The Good Enough Family
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

The families of the not too distant past were orientated along four
axes. These axes were not mutually exclusive. Some overlapped, all
of them enhanced each other.

People got married for various reasons:

1. Because of social pressure and social norms (the Social Dyad)

2. To form a more efficient or synergetic economic unit (the
Economic Dyad)

3. In pursuit of psychosexual fulfillment (the Psychosexual Dyad)

4. To secure long term companionship (the Companionship Dyad).

Thus, we can talk about the following four axes: Social-Economic,
Emotional, Utilitarian (Rational), Private-Familial.

To illustrate how these axes were intertwined, let us consider the
Emotional one.

Until very recently, people used to get married because they felt
very strongly about living alone, partly due to social condemnation
of reculsiveness.

In some countries, people still subscribe to ideologies which
promote the family as a pillar of society, the basic cell of the
national organism, a hothouse in which to breed children for the
army, and so on. These collective ideologies call for personal
contributions and sacrifices. They have a strong emotional dimension
and provide impetus to a host of behavior patterns.

But the emotional investment in today's individualistic-capitalist
ideologies is no smaller than it was in yesterday's nationalistic
ones. True, technological developments rendered past thinking
obsolete and dysfunctional but did not quench Man's thirst for
guidance and a worldview.

Still, as technology evolved, it became more and more disruptive to
the family. Increased mobility, a decentralization of information
sources, the transfers of the traditional functions of the family to
societal and private sector establishments, the increased incidence
of interpersonal interactions, safer sex with lesser or no
consequences - all fostered the disintegration of the traditional,
extended and nuclear family.

Consider the trends that directly affected women, for instance:

1. The emergence of common marital property and of laws for its
equal distribution in case of divorce constituted a shift in legal
philosophy in most societies. The result was a major (and on going)
re-distribution of wealth from men to women. Add to this the
disparities in life expectancy between the two genders and the
magnitude of the transfer of economic resources becomes evident.

Women are becoming richer because they live longer than men and thus
inherit them and because they get a share of the marital property
when they divorce them. These "endowments" are usually more than
they had contributed to the couple in money terms. Women still earn
less than men, for instance.

2. An increase in economic opportunities. Social and ethical codes
changed, technology allows for increased mobility, wars and economic
upheavals led to the forced introduction of women into the labour
markets.

3. The result of women's enhanced economic clout is a more
egalitarian social and legal system. Women's rights are being
legally as well as informally secured in an evolutionary process,
punctuated by minor legal revolutions.

4. Women had largely achieved equality in educational and economic
opportunities and are fighting a winning battle in other domains of
life (the military, political representation). Actually, in some
legal respects, the bias is against men. It is rare for a man to
complain of sexual harassment or to receive alimony or custody of
his children or, in many countries, to be the beneficiary of social
welfare payments.

5. The emergence of socially-accepted (normative) single parent and
non-nuclear families helped women to shape their lives as they see
fit. Most single parent families are headed by women. Women single
parents are disadvantaged economically (their median income is very
low even when adjusted to reflect transfer payments) - but many are
taking the plunge.

6. Thus, gradually, the shaping of future generations becomes the
exclusive domain of women. Even today, one third of all children in
developed countries grow in single parent families with no male
figure around to serve as a role model. This exclusivity has
tremendous social and economic implications. Gradually and subtly
the balance of power will shift as society becomes matriarchal.

7. The invention of the pill and other contraceptives liberated
women sexually. The resulting sexual revolution affected both sexes
but the main beneficiaries were women whose sexuality was suddenly
legitimized. No longer under the cloud of unwanted pregnancy, women
felt free to engage in sex with multiple partners.

8. In the face of this newfound freedom and the realities of
changing sexual conduct, the double moral standard crumbled. The
existence of a legitimately expressed feminine sexual drive is
widely accepted. The family, therefore, becomes also a sexual joint
venture.

9. Urbanization, communication, and transportation multiplied the
number of encounters between men and women and the opportunities for
economic, sexual, and emotional interactions. For the first time in
centuries, women were able to judge and compare their male partners
to others in every conceivable way. Increasingly, women choose to
opt out of relationships which they deem to be dysfunctional or
inadequate. More than three quarters of all divorces in the West are
initiated by women.

10. Women became aware of their needs, priorities, preferences,
wishes and, in general, of their proper emotions. They cast off
emotions and thought patterns inculcated in them by patriarchal
societies and cultures and sustained through peer pressure.

11. The roles and traditional functions of the family were gradually
eroded and transferred to other social agents. Even functions such
as emotional support, psychosexual interactions, and child rearing
are often relegated to outside "subcontractors".

Emptied of these functions and of inter-generational interactions,
the nuclear family was reduced to a dysfunctional shell, a hub of
rudimentary communication between its remaining members, a
dilapidated version of its former self.

The traditional roles of women and their alleged character,
propensities, and inclinations were no longer useful in this new
environment. This led women to search for a new definition, to find
a new niche. They were literally driven out of their homes by its
functional disappearance.

12. In parallel, modern medicine increased women's life expectancy,
prolonged their child bearing years, improved their health
dramatically, and preserved their beauty through a myriad newfangled
techniques. This gave women a new lease on life.

In this new world, women are far less likely to die at childbirth or
to look decrepit at 30 years of age. They are able to time their
decision to bring a child to the world, or to refrain from doing so
passively or actively (by having an abortion).

Women's growing control over their body - which has been
objectified, reviled and admired for millennia by men - is arguably
one of the most striking features of the feminine revolution. It
allows women to rid themselves of deeply embedded masculine values,
views and prejudices concerning their physique and their sexuality.

13. Finally, the legal system and other social and economic
structures adapted themselves to reflect many of the abovementioned
sea changes. Being inertial and cumbersome, they reacted slowly,
partially and gradually. Still, they did react. Any comparison
between the situation just twenty years ago and today is likely to
reveal substantial differences.

But this revolution is only a segment of a much larger one.

In the past, the axes with which we opened our discussion were
closely and seemingly inextricably intertwined. The Economic, the
Social and the Emotional (the axis invested in the preservation of
societal mores and ideologies) formed one amalgam - and the Private,
the Familial and the Utilitarian-Rational constituted another.

Thus, society encouraged people to get married because it was
emotionally committed to a societal-economic ideology which infused
the family with sanctity, an historical mission and grandeur.

Notwithstanding social views of the family, the majority of men and
women got married out of a cold pecuniary calculation that regarded
the family as a functioning economic unit, within which the
individual effectively transacts. Forming families was the most
efficient way known to generate wealth, accumulate it and transfer
it across time and space to future generations.

These traditional confluences of axes were diametrically reversed in
the last few decades. The Social and Economic axes together with the
Utilitarian (Rational) axis and the Emotional axis are now aligned
with the Private and Familial axes.

Put simply, nowadays society encourages people to get married
because it wishes to maximize their economic output. But most people
do not see it this way. They regard the family as a safe emotional
haven.

The distinction between past and present may be subtle but it is by
no means trivial. In the past, people used to express emotions in
formulaic, socially dictated ways, wearing their beliefs and
ideologies on their sleeves as it were. The family was one of these
modes of expression. But really, it served as a mere economic unit,
devoid of any emotional involvement and content.

Today, people are looking to the family for emotional sustenance
(romantic love, companionship) and not as an instrument to enhance
their social and economic standing. Creating a family is no longer
the way to maximize utility.

But these new expectations have destabilized the family. Both men
and women seek emotional comfort and true companionships within it
and when they fail to find it, use their newfound self-sufficiency
and freedoms and divorce.

To summarize:

Men and women used to look to the family for economic and social
support. Whenever the family failed as an economic and social
launching pad - they lost interest in it and began looking for
extramarital alternatives. This trend of disintegration was further
enhanced by technological innovation which encouraged self-
sufficiency and unprecedented social segmentation. It was society at
large which regarded families emotionally, as part of the prevailing
ideology.

The roles have reversed. Society now tends to view the family in a
utilitarian-rational light, as an efficient mode of organization of
economic and social activity. And while in the past, its members
regarded the family mainly in a utilitarian-rational manner (as a
wealth producing unit) - now they want more: emotional support and
companionship.

In the eyes of the individual, families were transformed from
economic production units to emotional powerhouses. In the eyes of
society, families were transformed from elements of emotional and
spiritual ideology to utilitarian-rational production units.

This shift of axes and emphases is bridging the traditional gap
between men and women. Women had always accentuated the emotional
side of being in a couple and of the family. Men always emphasized
the convenience and the utility of the family. This gap used to be
unbridgeable. Men acted as conservative social agents, women as
revolutionaries. What is happening to the institution of the family
today is that the revolution is becoming mainstream.


Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician,
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and
the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in
The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com