, safer sex with lesser or no consequences - all fostered the disintegration of the traditional, extended and nuclear family.

Consider the trends that directly affected women, for instance:

1. The emergence of common marital property and of laws for its equal distribution in case of divorce constituted a shift in legal philosophy in most societies. The result was a major (and on going) re-distribution of wealth from men to women. Add to this the disparities in life expectancy between the two genders and the magnitude of the transfer of economic resources becomes evident.

Women are becoming richer because they live longer than men and thus inherit them and because they get a share of the marital property when they divorce them. These "endowments" are usually more than they had contributed to the couple in money terms. Women still earn less than men, for instance.

2. An increase in economic opportunities. Social and ethical codes changed, technology allows for increased mobility, wars and economic upheavals led to the forced introduction of women into the labour markets.

3. The result of women's enhanced economic clout is a more egalitarian social and legal system. Women's rights are being legally as well as informally secured in an evolutionary process, punctuated by minor legal revolutions.

4. Women had largely achieved equality in educational and economic opportunities and are fighting a winning battle in other domains of life (the military, political representation). Actually, in some legal respects, the bias is against men. It is rare for a man to complain of sexual harassment or to receive alimony or custody of his children or, in many countries, to be the beneficiary of social welfare payments.

5. The emergence of socially-accepted (normative) single parent and non-nuclear families helped women to shape their lives as they see fit. Most single parent families are headed by women. Women single parents are disadvantaged economically (their median income is very low even when adjusted to reflect transfer payments) - but many are taking the plunge.

6. Thus, gradually, the shaping of future generations becomes the exclusive domain of women. Even today, one third of all children in developed countries grow in single parent families with no male figure around to serve as a role model. This exclusivity has tremendous social and economic implications. Gradually and subtly the balance of power will shift as society becomes matriarchal.

7. The invention of the pill and other contraceptives liberated women sexually. The resulting sexual revolution affected both sexes but the main beneficiaries were women whose sexuality was suddenly legitimized. No longer under the cloud of unwanted pregnancy, women felt free to engage in sex with multiple partners.

8. In the face of this newfound freedom and the realities of changing sexual conduct, the double moral standard crumbled. The existence of a legitimately expressed feminine sexual drive is widely accepted. The family, therefore, becomes also a sexual joint venture.

9. Urbanization, communication, and transportation multiplied the number of encounters between men and women and the opportunities for economic, sexual, and emotional interactions. For the first time in centuries, women were able to judge and compare their male partners to others in every conceivable way. Increasingly, women choose to opt out of relationships which they deem to be dysfunctional or inadequate. More than three quarters of all divorces in the West are initiated by women.