One day, when John's mother was in her 70s, she told him a story about how things had changed in her small town since she was a girl. She said:
When I was a girl, things were very different. When we were feeling ill, my grandmother knew what would cure almost anything and all of us turned to her for healing advice.
When there was a dispute or trouble between family members, we turned to Uncle Charlie who listened, understood, and counseled us. He would remind us that our family's sticking together was the most important thing we had.Most important things I learned were from our neighbors and family. School helped, but the way I really came to understand the world was from the folks around me.
Whenever the family gathered, each of the kids was expected to display some talent for the group -- singing, reciting a poem, doing acrobatics, playing a musical instrument. We didn't think of it as entertainment. It was the enjoyment of sharing our gifts.
Everyone had backyard gardens and we had wonderful get-togethers when we picked and canned the food that got us through the winter.
My dad and brother built our house.
Today, that seems to have all faded away. Now, people use only doctors when they are ill and grandmothers are ignored.
People go to lawyers and psychologists when there are problems and Uncle Charlie is ignored.
Now, people think schools raise a child so children ignore their neighbors and their family.
Now, people enjoy television and movies and they ignore the gifts and talents of the people around them.
Food comes from the supermarket and McDonald's and the backyard is for grass. There are no wonderful canning parties anymore.
Houses are built by architects and contractors who never make a house that really fits a family like the one my dad and brother built.
John's mother was reminding us that her community was the producer of much of its health, problem solving, education, talent, food and housing. It was a productive place.
Now, she observes communities made up of consumers who believe that health is in a hospital, problems are the domain of lawyers and therapists, education is produced by schools, enjoyment is produced by electronic media, food is provided by supermarkets and a home is built by professionals.
Hidden within John's mother's observations is the fact that she is describing the loss of basic functions belonging to families and neighborhoods. Most have become incompetent in terms of doing the work of families and neighborhoods. The cost of this incompetence is families and neighborhoods that have no real function.
No group persists when it has no reason to be together. Therefore, if families perform no functions we can predict that they will fall apart.
We delude ourselves if we think our high divorce rates are caused by interpersonal problems and disagreements. It's not that people are not getting along; it is that they don't need each other because they have no functions to perform. They are just isolated, unproductive, dependent consumers who happen to live in the same house.
John McKnight and Peter Block blog on parenting, family and neighborhood issues at their website www.abundantcommunity.com. John is emeritus professor of education and social policy and co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. He is the co-author of Building Communities from the Inside Out and the author of The Careless Society. He has been a community organizer and serves on the boards of several national organizations that support neighborhood development. Peter is founder of Designed Learning. They are coauthors of The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.
The old fashioned idea of people who aren't friends who enjoy each others company sticking together for practical purposes is on the way out. As it should be. People should be with others because they like talking to them and being their friend. This is the most genuine and real relationship. Modern people have lost their tolerance of spending time with people they don't really like. Just the way it is nowadays.
While in the absence of modern medicine, Grandma may have had some useful herbal remedies, her remedies did not prevent as many as 1 in 10 women dying in childbirth (in Afghanistan today, 1 in 5 women dies of pregnancy or childbirth-related causes), nor did they prevent conception in women worn out from birthing more than a dozen children (which used to be the norm), nor were they able to prevent the deaths of children from infectious disease. Women prefer modern medicine which has cut the maternal death rate to about 8 in 100,000.
Certainly, the point can be made that under capitalism, people have become objectified, their value measured only in dollars; and that community has broken down; and that people spend their lives looking at screens instead of being present with other people; and that high rates of depression and mental illness are present in moderns; that people have lost the skills of self-reliance and the advantages of small-town community. All this came about through vast historical, social and technological forces well worth analyzing. How useful patriarchal nostaligia for the good old days is in this analysis is debatable.
As a history major, I'm interested in your sources for your comment: 'What these men think were the good old days were, for women, the really bad old days. Forbidden by law from education, unable to divorce abusive husbands, holding the legal status of livestock (cattle), wholly at the mercy of the patriarchaÂl order, women did not have it good back then"
Oddly enough, I can't seem to find collaborating proof of your comments as there are plenty of cases of women owing business', women becoming educated, women divorcing, women owning slaves, women owning property, women becoming writers and teachers.
Can you please let me know where you are getting your information? Thanks..
The data about childbirth mortality rates comes from various sources including the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Treatment, and World Health Organization data. Common knowledge. You should be aware that contraception was illegal in the United States until sometime in the 1960s when the US Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Conneticut that contraception should be legal for married couples.
In the US historically, elementary school teaching (underpaid) was one of the few occupations open to women, presumably because men did not want to hang around children all day. Yes, a few 1800s women became writers, because it was a form of expression for which they did not need money (pencil, paper and time being the only requirements) or a formal education. Occasionally, a liberal-minded affluent father would allow a girl education by private tutor, but universities were off limits to females. In the days of Jane Austen, women were still barred from attending art colleges, or music conservatories.
Quite honestly, the science backs up the notion that people tend to get weary of each other. Even the conservative world is slowly beginning to grok this, as when Dr. Keith Ablow called marriage "one of the leading causes of major depression in the nation."
You said: "The key--and I think this will become the new normal--is for adults to part ways without animosity, and not seeking to plunder the other for assets or money going forward."
I agree with the first part of your hypothesis, but when you penned the line above, I've 'gotta object.
I can't tell you how many marriages I've seen in the past two decades fell apart as the kids hit their late teens or left the nest. And NONE of the marriages ended without animosity (I've been tracking 25 divorces for the last 16 years or so).
In every case but a couple, the women filed for divorce and after lengthy (and expensive) divorce proceedings, got the majority of the assets, plus child/support and alimony. All of the men were stripped of their homes and reduced pretty much to "human wallets". Only a few will ever be able to retire, and most have to split their retirement income with ex-spouses.
The plundering comes at the expense of the men whose only sin was to provide for their families.
I don't see any of that ending until divorce laws are changed to reflect modern times. Current divorce laws encourage women to initiate.
A female historian in England recently finished reading 240 diaries written by women from the 1700's to the late 1800's. She was surprised to find how many women loved their husbands (only TWO complained of abuse or mistreatment) and doted upon them.
Life WAS HARD for BOTH males and females in the good old days. But working as a team and facing outward against hardships, they usually thrived and were far happier than couples today.
Marriage based on economic slavery may be "stable," but it is cruel and inhuman punishment! Men are still socialized to believe that it is a woman's job to make the relationship work, although that is not as true as it used to be, but the truth of the matter is that for a relationship to stay stable in the modern world, both parties must work to support and help the other. Far too few people have that attitude.
What do you mean by this comment? I majored in history. Life was hard for BOTH men and women, and wonderful at the same time.
Modern woman's happiness has declined every year since 1972, which incidentally, is when modern feminism began to really catch it's stride.
Maybe you are viewing the wrong way through the looking glass?
Marriage by economic slavery, as I tried to make clear, is a bad idea, no matter who is enslaved. Making a happy marriage is hard work, and men have largely been socialized against the attitudes that will help them. That is shameful, and it should be changed.
My expertise on this subject comes from seeing the stable and happy marriages among my friends and family--only one divorce, and that is rare in this world.
Or paraphrasing Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell, (sorry, I'm not finding the exact quote) in 'The Importance of Being Earnest', "Of course she's unhappy. Young girls are always unhappy! It is not until they are grown women do they realize that they had been, comparatively, ecstatic!"
It saddens me that there is a generation of young people who sincerely believe they've arrived on earth to be entertained, consume, and to "live off the fat of the land". I don't blame the youth, human beings learn by watching others.
This article reminds me that despite popular culture and the mantra of supreme individuality, the human being is hard wired for connection, from one to another. Like the grandmother, who knew how to heal, our communities are suffering (rich and poor) because we are attempting to mass produce a wisdom that is only transmitted from one to another. You can't bottle it, it cannot be manufactured. It is only given in relationship. The way to turn this all around is sincere self-assessment and critical choice, ultimately leading to a re-igniting of intrinsic purpose that precedes function. Unfortunately, our habits devalue community and authentic connection, while consumption hides extreme loneliness. Google has taken the place of grandma and mid-day talk shows have usurped Uncle Charlies gift to heal the whole.
Despite our current reality, I sense a major change on the horizon!
Obviously we can't really go back but have to adapt to the changes around us, for better or worse. I liked the phrase "We delude ourselves if we think our high divorce rates are caused by interpersonal problems and disagreements." In successful marriages, there are interpersonal problems and disagreements as well so this is not the direct cause of divorce. Even though interdependency has changed, I believe we still can strive to form relationships that engender similar feelings if we appreciate what is said above. Obviously things were not perfect then and there were still people that would abuse "community" or individuals within for their own agenda. Still we can learn from simpler times.
Maintaining the community was something the women used to do. They kept it together and as a kid I didn't know I would be among the last to see that kind of thing. I hope future generations reclaim the sense of community we once had be they made up of men or women with enough time to make it happen. I recall many men in the community who were around while the other men were at work. The photographer or vendor who didn't have a 9 to 5.
Men and women should not live in fear of depending on each other. We have done it for thousands of years and for the most part it worked out ok. Anyone trying to divide us or make us resent each other is probably a short sighted selfish self promoter. Harmony and happiness go together.
While we do buy frozen vegetables, we also grow can our own. We don't buy jam at all, as we make enough to last the year - from home-grown fruit. We make all our own food from scratch - no mixes or prepared foods. My wife even makes some of her own cheese and I have butchered pig legs for her. The kids get drafted for all the chores. Similarly for house work - cleaning, repairs, and maintenance. Everybody helped install tongue and groove oak flooring and paint the walls. I eat with my family if I get home in time, otherwise the kids eat with my wife.
I work with the kids on their homework and I take them for 2 mile walks daily. There is only 1 TV in the house, in the family room.
If we had a few acres, we would be a lot more self-sufficient. But we have a small suburban lot.
We could have made the choice to have everybody do their own thing independently. We did not do so. I think the choice was wise.