Community: A Hope for the Future
Relationships:
This is the third of our three-part series on community and its relationships within our culture.
Today, we’re going to delve deeper into this idea of community, specifically, into the type of relationships most beneficial to participating in true community…because meaningful relationships form the fiber and connectedness necessary to any well-functioning community of the future.
Envisioning a hope for community of the future requires the assumption of two principles:
The first is to recognize that genuine community is built from personal relationships grown from the seeds of togetherness, interdependency, and commitment. These intertwined elements are necessary for any culture to prosper.
Secondly, is to appreciate that humankind is meant to live in genuine community; and consequently, in meaningful relationships with one another. Relationships and connectedness are in our DNA. It’s who we are, it’s how we’re wired. By such means we are able to experience the benefits of an abundant life characterized by a rich flow of give and take.
For example:
• There is what we give others in which one learns of compassion, empathy, and generosity.
• There is what we receive ourselves whereby one learns gratitude and appreciation for both material and spiritual blessings.
• There is companionship that generates the fidelity of deep and abiding friendships which assist in weathering the storms of life.
• And, in relationships individuals experience the timeless lessons about life: love and hate, joy and sorrow, life and death.
In anticipating the future, a major question arises, “How does one go about forming more beneficial interpersonal relationships from which to build more genuine communities?”
Most folks would acknowledge that these are valuable assets of meaningful relationships. But a major question confronts us, that is, “How does one integrate the values of community and healthy relationships into current and future culture?”
To answer the “How” question, I would like to make a couple preliminary points:
1. First: Remodeling an institution like the concept of community does not always necessitate the complete destruction or abandonment of the original – as our current culture prefers to do. For one to do so shows a complete disregard for (or ignorance of) the intrinsic beneficial values previously served by that institution. A wiser process is to pull from the past that which is best served and use it to fashion and construct a more excellent way. That applies to not only traditions, values, and ideals, but also to people and relationships.
2. Secondly: Build with a long-term vision. The short-sightedness of immediate gratification or self-serving interests rarely results in a durable or substantive solution. A short-term view only is concerned with a quick fix, not the long-term journey. Social organizations and institutions should be constructed gradually and thoughtfully by persons of sensitivity, perspective, and integrity…building one block at a time by virtuous and noble means. Political expediency is not helpful here.
3. Thirdly: Consider the consequences of any action. For example, in terms of the topic of community, can one ask, “What are the long-term consequences of abandoning genuine community, one that is based upon meaningful interpersonal relationships?” Does anyone ask that question? The trajectory is clear… consequent present-day burdens of loneliness and isolation upon our young. Push this trajectory out 10 years and what does it look like? Is it a pretty picture?
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking; and our society rests at the eleventh hour.
Then what is the way back to meaningful personal relationships which instruct, affirm, and inspire one another?
To answer this question, let me ask another rather simple question. “Why do animals build nests?” A person might well answer in a variety of ways: One might respond, “To have protection from the harshness of the environment…the cold, wind, rain or snow.” Or perhaps, “To protect their newborn from predators or disease.” Or maybe it is, “To provide a safe place to teach their young to hunt or to fly within their native abilities.”
So, then, let me ask, “What are the “nests” we humans provide for our young?”
“That’s a silly analogy,” one might criticize. But is it really? Are we humans so far removed from our animal nature, that we can abandon providing safe places of nurturing we call “nests” for our children?
Permit me to ask another question. What has been the one “nest” for all humanity? You’re right. It has been the family. Parents and progeny living together in intimate relationship…designed for protection, provision, and propagation of the species.
The Biblical passage in Genesis, whether one regards it as literal fact or as myth, either way, still expresses a basic desire and need of the individual person. It is to live in relationship with another. After all that God had created of the heavens and the earth, and proclaiming it as “good,” God comments of Adam, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Gen 2.18) God created Eve as a mutual life-mate. From that time on, the individual was made to live in relationship with others…to experience close and personal companionships with others of kind. Humankind is truly what Aristotle called a “social animal.” The desire for meaningful relationships is innate to our being.
As just mentioned, in the Genesis passage, God created man and woman to live in close personal relationship with one another as companions in an equally shared life. Furthermore, it is stated that they were to procreate humankind by means of childbearing within the context of family.
An important point worth making before going any further is that I’m going to use the word “family” in a rather loosely defined manner… that being “any relationship between parent or surrogate parent and child.” That may include single parent families, families consisting of a gay parent or parents, blended families, uncles, aunts, grandparents, as well as the traditional nuclear family. The reason should be obvious. From a child’s perspective, their emotional and physical needs: those of safety and security, acceptance and self-confidence, love and affection, values of respect and truth and so many more, …all are most closely tied to the character quality of their adult-child relationships and to the circumstances in which they are raised. A single parent family can provide the desired nurturing for his or her child that is needed, while a distracted and dysfunctional nuclear family may not. It depends primarily upon the nature of the relationships involved. Point made.
On the flip side, however, remains the reality that the optimal family structure is a mother and father both present and providing a loving environment for their children. Unfortunately, not all men or women have the opportunity of such a relationship. Many persons find themselves the sole member of a single parent family from the tragedies of death of a spouse, abandonment, abuse, divorce, or separation. So, we should be sympathetic to their plights as well. To suggest that a husband-and-wife marriage is the optimal structure for rearing children is not to criticize single parent families in any way. It is only to encourage those who have that opportunity to build the kind of relationships that will form a marriage consisting of a two-adult team, offering the children a safe and formative childhood.
Before approaching the future, can one first ask, “What is the condition of the American ‘nest,’ the family, presently?” What is our starting point? (Data from the Brookings Institute)
*Marriage rate in the United States is the lowest ever recorded.
*25% of children live with one parent and no other adult; which is 3x the rate of the rest of the world
*More than 400,000 children live in foster care without either parent
*40% of all births are of unmarried women
*The % of parents who stay together through their child’s upbringing: B-12 y/o is 74% if married, but drops to 24% for those cohabitating.
*In fractured families, there are higher rates of substance abuse, mental illness and crime. [1]
*On the contrary, if a person in poverty graduates from high school, gets a job and waits to have children after marriage, the chance of remaining in poverty is 3%! (Wilcox, Wang)
*The collapse of family structure in America is causing social and economic disasters.
So, is it too much of a stretch, in the effort to build genuine community, and meaningful relationships for the future, to suggest that a place to start might be to first foster marriage and the family? I know this runs countercultural to today’s norms, even though all evidence attests to the benefits of both marriage and family. But to believe otherwise is choosing to live in delusion. Has the progressive fragmentation of the family really resulted in this generation of children actually doing better than 20 years ago? Uncertain? Look at the present-day statistics for drug abuse, crime, violence, declining education scores, poor work performance, and unabashed malevolence towards others.
The quick rebuttal would challenge the premise that the fragmentation of marriage and the family is such a major cause of our societal woes. There are so many other negative influences which surely contribute to the breakdown of community and interpersonal relationships; and there is some truth to that. But in response, one must ask, “Where else, other than the institutions of family and faith can young children learn life’s most important and beneficial lessons?” Think about it a bit. Where do they learn? Who provides them with…
Protection from physical and emotional harm?
Unconditional love and affection?
Affirmation and encouragement which establishes personal value and potential?
Individual expression within a safe place which fosters imagination and creativity that builds personal identity?
Learning how to express one’s thoughts and emotions appropriately?
Developing empathy and compassion for others?
Working through conflict constructively?
Critical thinking: on values of truth, reason, honesty?
Understanding rejection and dealing with failure?
Experiencing forgiveness?
Responsibility of work well done that builds confidence and self-esteem?
Qualities of appreciation and gratitude for even the little that one may have?
Participation in healthy play and recreation together?
…and countless others.
If not experienced in the context of family, where else will a child learn these lessons? Perhaps that is part of the problem. Presently, they aren’t being taught the lessons of meaningful relationships.
Restoring the Family Nest:
How to start – Five Basics:
1. Avoid demeaning attitudes and language: Relationships demand mutual respect and civility even in the midst of conflict and disagreement. You will notice an obvious and intentional omission of attitudes of any “oppressor or oppressed” dichotomy of divisiveness; or opposition to “meritocracy” or mean-spirited activism. Sowing discord and division has no place of honor here. Name-calling, foul speech, and vindictive slandering of others is not to be tolerated in any form, nor at any time. Teach respect for one another.
2. Give one’s child “quality” time and “quantity” time. They need both. Surrogate parents by means of sitters, nannies, au-pairs, day-care centers, pre-schools all have their place. But children also need to know the security that their mother or father will be there for them, regardless of the time or place if genuinely needed. That is Parenting with Presence. Not only a physical presence but the presence of awareness of how their children are actually doing…their daily victories and failures, their momentary joys and disappointments. The times they need encouragement; and the times they need discipline and correction. Parents need to be there attentively in those moments, especially in the early childhood years. It’s a way of telling the child, “You are important to me. You have value. How you feel and what happens to you really matters to me because I love you.”
3. Intentionally create family times to communicate issues of gratitude and concern, praise and correction, affirmation and disappointment. Express love and affirmation at every opportunity…create times for doing so.
This point of effectively communicating with our children is more fully expressed in the book, Hollowed Out – a warning about America’s next generation, by Jeremy S. Adams, a high school and college teacher who expresses his observations of the youth of the next generation with eye-opening insight. It’s rich reading, but now I can only share two of his comments that have to do with child-raising in our homes today. He describes the typical teen as having three main issues: First is a “lack of vital human connections” devoid of meaningful relationships with family and friends. [2] Secondly, he notices a fear of romantic relationships, avoiding the intimate sharing of love and commitment with another. Thirdly, is the preference for seclusion and isolation rather socializing with friends. Surprisingly, he offers a relatively small, simple, “first step” in restoring the parent-child relationship. Trivial as it may seem, it serves as an iconic reminder of how meaningful communication can be established within the community of the family…that being restoring time for the family dinner table.
Adams states his case: “The family dinner can be a refuge, a place of restoration, a place where the phones are put aside, time is taken to prepare good food, consideration is given to each other, and everyone engages and helps. It should be regarded as just as important as a scheduled activity as any other.”
A lot of good things can happen:
• Improve communication with one another
• Learning to listen to one another and try to understand where they’re coming from
• Learning to respect one another and others in civil discourse
• Provide an opportunity when each person around the dinner table can share thoughts and emotions within a safe environment
• It can be a time to ask questions, give feedback, affirm one another, express gratitude, and plan for the future.
Adams concludes with this challenge to every parent:
“No matter the focus, parents need to insist on this shared time and shared space. It is the antidote to anxiety, to unhealthy seclusion and separation, and to the alienating idea that family time and obligations are a burden rather than a nourishing and edifying blessing…it is a way for parents to engage every day with their kids; it is a way to keep loving tabs on them. When kids get into trouble, it is often because the parents aren’t paying attention.” [3]
Good questions:
Can my family carve out time to gather around the dinner table? Will we make it a priority?
Can we put down our cell phones and actually talk to one another face-to-face, with eye contact for a change?
Can we talk about meaningful issues, about life, faith, school, relationships, aspirations, frustrations, and disappointments?
Can the process be one of encouragement, social and emotional support, developing coping skills? Can it be a time of affirmation?
And the most important question, Can I learn to LISTEN to my kids without knee-jerk judgments or corrections? Make it a time of discussion, not a lecture.
The alternative to effective communication between adult and child is not pretty. You know it. I know it. For example: What happens in the absence of dinner hour together as a family, or any other times of meaningful family interaction and discussion? Jason Whitlock states that “technology has diminished ‘the influence of traditional authority figures’ and strengthened the ‘reach of celebrities.’ Kids shut their bedroom doors, turn on their televisions, laptops, and game consoles, plug in earbuds, open social media apps, and disappear into a world far removed from mom and dad. [4] The digital world inhabited by teens is not one that celebrates ‘family values’ or intellectual accomplishments or any form of piety, affection, dignity, or nobility of spirit. It is rough, raw, casually vulgar, endlessly sexual, insolently uncouth, sneeringly sarcastic – a place where all relationships are ‘transactional’ and obscenity is a constant theme. Unsurprisingly, the neuroscience tells us that this digital world is harmful to the cognitive development of children and teens.” [5]
Sobering, is it not?
Now, back to Basics: two additional ones:
4. Use the power of example: Set the tone of conduct and model appropriate behavior: demonstrate courtesy, respect for others, civil discourse, honesty, common sense, responsibility, and accountability.
5. Teach, teach, and teach: explain the “whys” so often asked, do family activities, even work chores together, explain various perspectives on social issues.
The healthy family, or lack of, is when and where children are exposed to experiences and lessons of enduring influence in later life. We know that psychological affirmations or insults in those impressionable years form the basis of one’s future views of relationships with other persons and general society overall. One’s self-concept, self-esteem, and self-confidence are all greatly predicated on the experiences of childhood. So, in terms of an understanding of meaningful relationships, the role of the family is paramount.
Can one reasonably ask these questions:
• But how can parent-child bonding occur if parents are not present and attentive to their child’s moods, worries, and frustrations?
• What better way can children discover and internalize values of patience, compassion, and forgiveness other than from a loving parent?
• Whom do children look to for the examples of self-sacrifice and courage lived out in everyday life?
• Who is at their side to explain that life is not always fair but that there can be success on the other side of failure?
• How does a child learn the discipline necessary to grow into a well-balanced and well-adjusted life?
In the family, a child is first exposed to issues that can build or destroy an understanding of meaningful relationships as well as a sense of genuine community. In a positive sense, within the members of an emotionally healthy family, one begins to learn the lessons of mutual respect formed within a framework of safety and security. In addition, the child discovers that there is a natural hierarchy of authority within a family, with the parent responsible for the protection and well-being of their children; as the children in turn add to the love and affection of the family. Experiences of learning and developing personal values naturally occur by means of both exploration and curiosity, as well as those of caution and restraint. Values discovered in relationships with one another can be safely and effectively taught: honesty, compassion, unfairness, failure, and forgiveness. Lessons on the benefits of personal responsibility and the satisfaction of creative labor can be exercised in light of a growing understanding of the balance between self-esteem and self-sacrifice. In short, family can be an oasis where understanding and faith can grow amidst the barren hardships of the world.
Sadly, in the dysfunctional family it is often a different and much more difficult process. Relationships are tenuous at best and often spiteful and abusive. Experiences of safety, trust, self-confidence, affection, and forgiveness can be sparse or non-existent for many vulnerable children. Poverty, abuse, and neglect reign and become the norm of every day; and hope dims. Harsh reality can soon extinguish any ideals of meaningful personal relationships, twisting them into barren and distorted disillusionment.
The difficulties of raising a family of whatever form cannot be overstated. Today’s world rips at the family, wanting to pull it apart by whatever means. There are those ancient devils of hunger and poverty that have never gone away. Poverty drives before it the demons of crime and violence, which so often emerge from the dark alleys of addiction. And, in the shadows crouch the ghosts of abuse, human trafficking, racism, and unfair discrimination of all kinds.
The consequences of the fragmentation and disintegration of the family confront one at every crossroad. Impaired learning and behavior skills, ruined relationships, poor self-esteem, skepticism of religion and faith, distrust of law and order, antagonism towards those of greater means can all often be traced back to dysfunctional family dynamics.
It is important to empathize with these varied family structures, but empathy can only go so far and needs to be reinforced with action. What needs to be done? What actions need to be taken within our families?
Societal Solutions:
Provide safe places in which to live, work and play. Our society MUST make this a priority. If one lives in fear, and threatened by the harms of addiction, poverty, and crime, any hope of flourishing soon fades.
Change the current tax and welfare policies that now undermine the family: Current policy is to pass legislation that doubles payments to single parent families, an apparent noble goal, but this actually incentivizes single parenting or cohabitation rather than marriage. Why get married if you can get paid to stay single? Why get married if one then is committed to pay alimony in the event of separation? How can we incentivize marriage? Israel gives tax credits; Japan $5000 for marriage, etc.
Provide good jobs for fathers and mothers to adequately provide for the family. Expand skills-based vocational training and re-tooling. Build opportunities for parents to work full or part-time from home if desired.
Develop community and faith-based resources for families, especially for those with newborn children when the stress of childcare is greatest and is the most common time for separation and family breakups. Develop family leave assistance and visiting nurses to instruct and support parents in childcare in the home.
Change social norms: Research shows that 1/3 of wives earn more than their husbands. Change societal expectations of the “ideal worker” working 60–70-hour weeks …change societal expectations for fathers/mothers’ roles. Accept stay-at-home dads while mother works…the real crucial factor is to keep the marriage intact to provide a nurturing environment for children to grow and experiment in a safe and forgiving home.
Promote the three factors most determinative in rising from poverty:
o Go to school and get H.S. diploma
o Get a job
o Marry before having children
Research by sociologists Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang showed that if a person followed these three ideas, only 3% remained in poverty.
In the context of relationships and community, both the institutions of family and faith embody the first principles of human conduct independent of any culturally contrived norms of convention or ideology. It’s like Vince Lombardy, coach of the Green Bay Packers is touted to have once stated after losing several games, “It’s time to get back to the basics.”
Family Solutions:
1. Provide a safe and nurturing environment for children to learn and thrive.
2. Tap into the synergy of interdependency between individuals and their cooperation to a mutual good; teach the value of respecting the diversity of other people’s cultures, their traditions and celebrations. Practice social consciousness towards others.
3. Teach conflict resolution rather than allowing divisiveness – call out mean-spiritedness where it exists. Emphasize positive solutions.
4. Develop a “We” perspective rather than “Me” perspective. Look outside one’s own self-absorption and respond to the needs of others around us. Serve as a volunteer at your school, house of worship, or neighborhood.
5. Develop the mindset of producing rather than consuming…sharing within community. Respecting the environment, sustainability, and economic modesty.
6. Develop mentoring programs for role modeling of values, their consequent attitudes and actions.
7. Provide avenues or conduits to hope for the youth. Show them possibilities, to dream dreams, and teach them skills to accomplish those goals. Encourage imagination and creativity.
8. Minimize internet use and focus on classical literature, reading skills, critical thinking and rational deliberation rather than impulsive emotionally driven decision-making.
9. Practice affirming others.
10. Develop personal identity by valuing a job well done…encourage a work ethic.
11. Finally, a healthy community requires quality leadership. Support those who inspire and convey integrity and fairness in the decisions that are made.
If one were to build a better world, a better country, and a better society it must begin by fostering the family nest, in all its various forms – for it may well be the greatest of all institutions.
***
[1] https://justthenews.com/nation/experts-say-growing-number-single-parent-households-will-lead-more-crime-poverty-depression
[2] Jeremy S. Adams, “Hollowed Out,” (Washington, D.C.; Regnery Publishing, 2021) p.92
[3] Jeremy S. Adams, “Hollowed Out,” (Washington, D.C.; Regnery Publishing, 2021) p.94
[4] Jason Whitlock, “American Sports Are Letting Down America,’ Imprimis 49, no. 7/8, (July/August 2020)
[5] Jeremy S. Adams, “Hollowed Out,” (Washington, D.C.; Regnery Publishing, 2021) p.95