Family Power

Between my community development practice and my writing about policy and the planning field, I try to balance two principles: (1) practice and strengthen the situations where children really are now, and (2) write about how more vital and sustainable settings for children could come about.  Striking this balance can be challenging.  The first principle requires working with very imperfect situations that the second principle says must change.  Yet, the first principle - working with reality - also counterbalances the idealism inherent in the second one.  For example, I have written about the importance of strengthening marriage as a collaborative institution in which men and women can work together as committed, loving, equal partners.  I believe in that idea deeply, and its importance is supported by considerable research evidence.  However, today many children are being raised by single mothers who are doing the best they can, often very effectively, and in conditions where the likelihood of forming such marriages is low.  Good community development practice tries to build with them and their communities more stable situations around their children in the circumstances in which they live right now.  On the other hand, the policy thinker in me steps back and points out that collectively, the large numbers of single-mother households also means large numbers of marginalized fathers - and it's not good for anyone for the sons the women are raising now to one day join those ranks.  Practicing with realities "on the ground" and writing with visions of better lives is not an easy balance to maintain, but it's better than doing one without the other.

Because I write frequently about the productive family, I get asked whether I really think families can and should do so much for themselves in their own homes.  Do I really think all families should run their enterprises at home, home-school their kids, and grow all of their own food?  Of course not!  In fact, we don't do all of that either.  But, I write with such emphasis on using the home and habitat productively because I want to help people imagine what alternatives to the consumer-oriented lifestyle for the family can look like. 

For example, there are advantages for at least one parent to base some of his or her work at home, even if it involves flex-time employment with a non-familial employer.  The presence of the parent in the home enables more points of contact with the kids that can keep them safer and away from harmful television programming.  Such incremental steps away from having parents all employed away from home can make a very positive difference in their children’s lives.

Or take the idea of the parent as co-teacher of the child with the formal school.  That doesn’t require full homeschooling.  There are many varieties of co-teaching roles parents can play.  There are also many more possible such roles than are normally envisioned by school districts.  Parents can be engaged as co-teachers in specified subject areas on delimited topics.  For example, when the American history class covers periods of immigration to the United States, parents can be involved as teachers by having them relate the course material to their own stories of how and when the students’ families came over, where they first settled, and how they arrived in the communities where the schools are now situated.  There are as many co-teaching possibilities as there are subjects.

So yes, I do advocate steps that would change the roles of parents more into producers and less into consumers.  I do lay out what such changes could look like were they to be adopted across a variety of family functions.  But, meaningful changes can take place one role, one parent, one classroom, and one home at a time.

Every year, more children come into the world outside of marriage.  Younger women are now more likely to give birth outside of marriage than in marriage.  Of course, studies have shown for years that children grow up more healthy, less poor, and better educated when they are raised in stable marriages.  So, why do we seem to watch helplessly as the disappearance of marriage continues?  Why allow such a large percentage of the next generation of Americans face life with the odds increasingly set against them?

Marriage is being decoupled rapidly from childrearing, even though doing so makes it harder on children.This decoupling is especially true for younger and less educated women and men.  Statistics show that college educated women are more able to earn enough money to afford a full consumer life and take care of children (or have them cared for by child care providers).  Such women marry, and are more likely to partner with men who are mature and capable themselves of earning a decent, middle-class income.

Our modern, consumer-driven life and the post-industrial economy that has made it render people less able to produce things for themselves, more dependent on buying everything they need, and more expansive in their definitions of what they must have.  This is the case, even as the traditional skills that favored men in the industrial economy are ever more outdated. These developments often make marriage seem not worth the effort.

Yet, somehow, some way we have to build an economy and culture that enable all people to produce more for themselves, and that provide more leverage against the excesses of consumerism. And we need to foster ways of working for men that draw on more than their brawn.  Tomorrow's children and the marriages in which they need to be raised cry out for such changes.

You put your weight on the left foot and a mine goes off on the right; you shift to the right and the left side explodes.  That's how it feels sometimes to write about families.  Since almost everyone came from and belongs to a family, this gets personal.  It gets personal even for those who like to think of themselves as detached scholars!  I ponder this uncertain ground as I try to articulate the importance of productive families.  "A good marriage makes it measurably more possible to build a productive family," I might state.  "There you go, demeaning single parents," says a voice from the left.  "I hope you don't mean gay marriage," chimes in a voice from the right.  My book focuses on families formed by moms and dads because men and women bring children into the world, most kids are raised by them, and relations between men and women are complex enough on their own.  Grappling to be sensitive, I add that I know that other kinds of households, including those formed by gays and unmarried people, are raising children lovingly.  "What a shamefully narrow view!" says the left, condemningly.  "Don't open the door to gay families!" you hear from the right.  You'd like to think that starting with kids and the kinds of communities that are best for them would establish some kind of common ground for public dialogue.  But in today's climate, think again. 

For some years now, I have been the one in our family who cooks dinner.  I prepare all kinds of dishes - pastas, roasts, stir fry meals, soups, and others.  One of my sons' favorites is a mac & cheese casserole that is part Kraft and part more original combinations of diced tomatoes, sausage, tomato puree, beans, and spices such as chipotle pepper.  Sometimes, instead of the sausage, I toss in sliced hot dogs or ground beef.  I've wondered at times whether the kitchen becomes a more masculine space when dad, as oppposed to mom, has the lead role as chef.  How would one know?  What would be the indicators?  More dishes named after football formations?  No, that's not what I mean!  What cooking does for me as a dad is it gives me one more role through which to paticipate in shaping the life of the family - diet, budget, and frequency of family meals, for examples.  My wife cooks breakfasts and bakes bread, so she also has her footprint in the kitchen.  We quietly celebrate the meals we create that include vegetables and herbs from our garden.  Our kids take it for granted that mom and dad both cook. If the kitchen becomes a more masculine space when dad cooks, it's a pretty subtle change. Rather, in our case cooking does give dad ways to shape the family's habits and rhythms that he would not have enjoyed otherwise.