Mike's musings

Family values

I just read a very interesting and well-argued paper in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics called "World Family Trends", by Don Browning. In it, he looks at how trends in families, and in particular, what he calls "father absence" have led to increased poverty, increased risks of physical and sexual abuse and reduced chances for children, among other issues. He argues strongly that "there should be, as a matter of ecclesial and public policy, a presumption towards encouraging the formation and maintenance of intact families. This rule has exceptions, but they do not undercut its importance as a cultural and religious guide." (p. 246, author's italics).

I was impressed by his arguments, but the more I thought about them, the more I realised that they seem entirely predicated on the idea of family as a relationship between adults and their children. And I thought back to what I'm reading slowly in parallel: Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, which discusses how society seems to construct itself on an imaginary future Child, and how we might want to think beyond that. And, whether you agree with Edelman or not, there are, and there always will be, couples who can't have children, or who have lost children, or don't want to have children. These may be for medical reasons, for psychological reasons, reasons around sexuality, or just preference. And we shouldn't ignore those.

A project like that laid out in Browning's article, where the argument seems to be almost completely around children, doesn't provide any good reason for why those people should be married, or even called "a family". That doesn't mean that they shouldn't, of course. But I think that part of what Edelman is getting at is that just by making such an argument, and not even referring to these other issues, such an article assumes an indifference to such people, and such relationships, which serves to diminish their "importance" within the discourse of which the article is a part. And that discourse is part of our society, so there is a danger that such people and such relationships become devalued and made less normative even than they already are.

I'm not saying that this was Browning's intention. He might even have considered making points around non-child-based families (I've just made that up), but that he didn't still makes a negative point, particularly in such a heteronormative - and child-centred - society.

References

Browning, Don (2001) "World Family Trends" in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. Gill, Robin, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Edelman, Lee (2005) No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina.

Labels: family