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Introduction: The Family--a Search for Norms
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18157 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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11 / 1990 |
1,075 Words |
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From at least as early as Plato's Republic (fourth century B.C.), controversy and disagreement have existed in Western thought about the family. One group - Plato among them - has attacked the received or traditional notion and structure of the family (male-husband-and-female-wife-and-their-children) in favor of some supposedly more important or greater good. Another group - Aristotle among them - has supported or upheld the received or traditional view. Aristotle argued against the scheme of his former teacher Plato on the grounds that it went against “natural affection.” Plato has been seen - perhaps inaccurately - as the forerunner of all utopian social reformers and engineers (of which Marx and Engels, present-day feminists, and homosexual activists are probably the most important modern examples), and of their attempts to scuttle or at least drastically change traditional families. Aristotle can be seen as a forerunner of all those who uphold the traditional view on the basis that it is grounded in human nature and promotes human goodness and well-being.
Today the disagreement and confusion seem to have increased, and something resembling a war has broken out over the family and family issues. Where once it may have seemed reasonably clear what a family is or was, and what values and norms should be upheld and promoted for it, today this has broken down. But, because what the family is and does are so closely connected with what and who we are, we continue to care passionately about it. Everyone seems to be worried about the family and to agree that it is changing, but there is little agreement on what the family is, or should be, so we can hardly agree on norms for it.
The plight of the family is a continuing problem, and this magazine itself reflects this. The Currents in Modern Thought section of THE WORLD & I has had at least one previous theme on the family (December 1986). In the introduction to that section the editor wrote:
The family in Western society is in deep trouble. Once taken for granted as the keystone to personal and collective well-being, the contemporary family is moving ever more rapidly toward dissolution and atomization.
Ironically, the family has never endured as a fixed institution. It has been constantly modified by the changes that affect its members. Furthermore, the economic, political, moral, and intellectual forces that have produced accelerated changes in the modern world have engendered loud and discordant echoes in the contemporary home. That is just as true now as then, and can serve equally as a prelude to the present discussion.
Our present symposium itself exhibits some of the discord occurring in discussions of family issues and norms: Some of our writers take positions or hold to views that are rejected or castigated by others. This is as it should be. Given the existing disagreement on this topic, only divergent opinions could represent adequately the present discord and confusion.
Helen Hull Hitchcock claims that American society is now undergoing a moral Cold War, with the family being at the heart of the conflict. She discusses the views of the two major contending camps on family issues; she calls them the “liberals” and the “conservatives.” She claims that the traditional family is under attack because it interferes with radical individualism and
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