Traditional family values

The modern-day concept of "traditional family values" in the UK and America is based mainly on an idealised perception of the traditional family structure of the 1950s.

Some aspects of so-called "family values" are certainly beneficial to society.  According to the Wikipedia article on family values, in a 1998 Harris survey, two common "values" were perceived to be, "loving, taking care of, and supporting each other", and, "knowing right from wrong and having good values".  We could certainly do with more of those two values in our society.

But many people also associate "family values" with an idealised perception of the traditional family structure that dominated in the UK and USA in the 1950s.  Children were mainly brought up in traditional nuclear families where the father was the breadwinner and the mother stayed at home and raised the children, and there is a common myth that this family structure encouraged those sort of loving and caring "family values", and that the breakdown of that family structure is mainly responsible for the recent "loss" of those values.

But in reality, the majority of evidence suggests that those values were also deficient in the 1950s.  Instead of either embracing modern-day trends or trying to bring society back to how it was in the 1950s, we would be better off looking for ways of encouraging new modern trends that do a better job of encouraging these values than either present-day trends or the cultural norms of the 1950s.

History behind the 1950s family values

I have done a fair amount of research into this- you can find more detailed summaries of the history elsewhere, but I will outline what I see as being the most important points.

• The nuclear family has always been an important part of child-rearing, but in many past periods, children were often brought up within less narrowly-defined "family" structures, where extended family members, close friends who were treated as part of the family, servants and others contributed.  In the Victorian era, the narrowly-defined nuclear family consisting of a married couple and their children became more dominant.
• In World War II, there was a temporary breakdown in this structure, for many men served in the war and women were required to take up work in their native countries.
• After the war, there was a strong social backlash, and people were heavily encouraged to return back to traditional family/gender roles and heavily stigmatised if they did not.

Common misconceptions about the 1950s family values

"The 1950s family arrangement encouraged people to love and care for each other."

My experiences overwhelmingly suggest that it only encouraged people to apply these values to people that they considered to be "family", i.e. related to within a few generations.  People who were not considered family members were often not entitled to the same amount of respect (an issue that recurs in my articles on friendships, but was worse in the 1950s than it is today).  In addition you were only "loved and cared for" if you conformed to a narrow way of doing and thinking.  If you were left-handed, black, homosexual, a single person in your 40s, or a mother with a high-flying career, forget it.

I am all up for people loving and caring for each other, but it should be an all-inclusive thing, not something that is reserved only for limited groups of people and comes at the vast expense of others. 

"The 1950s family arrangement encouraged people to know right from wrong and have good values."

In the 1950s, most people generally "conformed" a lot more than they do today and were more likely to obey and accept authority without question.  This meant that people were less likely to disobey good rules, but it also meant that they were more likely to accept bad rules without question on the basis, "Because authority X said so", which, for example, made it easier to justify persecuting vulnerable/minority groups purely because they were considered different.

Since the 1950s we have progressively moved away from blind obedience of authority, and there are some areas where I feel there is considerable room to progress further.  For instance, customs like the wife taking her husband's surname upon marriage, and businesses working 9 till 5, Monday to Friday, are frequently imposed on people on the basis, "Because society says so", despite being unnecessarily limiting in many cases.   However, there are other areas where we have gone too far, i.e. people feel more able to disobey most rules, including rules that prohibit particular behaviours for good reasons.  What we need is an increased sense of rules being based on wider moral considerations, and respect for those considerations, rather than an acceptance that "rules are rules".

"The 1950s family arrangement, where fathers were the breadwinners, and mothers stayed at home and looked after the children, encouraged children to be cared and looked after properly."

This works as long as the family is affluent enough to get by easily on just one income, both parents are happy to conform to these roles, and the family gets on well.  

But if the family is not affluent enough then it can be tough to feed the family, and fathers may end up pressurised into working long hours, meaning that they end up stressed and over-worked and don't get to spend much time with their children.  Mothers who want to have some independence can end up unhappy due to feeling trapped in domestic roles.  I often come across a view that parents should be prepared to sacrifice everything for their children, but the "100% sacrifice" model can result in unhappy parents, which detracts from the chances of their children being brought up in a loving, caring environment, and can result in sacrifices being made that hurt others, such as friends being dumped because they aren't considered part of the family and "family/children come first".

Today's problem is that the rise in working mothers has not been accompanied by measures to make it easier for fathers to spend less time at work and more time with the children, so we are left with a model where many households have both parents in full-time work.  Rather than promoting the 1950s family structure, we should be looking at a shift towards more flexible working hours, and more scope for parents to work shorter hours (say, 25-30 hours/week rather than 35-40) so that they can job/child-share, both having fulfilling careers but enabling at least one parent to be available for the children for most of the time.

"Traditional marriages should be encouraged and cohabiting discouraged.  Statistically, married people are happier on average than unmarried people."

I would argue that people in a long-term committed partnership are likely to be happier, on average, than people who are not, because they are guaranteed to have at least one emotionally-fulfilling and stable relationship in their lives.  The association with marriage stems from the fact that people in long-term committed partnerships are, statistically, more likely to get married.

The real problem is that too many people "take on" too much in their sexual partnerships before they are fully committed and know that they are really right for each other, resulting in repeated damaging break-ups, which is particularly problematic when couples have children before they are strongly committed.  Marriage is one way of trying to enforce commitment, but unlike in biblical times, when it was about a physical and emotional commitment, today it is a primarily legal commitment- couples sign legal documents and are discouraged from breaking up because of the legal repercussions of divorce.  I am uneasy about this, plus the marginalisation of unmarried couples who are more committed to each other than most married couples.  If we were to change the definition of marriage to something more similar to the biblical version, I might agree with encouraging more couples to get married.  But as our definitions currently stand, I suggest that it is "long-term commitment" rather than "marriage" that we really need to be encouraging.

"But maybe we can bring back the traditional 1950s family structure without bringing back the negatives associated with enforcement of it?"

My feeling is that this would be very difficult, if not impossible.  For example, how do we encourage women to stay at home and raise children without marginalising working mothers, and triggering knock-on effects that result in increased enforcement of conformity to traditional gender roles, and increased marginalisation of "sensitive" men, independent/career-minded women and homosexuals?   I cannot see a way out of that problem.  Too many people think idealistically about one parent always being there for the children, think of the most obvious way to get to that scenario, and don't think of the negative knock-on effects that it would most likely cause.

I will go back to the two sets of so-called "family values" that came up at the start of the article:  "loving, taking care of, and supporting each other", and, "knowing right from wrong and having good values".  That's what we need to be striving for, and I don't see how bringing us back to a more 1950s style society would help to bring us any closer to it.