“If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families… worse for children.” -David Brooks
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/
Although David Brooks and I don’t share the same view of God’s design for family or the superiority of the “chosen families” he advocates, we are united in his statement above. This week and next, I’d like to discuss challenges to the idea of the traditional nuclear family and then make a brief case for its value and importance along with marriage. But first a shared definition…
The traditional nuclear family is a father, mother, and their children living in the same home. It’s a simple idea that goes back to the earliest humans (think Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel), acknowledges natural procreation, and has the benefit of now sixty-plus years of social science that says kids do best with a mom and a dad united in healthy marriage. Sadly, it’s also an idea that’s associated with ugly expressions of patriarchy and the oppression of women. For these reasons and others, many today find the term unhelpful or want to say it never existed until 200 years ago when biological family units were elevated to a place they never had been previously. Besides Brooks’ article, another case in point is the new HBO Max documentary and miniseries Nuclear Family that repurposes the term to tell a story and “explore the meaning of family.”
In the thirteen years I worked for National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), I was more aware than the average person of individuals and movements that wished to dismantle the traditional family and downplay the unique and irreplaceable role of fathers. It came as a surprise, however, to see this message promoted and sponsored by a prominent para-church organization.
On December 7–8, 2006, I was invited to speak and participate at a two-day training for Youth and Community Workers in Bronx, NY on the topic of fragile families and related issues. It was sponsored by one of the largest Christian relief organizations in the world.
In preparing for the event, my goal was to further cultivate the relationship, introduce their youth workers and staff to NFI and our resources, and to gain research and development on working with fragile urban families. The event had been presented as an honest forum to discuss “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of fragile family situations.
When I got there, although I had been invited as a primary participant, I was given less than ten minutes to introduce myself. Realizing that they were not going to give me time to present what I had prepared, I tried to keep my primary message clear: “It is critical for youth workers who want to improve the lives of fragile families to engage, rather than ignore fathers. NFI is a non-profit that specializes in this and we are here to serve you.”
I sat down and the rest of the “forum” included only a little discussion and instead the primary platform—about 90% of the teaching time—was given to one guest. His sessions evidenced a strong emergent church, post-modern bent.[1] And, consistent with the dark side of this movement, his teaching centered on experience and “novel” interpretations of Scripture at the expense of research, objective truth, and ancient wisdom. His joy seemed to be tearing down time-tested paradigms held by participants and replacing them with his own pet interpretations. Although he was entertaining, he made several statements that did not sit well with me. The one that bothered me the most was “There was no idea of the nuclear family until the 1800s.” Although he said nothing further to back up or unpack this statement, his comment had the effect of de-emphasizing the contribution and involvement of my organization as “a partner.” Worse yet, his false statement (more on that next week) had the effect of making the message I was there to bring seem antiquated and irrelevant.
There are other challenges, even within evangelicalism, to the “detached” nature of many nuclear families. A recent example of this is Jamie Smith’s excellent Desiring the Kingdom. In making the case for the importance of ancient liturgy, he says that the vows taken by the congregation when a child is baptized involve a “relativizing of ‘blood lines.’”[2] He further states that the church becomes our “first family.” He describes the “privacy of the family” as just “another sphere of rabid autonomy in late modernity.”[3] Smith is concerned with “the idolization of family,” where the family functions as a “closed, self-sufficient, autonomous unit.”[4]
Next week we’ll respond to these and other challenges and make a brief case for God’s design for the nuclear family along with marriage (Part 2).
[1] “Though a subject of great discussion in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the emergent movement has seemingly dropped off the map as of late. Part of this stems from the difficulty in defining just what the Emergent Movement is. Led by authors and pastors like Brian McLaren (A New Kind of Christian, 2001) and Tony Jones (The Church is Flat, 2011), emergent churches have sought to reshape how to “do church” in the postmodern culture, often challenging traditional Christian understandings of faith and practice.” (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/topics/e/emergent-movement/)
[2] Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 185.
[3] Ibid., 186.
[4] Ibid.