The American family is a strange institution. There are people out there today who will readily compare their family to an institution—a mental one at that—and give you examples to confirm their stand. They’ll especially do it if they can get on Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil. What a sad state of affairs when getting fifteen minutes of fame on TV is more important than family honor.
In the early days of man’s civilization (a term, by the way, which is almost false advertising when it comes to humans), people congregated in groups for strength and mutual protection. When Ugh-ugh the Caveman and the members of his tribe roamed around, large groups were necessary in order to ward off predatory animals like the short-faced cave bear and the unscrupulous lawyer. Even back then, bickering began in these nomadic groups as men, who were in charge, chose certain women over others. This resulted in clannish separation and fragmented smaller family units. The benefits of protection from large groups began losing their priority and humans found it necessary to have strong places of residence such as caves for protection. With the birth of housing, and the inevitable afterbirth of landlords, that protection became less vital, and strength was relegated to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, and armpit odor.
Humans began to build cities as they settled down to farming instead of hunting and gathering. Sure, there are still some hunters and gatherers around, but they now mostly hang around singles bars. The cities gave smaller groups individual housing instead of everyone being in the same cave or shack. Isolation between those groups led to the rise of families and as a result, people became even more individualistic. In such places as Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia, civilization flourished with huge cities. Rome and Athens were also the sites of massive cities, as was South America, spearheaded by the Mayan, Aztec, and several other lesser tribes.
In the rest of Europe, though, large cities took quite a while to take hold. In fact, much of Europe did not see “civilization” until the Roman Empire invaded them. The so-called Dark Ages, labeled as such because of the lack of proper lighting, favored those people whose groups still had the strength of numbers. They took over the farmland and started hiring those who lacked the strength of numbers to work for them.
Money was no object back then because there was none, but some for of legal tender was still needed in order to make those without possessions want possessions of their own. Farm workers were often little more than slaves granted housing and protection by their employers. History refers to these people as indentured servants, a term that means you work for me or take your chances on your own. The land barons had large, fortified castles, defended by knights, and the serfs lived in shacks outside the castle walls. Some of the serfs became quite adept at manual labor like armor building, constructing wagons, playing music, and holding barbecues.
These people held dreams of becoming exclusive workers for the kings, princes, or whatever name the landlords chose for themselves, for if they gained these lofty positions, they would eventually be moved inside the castle walls to protect their lives and assure their services to their masters. If their families had pretty girls, they were groomed to become trained in court procedures, hopefully to become married to a member of the ruling family. The castles became the home of businesses, and from there came the first importance of families. Fathers, because back then all businesses were run by men, were proud of their business, and they certainly didn’t want to leave it in the hands of strangers when they could no longer run it. The continued safety of their families depended on the continued operation of those businesses, so they trained their sons in the ways of their commerce. A man’s last name often denoted his business, so back then if a man’s last name was “Fletcher” or “Butcher”, or his nickname was “Bugsy”, you knew what line of work he was in.
The job of women back then was to maintain the household and have sons to run the family business. Sons were a prized possession, whereas women were considered second-class citizens, with little or no rights and without a prayer of ever making as much money as a man. Come to think of it, that’s not so much different from today. Women as family members were so far down on the ladder that in order to make them more desirable to a prospective husband, the tradition of a dowry was instituted. The bride’s dowry was pretty much on the same level as the “Showcase Showdown” on “The Price Is Right”. Men out looking for a quick buck would often search out the dowries that went with a daughter in order to maximize their wealth. Fathers put as much wealth as they could in those dowries in order to get that extra woman out of their household to make room for the more desirable and useful boys. Quite often, much to the new bride’s chagrin, the dowry was sold off by the husband, who pocketed the money and moved on to other women.
It took ages for women to gain any kind of clout in this world. Men controlled everything, and women were basically galley slaves who cooked and cleaned, not allowed to do many things that were considered a man’s privilege. Women couldn’t smoke or drink unless they worked as barmaids or prostitutes. The right to vote was denied them, as was the privilege of driving. Work was almost unheard of for women in many fields, and they certainly weren’t allowed to run a business. Eventually, things changed as women won some concessions in court and were allowed to take over their dead husband’s businesses. At first, there were stipulations that the women would control the business only until they remarried, at which point their new husband would take over. The really intelligent women avoided remarrying, and started the trend of having their daughters learn about the family business as well as their sons. Sometimes this worked out perfectly. Let’s face it, girls, you’re much more likely to buy cosmetics if the person behind the counter is a pretty woman instead of a 300 pound, five o’clock shadowed hulk named Hubert.
Okay, so let’s look at families. In the old days, family units were always pretty much the same. You had your husband and wife, 2.3 kids, the family dog (although the line there was broad—men sometimes got their dog and wife mixed up in the order of their importance), and in a lot of extended families, the husband’s parents were staying there too. Everyone had chores since there was no television available and no place to plug in the boom box, so everybody needed something to keep busy to avoid being asked to help Grandma with her knitting. In school, girls were taught something called “home economics” so they would know how to cook and sew and to be desirable to men. Boys were taught “shop”, where they could learn how to make hefty weapons out of metal and wood in order to kill their wife once they found out she failed “home ec”.
World wars I and II did a lot to change the image and status of women. All the young men were out getting killed in a far-off land because old men made faces at each other then said “Come on, let’s fight”. Of course, these old men only start the wars, and it’s up to the young to die for the old men’s idiocy. World War II was especially helpful in changing the course of women in society and altering the basics of family groups. Sending the young men to war left business in the capable hands of women, who were finally able to do such things as running a farm, driving cars, working in assembly lines, and arcing a gob of tobacco juice into a spittoon from across the room, a stunt that came in handy when there were no baseball players left and a women’s league was started to keep fans occupied.
The image of “Rosie the Riveter” was one the ladies enjoyed, and after the war, women fought hard to be able to stay in the business world, but returning veterans were given priority, and most women had to go back to the only jobs men would let them have, such as becoming secretaries and working the corner of Fourth and Main in the red light district.
Women, with their often superior intellect and built-in ability to adapt to situations, became stronger genetically than men, and in that direction laid their revenge. When you look at birth records, you find that starting in the late 50’s, more girls than boys were born. This shifted the balance of power to women, so that today, even when the husband boisterously proclaims himself to be the head of the household, almost 75% of all family decisions are influenced by his wife, up to and including where the family will live and what kind of car they drive. This changes, of course, in wealthier families with kids, where the husband drives the cool luxury or sports car and his wife gets the dorky minivan.
Still, women today enjoy personal freedom that their counterparts in the 19th Century couldn’t even dream of. Single parent families made up of a mother and kids are now common, and those family units really show the strength of women. There are very few men who can get up early, go to work for 8 hours, shop for dinner on the way home, cook that dinner, feed the kids, then clean the house and pay the bills before going to bed and start over the next day. If a man had to cope with all that, he’d probably step in a bathtub full of water and throw in a plugged toaster.
Families themselves have changed. Up to the middle of the 20th century, they either stayed home together at night or went out as a unit to dinner, the movies, or a park. In our modern world where everything is about “What’s in it for me”, everyone is out doing their own thing, staying in touch with e-mail and cell phones because sending a letter takes too long and no one wants a land line phone. Kids hang out with their friends instead of spending time with their hopelessly fragmented families. Even when couples have no kids, they don’t always do things together, as was perfectly exemplified by a TV commercial last year for a service that allows you to buy and print your movie tickets at home on your computer. The handsome couple raves about the service, until the woman tells her partner “Enjoy your movie. I’ll be in theater so-and-so”. As she goes up the escalator with a smile on her face, leaving the distraught man behind as he yells after her “Are we still having dinner together?” The look on the woman’s face reveals that’s highly unlikely.
If we don’t reverse this trend, the American family will become a thing of the past. We need to go back to a slower pace, to a period when families had time to live and grow together as a family, instead of being a group of individuals living under the same roof. Parents need to take the time to get to know their kids, and kids should consider talking to their parents, learn how things used to be, and discuss family history. The young ones may find that life wasn’t as dull and boring as they think it was, and parents could gain a lot of respect from and for their children by trying to understand that kids aren’t motivated by the same things we were any more. If we do this, we can once again have strong family units.
Just don’t try to tell women that the comeback of families will mean they have to go back to cooking and having sons or they may make men obsolete. Some species of reptiles, amphibians, and sharks can fertilize their own eggs without male sperm, and I don’t doubt for a minute that human females can learn that same trick if men get too sure of themselves.
