Joanna Schroeder wonders if it’s true that our civilization would fall apart without the nuclear family.
Joan Walsh of Salon.com is asking an important question in this election year: Must Women Civilize Men?
Ms. Walsh posits the interesting theory that one reason the Republican candidates have been staging what is called a “war on women” this year:
We’re having this debate over issues once considered settled because the right is trying to blame virtually all of the nation’s economic and social problems on one cause: the supposedly broken American family. It’s their only solution. It’s also increasingly clear that shoring up the family, in their view, involves restoring a traditional vision of the family, in which the man is head of the household, and women accept their civilizing role.
The author quotes an article in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, where he says,
Liberals sometimes feel that it is narrow-minded to favor traditional marriage. Over time, my reporting on poverty has led me to disagree: Solid marriages have a huge beneficial impact on the lives of the poor (more so than in the lives of the middle class, who have more cushion when things go wrong).
One study of low-income delinquent young men in Boston found that one of the factors that had the greatest impact in turning them away from crime was marrying women they cared about. As Steven Pinker notes in his recent book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature”: “The idea that young men are civilized by women and marriage may seem as corny as Kansas in August, but it has become a commonplace of modern criminology.”
Walsh then goes on to explain her feelings about Kristof’s statement:
I don’t care whether it’s as corny as Kansas in August; that’s a remarkable statement, and I think it deserves more attention. “The idea that young men are civilized by women and marriage” gained currency in the Reagan era, when George Gilder published his screed against feminism, “Sexual Suicide.” Gilder argued that men are barbarians unless civilized by marriage, and by demanding sexual and economic freedom, feminists were denying women’s crucial civilizing function – and destroying the world as we know it.
Anti-feminist and misandrist at the same time? That must be a world record!
What do you think? Will our country fall apart without the nuclear family?
AP Photo/Jae C Wong
About Joanna Schroeder
“What do you think? Will our country fall apart without the nuclear family?”
These questions are few decades late. You do not have to ask it, but just see around and observe what is happening. Nuclear family is the fundamental unit of any society. Without nuclear family, a national is just collection of individuals bickering for their own self interest and nobody caring for common good.
I call bullshit. I am single and live alone. I have five sisters and a brother and two parents, but I only keep in touch with two of my sisters. Other than that, I am not really plugged into my family. I am an individual and an individualist.
And yet SOMEHOW! I manage to care about the good of others beyond myself.
I helped care for an end stage colorectal cancer patient when his socially acceptable family stood by and did nothing. I have watched as my own properly married parents have treated their kids like shit. My mom once yelled at my sister over the telephone when she was drugged up on morphine in the hospital after a surgery. Her yell-worthy offense? She had scared our mom by, you know, having a gall bladder meltdown.
I volunteer at a food pantry where I help individuals and families of all shapes and sizes, including mostly singles and other non-marrieds, and I watch as many, many of them care for each other. Someone will give up their place in line so someone who has to get to work won’t go hungry that week. Someone will not take the last item of a certain type so that someone else can have it. They care about animals and the environment, too. Many bring their own reusable bags. I have one client who will only take eggs if they are cage-free. Another client is a dedicated vegan. She will go hungry instead of taking meat, eggs, milk, dairy, etc.
This idea that only people in socially acceptable nuclear family units with a government stamp of approval on it are caring people who look beyond themselves is garbage.
Well as they say “Self-praise is no recommendation.” You are really a great person for caring about others. I am also never married person living away from my country of origin. To make somebody really work for something, he/she must have some vested interest in that thing. Why would man who has no children care about the school system of his district or child care facility? Why would somebody without elderly relatives care about services for old people. They have no stake in it. Married people have stake in these social assets.
Because perhaps they can see outside their own little world, to the system beyond it. They can see that others cared about them as they were growing up, in school, keeping them safe and want to give back. Because they perhaps watched their elders be cared for, because they possibly can see outside of a very self interested and narrow view.
You don’t seem to be able to do that, so far as your words here indicate, and I feel quite sad about that. You are missing out on a great experience, caring for others just because.
I go even further than that–I call the opposite. Nuclear families are more likely to be inward-focused and selfish than non-nuclears, focusing solely on the welfare and priorities of ‘me and mine.’ It’s the non-nuclear lifestyles–the singles, the divorced, the empty nesters–who are more able to wrench their gaze away from their own navels and consider the broader spheres of community, state, and nation.
Too many people seem to think that “I do it all for my kids” makes you unselfish. It doesn’t; it just recasts your selfishness in a more socially accepted (and even praised) format. The truth is that what’s best for your little family unit is often NOT what’s best for society overall.
If the “death of the nuclear family” is coming, it’s long overdue. It’s time for nuclears to give up their unearned privileges and status too, and join the ranks of all the other lifestyles: okay for some, but not superior to any.
Um, no. The nuclear family is a *recent invention*. It dates ONLY FROM the industrial revolution. Before that, most families all lived in either the same dwelling, 3 or more generations… Or at least in very close proximity, as with a small village. The father-mother-kids were supported by aunts, uncles, grandparents, godparents, and so on.
Stable families does not equate to nuclear families and “traditional roles” (which only date back to the 1800s anyway). Stable families are those families, of *ANY TYPE* that have deep and broad community support. The studies I have read point up that these kinds of families, regardless of the gender, preferences, or number of parents, raise the most emotionally healthy and capable children.
This is confusing, to say the least.
The question “*Do* Women Civilize Men?” posed in the title is completely separate from “*Must* Women Civilize Men?” posed by joan Walsh. To the first, I’ll answer no. To the second I’ll answer yes.
In truth, we civilize each other and that is one of the purposes of marriage.
Just like many debates about sex come down to untold negative beliefs about sex, the debate about marriage boils down to unspoken negative beliefs about human nature. It explains how far right thinkers can be both misogynists and misandrists at the same time is because because at their core right wing thinkers truly harbor very negative views of all human beings, not just of men or of women.
I suppose it depends how you word the question to make it sound offensive.
Having responsibility for a family and children helps keeps men and women out of trouble, because they are too busy.
Men have been effectively and systematically marginalized from fatherhood and we know that leads to high crime and broken communities.
Single mother homes also don’t seem to do very well at raising future good citizens.
What an offensive concept. Do you all really take a look around at your single friends and see a bunch of uncivilized criminals? And all your married friends are the picture of morality and refinement? You’ve chosen to hang out with a really odd mix of people, if that’s the case.
“Anti-feminist and misandrist at the same time?”
A common thing in politics these days.
“Will our country fall apart without the nuclear family?”
The question presumes that this would be a bad thing. Why should “our” country endure? What does “our” country offer to men and boys?
There is a section in the MRM who feel this way, they actively look forward to ‘the collapse”, where enough men have opted out; of high-paying jobs, of the dangerous work, of supporting children they never see, of inventing, of innovating, of creating jobs, of serving in the front line military. The theories vary but the end is usually something like “men will be needed again because when you are fighting over the last tin of food, strength wins. That means men win.”
I understand the anger I describe above and no, I do not subscribe to it; women in the west enjoy their rights simply because our society is civilised. Women can work in safe, air-conditioned offices, very few sortie into the mines, construction, logging, longhaul trucking, metal foundries, the merchant marine or any number of dangerous jobs still predominantly performed by men. Yet some men get severely worked over by that same society that makes it safe to be a woman and employed but not safe to be a man and employed.
The fall of civilisations, in this context countries, causes many problems, it rarely solves any. Might makes right is a poor choice of politics. I do not believe advocating the fall of a country is in anyone’s best interests, even for men. Far better we build upon what we have and peel away the deadwood we have permitted to accumulate around the edges of our legislation. A bloodless social revolution would be better in the long run for everyone.
Holy crap the title of this article is much more inflammatory than the article itself. Like, I get wanting eye-catching titles…but this was a bit misleading. Your asking whether the nuclear family civilizes us, which it’s a bit outdated to think that women are the curators of the nuclear family. I’m guessing the title was meant to reflect that last quote by Walsh…but yeah, still a bit incendiary.
Anyway, more to the point, no I don’t think the nuclear family ‘civilizes’ us. I’ve no problems with it…I had a lovely childhood living in a nuclear family (complete with dog and white picket fence), but I don’t think it is somehow the best form for a family to take. I think a lot of the reason that other family types struggle in the U.S. is because the societal support for such families just isn’t there.
I think the only reason people think a lack of a nuclear family is damaging is because of a dependence on the illusion that the nuclear family is THE type of family that everyone would should have. The whole spouse, 2.5 kids, and family dog thing. The different types of families that have come along during the years aren’t necessarily harmful to society at large, but rather that society’s refusal to change and accept these different family types is what’s harmful.
Agreed.
Assuming that the statistic is true about a “correlation” between being a single male and being a criminal, that in no way means that there’s a cause and effect relationship!
It could be that men with certain personalities are more likely to get married and at the same time more likely to be law-abiding. That does NOT mean that marriage made them more law-abiding. That’s faulty logic. It could be that men who are capable of relationship stability are less likely to engage in criminal activity. Besides, being in prison is bad for your marriage, so of course the ones outside prison are more likely to be in healthy marriages!
Some more problems with Kristof’s conclusion:
Being married is only one form of being in a relationship or “having a woman to love.” Are there statistics about felons who are in long-term relationships but not married?
Perhaps having a regular sexual partner gives married men something to do. A major contributor to crime among young men is boredom. Having a partner gives you some work to do. Idle hands and all that.
I wonder where to put child abuse or spousal abuse in this theory. For a tiny minority of men, marriage gives them closer access to victims. On the flip side, marriage also brings men into close contact with the women who abuse them. Hardly civilizing there.
The snarky, cynical part of me wonders if maybe husbands simply don’t commit crimes because their wives won’t give them permission. I’d hardly call that a civilizing effect.
The “civilizing mission” idea has a very nasty, bloody history on the global level. Modern forms of imperialism said that powerful countries had a “civilizing” duty to those poor, weak, dark-skinned, backward peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. I find the concept very chilling from a historical standpoint. “Civilizing” is often, paradoxically, a very savage, brutal process.
But, let’s accept this conclusion for the time being, for one reason: we can prevent some crimes committed by gay people if we allow them to get married. Conservatives, think of same-sex marriage as a crime prevention measure. Don’t you care about making our streets safer? : – )
“But, let’s accept this conclusion for the time being, for one reason: we can prevent some crimes committed by gay people if we allow them to get married. Conservatives, think of same-sex marriage as a crime prevention measure. Don’t you care about making our streets safer?”
Ah you just made my day with that comment.
It’s pandering to a big mass of voters. It flatters many women and appeals to conservative males. It’s in some ways pro-female and pro-male at the same time. (For those who are already susceptible to that spin on it.)
Ironically (or not), the “women as civilizers” idea was a major argument that the women’s suffrage movement used a hundred years ago to argue for women having the right to vote. (Not the only argument they used, but one of them.) Basically, the argument was that women needed to have legal and political equality so that women had the chance to make society more nurturing, sanitary, spiritual, cooperative, and morally grounded. They argued that women should have more power precisely because you can’t leave it up to dirty, competitive, violent, unruly men to run the world. (This argument got a big boost after the horrors of World War I.)
Family values conservatives today sound a lot like feminists of a hundred years ago. Perhaps in a hundred years conservatives will sound like the feminists of 2012….
More and more women will opt for staying single until more men start vacuuming and cleaning the dryer of lint on a regular basis.
This kind of work frustrates me the most.
While the Republicans are certainly wrong about 100% of their social policy, the Democrats also live in a fantasy world.
I call it a fantasy world because, like it or not, there is TONS of empirical evidence that a family which looks quite a bit like a “nuclear family” really does produce better outcomes for the children involved.
There is good reason for this. Families with two incomes enjoy a higher standard of living, and the children enjoy access to more resources (tutors, after school activities, schools without the need for metal detectors) as a result.
Families with two parents are also able to devote more parental attention to each child. This is just simple math: when you increase the number of parents by 100%, you have also increased the amount of available parental attention by 100%.
Sure, single parents with high incomes can usually do alright, but the statistics on child outcomes are fairly clear: two parents is almost universally better, especially at the lower end of the income spectrum.
This is where the failure exists on both sides. Parental time and income matters more than gender or gender role. So, working mothers and homosexual couples can be every bit as effective as traditional heterosexual couples. The Republicans would do well to recognize this, but they have failed miserably thus far.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have not recognized this research (and there is quite a bit of it, going back decades) at all. They would do well to start living in reality, but have likewise failed to date.
There is a big difference between believing in a nuclear family and saying that single parenthood is a good thing. I don’t get the sense that many people believe single parenthood is a good thing more to the idea that the family can take more shapes than just one man or one woman. For example a gay or lesbian couple are two parents raising children, but that’s not a nuclear family. I personally agree that children raised by a single parent statistically have a higher likely hood of becoming involved in crime and such. That does not mean one woman + one man + 2.5 kids is the solution, it doesn’t mean it’s not the solution either. I hope no one here is truly advocating for single parenthood as a good thing.
“For example a gay or lesbian couple are two parents raising children, but that’s not a nuclear family” What? Why not? because they are gay? There is a committed union of people, two incomes, two resources, two sets of grandparents potentially.
Also, a financially secure single person in good health and of stable mind could be seen as a potentially better parent than a married man and woman, with issue of poverty, mental illness or addiction issues…a triad of people could be seen as even more stable if you are looking at available resources.
The issues I’d look for are emotional stability, health, financial security and resources available to the upbringing of the child, not whether it looks “traditionally nuclear.”
@Julie Gillis I think you may have missed my point. I think that a gay or lesbian couple can be very good parents, but technically if you take the politically conservative perspective they are not a nuclear family because they are not one man married to one woman. I was using them as an example of a non-(technically)-nuclear family which can still raise a healthy and successful child/children.
Ah. Got it. Sorry.
All I can do is LOL ….
I see one obvious point that the Salon article carefully avoids–inquiring WHY the nuclear family is disappearing. You know, by actually asking people.
That could easily lead to an equally obvious and uncomfortable finding: that the nuclear family simply doesn’t appeal much to men any more. And why should it? Why on earth would a man WANT to be in such a setup? What benefit does it offer men that can’t be obtained elsewhere?