First, look at this CBS video clip of an American family (after a moment of advertising). Take note of the final comments, i.e., “Giving your kids what they need is always harder than giving them what they want. Only when your older can you appreciate those fences“. Decide whether this story shows the American family way ‘evolved’, or just the opposite. If you approve of this approach to family and child rearing, I predict you will have difficulty understanding, let alone appreciating, another family way. Even so, I’ll make the case.
I was raised in a normal American family way. Not surprisingly, in the 1950’s it was common knowledge that American ways, one and all, were the ultimate in human evolution. I, nor most folks I knew, had any reason to doubt that. In fact, when I expressed my plans to travel abroad, older colleges at work warned me that scores of women abroad would want to marry me in order to live the American dream.
Working and traveling (15+ years) among the peoples of the ‘impoverished and backward’ cultures of the second and third world soon opened my eyes to the cultural myths to which I was conditioned. I could finally see the forest for the trees, especially some of the dysfunctional aspects of American culture, with its obsession with independence and the effect that has on basic family life in America.
Alas, the American family way is often out of sync with basic human social instincts which have seen us safe and sane for countless millennia. Of course Americans didn’t ‘chose’, of their own free will, to opt out of what has always been the natural way of family life. No one decided to take the natural out of the American family ‘norm’.
The American family ‘norm’ likely began with the rapid settlement of the country by Europeans. They left their ancestral home with its extensive family ties and landed in an open and ‘every man for himself’ situation(1). Little wonder that this became the seeds of the American ethical belief that ‘independence was best’. With little ancestral ties to lean on in hard times, ‘independence’ was the only way. However, ‘independence’ does not truly fit our social nature. We are happiest and most emotionally secure when closely connected with others. The tribal family has provided that for our species from the beginning. Not only for our species, but all the other primates (except perhaps the more independent orangutans of Borneo.)
Finally, I realize that folks confident in the righteousness of the American cultural paradigm will be unable to impartially evaluate my observations above. I reckon it usually takes personal experience to realize what is outside our box. My reason for this post is to encourage anyone seeking an alternative to the empirically obvious dysfunctional aspects of American family life. There is another time tested, saner way to approach family life!
(1) I think this ‘every man for himself’ situation may account for the high draw churches have; they filled a need for ‘extended’ family ties. ‘Every man for himself’ also serves the highly industrialized and expert driven life style that people value. This puts the final nails in the coffin of ancestral natural ways. Be patient though, natural ways will (must) reemerge in the long run. I doubt cell phones, email, Facebook, Thanksgiving-get-togethers or church will ever make up for the loss. Nature always wins in the end!
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