| 
Politics
and the Family
Family is the Basic Unit of Society
Are the Biggest Institutions Destroying the Smallest?
Column Four
by Richard Eyre
Column
1 Column 2 Column
3
 Most
everyone, it seems, pays lip service to the concept that the family
is the basic unit of society — the fundamental building block, the
smallest and most critical institution out of which all other institutions
are made.
From the science
of matter to the science of management, we have to understand and
maintain the smallest unit if we want to ensure the proper functioning
of the larger entity. How self-destructive it would be if an organization
began to destroy its own cells or if corporate executives started
undermining their own workers.
The principle
and warning applies directly to today's society.
The larger institutions
of our country, as they pursue their own preservation and expansion,
are undermining, superseding, and otherwise destroying the basic
institution of the family in a hundred ways. Every part of society
— from banks to businesses, from media to manufacturers, and from
government agencies to news agencies to ad agencies — must come
to realize that as they weaken and undermine families they are ultimately
destroying themselves. None of them can exist without the foundation
of stable households that are the demand engine and the end consumer
of every good or service that they produce and provide. The survival
of all the large institutions we have created depends entirely on
the survival of solid individual households and families.
Some argue otherwise:
"Who needs families?" they say. "Individuals are
consumers, individuals are employees, individuals are what make
up society. Who cares if they are married or if they live together
as families?"
Statistics and
common sense provide the answer. Married individuals earn more,
produce more, and consume more than single individuals — 30 percent
more. Try to imagine any business school or government surviving
a 30 percent decline in sales, in production, or in tax base. And
try to imagine a society reproducing and successfully raising its
work force and its consumer base without functional, nurturing families.
Parents provide
a huge service to society by raising its next generation, its next
work force, its next taxpayers, its next universe of consumers.
Current estimates of the cost of raising a child to age eighteen
are in excess of $200,000. Yet we do little to repay families. In
fact, there are punishments ranging from higher taxes to job and
career disadvantages.
In earlier times,
children were an economic advantage to parents — they helped on
the farm and with the other manual labor or households. Today children
are a huge economic drain on their parents and neither government
nor business does much to ease the burden or support the effort.
The bottom line is that we all depend on families. And as surely
as we depend on them individually, we depend on them institutionally.
Short-term
vs. Long-term Gain
When larger
institutions have policies or practices that weaken or harm families,
it is almost always a classic example of trading long-term viability
for short-term gains. It is a macro example of choosing instant
gratification over permanent stability.
- A bank makes
credit too easy and increases short-term profits but generates
bankruptcies and family financial instability that diminish the
bank's long-term deposits and profits.
- A business
downsizes and reduces family-related benefits and thus raises
its current income, but it suffers in the long run because it
loses employee loyalty, morale, and stability.
- A movie focuses
on violence and irresponsible, recreational sex and produces a
box office hit on a relatively low budget. But life imitates art,
and kids make mistakes that hurt themselves economically as well
as emotionally, and theaters as well as every other part of commerce
eventually pay the price.
- A TV news
show focuses on the steamy and the shocking and gives much more
attention to "alternative lifestyles" than to family
lifestyle. Curiosity and titillation help the Nielsen rating but
undermine the families that we're counting on to provide the next
generation of viewers.
- A merchandiser/advertiser
disguises wants as needs, helping create a narcissistic, hedonistic
society of instant gratification. People buy more and product
companies earn more in the short term, but at the expense of family
stability and long-term prosperity, both in households and in
businesses.
- A business
refuses the options of flex time, job sharing, and maternity leave
in the name of avoiding disruption and inconvenience but ends
up losing some of its most competent employees, who decide to
put family first.
- A neighborhood
sports team (or a college or pro league) decides to schedule more
of its games on Sunday to increase attendance but makes parents
choose between sports and family time or church time, eventually
weakening families and undermining future community support for
the team.
- A legislature
creates a marriage tax penalty (makes it so a married couple is
taxed more than the same two individuals living or filing separately).
It increases short-term tax reserves but undermines the family's
ability to raise the next generation's tax base.
- A high school
teaches every imaginable class related to career and occupation
but pays no attention to family or parenting skills or to ethics.
Kids are prepared to go out and get a job but not to raise the
kids or establish the home that will support and supply the school
and the general economy.
- A law firm
encourages and supports and recommends divorce as the common solution,
lining their pockets with fees but splitting up the families that
constitute the communities in which they exist.
Most of us don't
have any direct influence over the banks, businesses, media, or
merchandisers that are undermining (or at least failing to support)
our families. But we are voters, and this is an election year, and
what we can do is look for candidates who will address these issues
and use their influence and voice to attempt to persuade the larger
institutions to take better care of the smaller.
And someday,
if we really want a way to turn public priorities toward private
families, how about this: Give parents one additional vote (in local
and state elections) for each of their under-eighteen children.
This kind of parental power at the ballot box would cause politicians
to pander to families like never before and would no doubt unleash
a stunning list of creative, family-friendly ideas and proposals.
Join me next
column when we will explore the devious (even diabolical) plan that
is afoot to destroy families throughout the earth. And please read
the earlier columns in this series when you have time.
Click
here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
© 2004 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
|
