The Rebel Family
quarta 23 Setembro, 2009 - 314 VistasOur social changes should start from the basic block of society: the family.
In the present social system there are two main basic functions for a family: the first one is procreation, the production of children, the second one is orientation: to help the children produced by the family to enter the social system in the best way.
The first of these functions is obsolete: we don't really need to produce a large number of children any more. We actually need to reduce the number of children who are born with the general target to reach a sustainable number of people living in our world.
The actual growth rate of one billion people every ten or so years is definitely not sustainable.
The second of these functions, orientation, is failing miserably in a very large number of cases.
Parents are too busy trying to support the family economically (and for other reasons as well) to give to the children a proper orientation. Children are often abandoned to their own devices and left in front of a television set or a computer delegating the television and the computer to give the necessary orientation. As the television is not offering a reliable view of the society (among its other failings), the children are not given the right orientation and grow up to become failed adults.
The reversed role
Once the children are grown up they start taking care of their own parents in their old age.
This is almost not happening any more as the society as a whole takes economically care of persons in advanced age (or at least it should).
How can we change and make more practical the family structure?
The first thing to do is to shift the focus of the family from its primary functions of procreation and orientation to a primary function of mutual support.
The main reason why people should get together to form a family and live together is to support each other. This also include the function of orientation for the children born in the family.
The procreative function should be reduced to the minimum.
How to reach this goal
1) Families should become larger.
What is now a nuclear family with two parents and many children should become a nuclear family with many adults and fewer children.
2) Desexualization of family life
At the moment what brings families together is the sexual need for reproduction. If we remove the need for reproduction, we can have families where the sexual activity is only recreational or absent altogether (in the sense that recreational sex can be sought outside the family).
Sex has never been a very good glue to keep families together in the first place. Families based primarily on sexual attraction fail very fast.
The primary glue of the family is not sex, it is love. Love is the “deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person” (wikipedia).
Once we remove sex from love, there is no reason why any number of people could care for each other, live together under the same roof and give each other support.
3) Renounce of the principle of consanguinity.
This means the understanding that the children we rise need not be our own children.
The importance of blood ties between the family and the children should be reduced or eliminated altogether.
If we have a large number of adults as members of the same family, children born from two adult members can be cared for by all adult members of the family, with great advantage to the children that instead of having two parents, will have many of them giving them affection and guidance.
The importance of sex in family life
When families fail is for one of two main reasons: the family has big economic problems and there is no agreement on how to solve them, or the family has big sexual problems and there is no agreement on how to solve them.
Sexual activities are so deeply rooted into family life that it is almost unthinkable to have a nuclear family without sexual activity.
The most important issue we have to face if we want to start a new style family is this: how we integrate sex in our family life?
Let's put it this way: sex is one of the many possible activities family members can do together.
Family members can have their meals together. Family members can go to watch movies together, can play game together, can have a barbecue every Saturday evening together.
The number of things family members can do together is almost unlimited. Sex is one of these activities.
If we agree that sex is a recreational activity there is no reason why family members should not have sex together, but there is also no reason why family members should.
At the beginning of our family life we can get pleasure in going to the movies every Friday evening. After a while we grow bored with it and we don't feel to do it any more. We can still do it now and then, but not every Friday evening as before. We can also decide to go to the movies together with some friends instead of only with family members. We can go to the movies with friends only, or we can go to the movies with some friends and some family members.
If we don't go to the movies with our family every Friday evening is this because we don't love our family any more? No, it is not.
If we go to the movies with some friends instead than going with our family is that because we love our family less? No it is not.
In the present system sexual activities are one of the main reason of strain within a family. When we are tired of sex with our family members we can not just decide to have sex with someone else.
If we do we have to start with a life of lies which brings down the love within the family and ultimately the family itself.
If we start to think about sex as purely recreational then having sex outside the family is no different than going to the movies with friends.
Step by step
The point is not to decide that it is necessary to have sex outside our nuclear family. The point is to give less relevance to sexual activities.
We can decide to have sex only with members of our family, we can decide not to have sex at all with members of our family.
We can decide to have sex with members of our family and others as well.
The important thing is that we manage our sexual activities in a clear and non conflictual way, to talk about our wishes and needs in an open way (what about going to the movies next Saturday?), to be flexible and open to change when the need arises.
A final important point
Families are not forever. When our life span was very short, we had the need to keep the family together to guarantee the fulfilling of the family aims of procreation and orientation.
Now our life span is considerably larger and our needs are different.
If we start a family at twenty and we have a child then, the need for procreation and orientation can easily end when we are in our early forties and we still have many years in front of us.
At that point the reasons to stay in the same family can cease altogether. We can possibly start a new family and fulfil it aims of procreation and orientation when we are in our early sixties and still with many years in front of us.
As procreation and orientation are not any more the primary focus of the family, we need more flexibility to keep the family together.
To be on the same family for our whole life can be an excellent thing and give us a sense of fulfilment and continuity.
The important thing is to keep an open mind, always.
