'Family' is one of the words we use in a variety of
senses. Depending on the context, it can refer to
your spouse and children, it can include your parents and
siblings, and it can be extended to anyone related to
you. We can use the word to describe a church
congregation or the whole human race.
More important than defining who is included in a family, we
need to understand what the word conveys. For most
people, 'family' means 'family like the one I grew up in' - and
we find it very difficult to appreciate just how different other
people's families are. It is difficult to build a
successful marriage when the word has very different meanings to
the two partners.
The Nuclear Family
Before we start to look at family life, we need to do a little
work on the foundations. For almost everyone today,
the basic meaning of 'family' is a home consisting of two
parents and their children. The image is still very
strong, even though most people do not live in this type of
family unit. We call it the 'nuclear family' because
it is supposed to be the basic building block of society.
Unfortunately, we were not designed to live within a nuclear
family, and on the whole, when we try to live that way it does
not work very well. Presumably this is one of the
reasons why so few people actually live in this type of
family.
Perhaps you remember the sixties' song 'Little Boxes' -
referring to houses made of 'ticky-tacky.' It talked
about people living in boxes - both physical and psychological
boxes. One of the most dangerous of these boxes is
the belief that a nuclear family is supposed to be self-
contained. In talking with people who have problems,
I repeatedly hear this message: "we don't need anyone
else;" "we will work it out on our own;"
"keep it in the family."
The Mythical Marriage
The self-contained family is based on the self-contained
marriage. There is a modern myth which says that a
true husband or wife will meet all your needs. Of
course, if this is true and you are unhappy, it is clear where
the fault lies - your partner is not doing their
job. If they don't meet all your needs, you have
clearly married the wrong person.
You don't need me to point out all the problems with this way
of thinking.
The Extended Family
When Abram moved from Ur with his family, he would not have
fitted into a modern removals van. People in those
days might travel alone or in small groups, but they lived in
families which today would take up half a street.
In fact, the Bible does
not talk so much about 'family' as 'household', or just
'house'. It
is the household which forms the basic economic and social unit
- the group of people who all eat from the same cooking
pot. But even 'family' in the Bible does not refer
to just two parents and their children - it means a 'circle of
relatives'.
And what the Bible describes as normal has been regarded as
normal throughout most of history. Until the
industrial revolution started to change the economics of
everyday living for ordinary people, the extended family was
taken for granted as the context in which people grew up and
grew old, in which they were born and died, in which they worked
and were nursed. Your family was your life.
I am not suggesting that we should attempt to undo the
industrial revolution. I am saying that some
of the consequences of the industrial revolution have been
unhelpful, and we should maybe learn how to organise ourselves
into social units which work.
Isolation
We look back at previous centuries and wonder how people could
have been so cruel. In years to come, people will
look back at today and say the same of us. One area
they will find it hard to understand is the amount of cruelty we
inflict on people by keeping them isolated.