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.

"Normative" bullying part 2- Gender and relationships

Gender differences- Nature or nurture?

The simple answer to this question is, "both", but a more challenging question is, how much of the observed differences between males and females is nature, and how much is nurture?  I think the "nurture" component has definitely declined since the 1950s, but it is still there, and I believe that the main problem with it is that it often tends to be enforced through "normative" bullying techniques.

A frequent personal experience of mine is that, culturally, men are expected to be X, and women are expected to be Y, but I tend to be a mix of the two.  I tend to be particularly exasperated by contradictory arguments like the following:

"Like it or not, men and women are different.  There is no peer pressure to conform to gender roles- that has died out since the 1950s- there is only pressure not to conform.  Fundamentally, men are X and women are Y, and if, as a man, you aren't X, then it means you probably have something wrong with you and so should be regarded with suspicion, for a civilised society has to have norms/rules and if you don't play by the rules you should be punished.  Most other men are happy to be X, so why can't you just be X like everybody else?  Vive la difference!"

This argument is extremely contradictory, arguing that there is no peer pressure to conform to gender roles, but then saying that if you don't conform to gender roles, you should be punished for being different because "rules are rules" (if that's not a form of peer pressure to conform, what is?)

Examples of cultural differences

In many developed countries, notably the USA and to a lesser extent the UK, it is normal for men's friendships to be based on shared interests, particularly competitive hobbies, and for women's friendships to be based on emotional bonding.  Men are not expected to bond emotionally with people other than close family and men who hug close friends can be regarded with suspicion, whereas women can hug close friends without any worries.  These gender divisions are harmful for both genders, since they make it difficult to find friends who will provide both shared interests and emotional bonding (male friends tend to provide the former and female friends the latter).  The lack of emotional bonding in men's friendships, in particular, tends to result in them being perceived as short-term and disposable.

For men

The norms relating to "Men don't bond emotionally with friends" have no biological basis.  They stem from the way that close friendships involving men were stigmatized during the Victorian era due to the fear of being accused of being homosexual, as there were strong criminal penalties for homosexual men, as Oscar Wilde found out to his great cost, for example.  The stigmatization of emotional bonding in men's friendships relates to the idea that men are not emotionally sensitive, and if they are, they are unnatural and probably have something wrong with them.  This issue has significantly fuelled the recent paranoia over child-molesters in the UK, where every man who behaves inconsistently with his gender role in the vicinity of a child is suspected of wanting to molest the child.  But it is at odds with biological evidence suggesting that about 15-20% of humans, both male and female, are born "highly sensitive".  

I suggest that this is an example of what I call "normative" bullying.  Men who are more "sensitive" than the expected norm end up feeling compelled to hide their sensitive traits, for fear of being socially rejected for being different, and even suspected of wanting to molest children.  In today's culture of "the minority spoiling it for everybody else", when there is a perceived threat to our safety, we look for innocent people to target by association with the likes of rapists.  Homosexual men traditionally used to be the easiest targets, but now that homophobia is becoming recognised as a significant problem, it is becoming easier to focus on "sensitive" men instead as they are not widely recognised as being vulnerable to discrimination.

For women

"Women don't engage in competitive hobbies/interests" does have a limited biological basis, as women tend to be less aggressive and competitive by nature.  However, much of the gender division is still caused by social conditioning.  From an early age, girls are taught that females "grow out" of competitive activities like computer games (especially violent games), chess, ten pin bowling etc., and that females who persist in doing them are acting unfeminine and childish and stooping to the males' level.  Another, related, problem is the patronising, "macho" type of reaction that females get from some males who are strong at such activities, like, "She can't be as good as us- she's female." or "I'm not playing against her because I couldn't stomach being beaten by a female."

I remember cases from my childhood where people applied the rule, "Boys shouldn't hit girls, but it's OK for girls to hit boys" (which is dubious in itself, for while girls are, on average, physically weaker than boys, the rule doesn't take into account the individual-on-individual variations from the average, or the fact that it is possible, up to a point, for weaker people to inflict significant harm on stronger people) and but then decided that it was OK for boys to hit girls who took part in these competitive activities because "they aren't real girls as they do boys' things rather than girls' things".  An extreme case admittedly, but one that strongly highlights the problem.

So, again, a significant reason why many girls don't engage in these activities is because if they do, they will be socially rejected for being different. This is reflected by the fact that once it becomes relatively "normal" for females to do a traditionally male-dominated activity, we usually get a sharp rise in the number of females who take an interest in it, and by the fact that many girls who take up these activities tend to give them up during their teenage years, which is when peer pressure tends to be at its most rampant.

All of the above is strongly relevant to areas where there is a problem with women being under-represented in the workforce- sometimes the above attitudes are quite prevalent, and tend to be accepted without question, such that people (both male and female) bully women out of wanting to be part of them, without even realising it.

I am not a fan of positive discrimination

I am a believer in equality of opportunity, which is not the same thing as equality of attainment.  There are some areas where biological differences between the sexes will result in there being more men than women (or vice versa) succeeding at a particular activity, e.g. men are at an advantage, on average, in activities that require a lot of physical strength.  And we get variations either side of the mean, so Company A may find that most of the best applicants for a job are male, while Company B might find that most of the best applicants for a similar post are female.

I can see that positive discrimination can go some way towards addressing the problems that I described above.  If women are under-represented within a group, and we push to get more women involved, then it will become perceived as relatively "normal" for women to take part, and therefore, less likely that they will be socially rejected for being different, and thus discouraged.  

However, positive discrimination can result in the jobs not going to the best candidates, with inferior candidates getting priority because of, say, their gender and/or skin colour.  It can also result in us unrealistically trying to aim for a 50-50 gender distribution in an organisation, where there may well be a genetic difference that, if we left "nurture" out of the equation, would make it more like 70-30.  These issues put a lot of people off from supporting what is a very important cause.

Once again, the problem that we're dealing with here is normative enforcement of "rules", i.e. the "If it's normal, it's OK, and if it's different, it's not OK" mentality.  I feel that it would be most beneficial to try to tackle this directly.  People should be punished for doing things that are likely to be detrimental, not purely for being different.