By: Michael PS

Michael PS — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:57:01 +0000

The family has lost most of its practical functions. Here in Scotland, the Heritable Jurisdictions Act 1747 stripped clan chiefs of their judicial functions; in the late 18th and early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution saw the its rôle in production largely replaced by commercial ventures; from the late 19th century, its rôle in education and health passed to the public authorities.

What was left was the family as a refuge in times of crisis; a safe haven in an uncertain, disturbing and hostile world. How does that work out in practice? Well, we have the holidays to look forward to: the family gatherings, the forced smiles, the awkwardness of seeing everyone pretending and not succeeding, the feeling that a corpse is lying there on the table, and everyone is studiously ignoring it. Yet it is difficult not to embrace that sense of fuzzy dependency, where everything is familiar, especially in a world that is breaking down and where, for most, “becoming self-sufficient” is a euphemism for “having found a boss.”

Perhaps, there will be something by Ibsen on the TV, to cheer us all up.

By: Gail Finke

Gail Finke — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 02:51:38 +0000

There is a large body of long-term data showing that marriage and married fatherhood — not single fatherhood — makes men reliable workers. There is also a lot of new evidence (as it’s a new trend) that mothers, especially single mothers, cannot work as long a day or appear at work every day as reliably as those married men. It stands to reason that a largely single population will not be as reliable or conscientious. Surely there will always be many reliable and conscientious men and women, but it doesn’t make sense to depend on that being true for society as a whole.

Comments on: “A Nation of Singles”: Jonathan V. Last

By: Michael PS

By: Gail Finke