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Glossop, RobertToday's Families: Continuity, Change and Challenge.Keynote address on the Occasion of the 50thAnniversary of the Canadian Home EconomicsAssociation.Vanier Inst. of the Family, Ottawa (Ontario).7 Jul 8917p.

Vanier Institute of the Family, 120 Holland Avenue,Suite 300, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada KlY 0X6

($2.00).Speeches/Conference Papers (150)

MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.*Economic Factors; Emotional Experience; *EmployedParents; *Family (Sociological Unit); FamilyCharacteristics; Family Income; Family Programs;*Family Structure; Foreign Countries; Futures (ofSociety); Nuclear Family; *One Parent Family; SocialChange; Sociocultural Patterns

IDENTIFIERS *Canada

ABSTRACTCanadian families differ from one another to the

degree that it is now customary for researchers, helpingprofessionals, teachers, and others to declare their interest infamilies, not "the family." The proliferation of different familyforms has led some, who disregard the fact that the traditionalfamily has had a very brief history, to lament the decline of familyand the erosion of true family values. While modern families arestructurally diverse, Cley function in the traditional way as theprimary places dhere pereons care for each other; produce, consume,and distribute goods and services; and try to satisfy family members'emotional needs. What is truly notable about today's family is theproportion of young women with children who have entered the laborforce or remained in the labor force while their children are young.Several considerations suggest that women are in the labor force tostay. Increasingly under pressure, the family is no longer a refuge,but has become a zone from which members seek refuge in individualpursuits. To respond to the needs of families in the 21st century,Canadians will have to recognize and respect the diversity of familyforms and be sensitive to the particular circumstances of familieswhich they seek to help alid support. (RH)

******************************** ,*****************A************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can Le! made *

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PERSPECTIVES

THE VANIER INSTITUTE OF THE FAMILY / L'INSTITUT VANIER DE LA FAMILLE

U DEPANTISENT 06 EDUCATION 120 Holland, Ottawa, Canada K1Y 0X6 (613) 722-4007Eduateonal Resswarcn AV Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORTAATIONCENTER (ERIC)

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TODAY'S FAMILIES: CONTINUITY, CHANGE & CHALLENGE

Keynote Address on the Occasion of the50th Anniversary of the

Canadian Home Economics Association

by

Robert Glossop, Ph.D.Coordinator of Programs and Research

Vanier Institute of the Family

July 7, 1989

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'PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

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TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)"

There are many assumptions about families that many of ustake for granted. Many have assumed that there is this singular,homogeneous, static thing called THE CANADIAN FAMILY. Many haveassumed that the single-parent family ig an invention of the1970's and an unintended consequence of what Saturday Night haspejoratively labelled as the "F" word, feminism. Many haveassumed that there is an epidemic of adolescent pregnancy. Wehave now grown accustomed to thinking of family life as more of asocietal problem and liability to individuals than as therhetorical cornerstone of society lnd foundation of identity itwas once thought to be. We assume, often on the basis of goodbut incomplete evidence, that family life involves essentiallyunhappy marriages, separations, divorces, the abuse andexploitation of women, children and old people, intractableconflict between the generations. Families are often portrayedas no more than the places that women and children run fvoll tofind safer places to be and from which men flee in order toescape their responsibilities. We have assumed that everythingabout family is in a state of flux and that nothing is constant.

Yet, our assumptions about families can and do, like anyother assumptions when taken-for-granted, distort our views andideas about families at least as much as they illuminate somedimensions of the family lives of some Canadians. The dangers ofrelying on such taken-for-granted assumptions are illustrated bya story that I first heard told by Dr. Lois Wilson, Past-Moderator of the United Church of Canada. The story concerns a65 year old man who, having recently moved from one community toanother, was being examined for the first time by his new familyphysician. As is the custom, the doctor started his examinationwith a number of questions about the man's medical and familyhistory.

"Tell me," asks the doctor. "How old was yourfather when he died?"

"Did I say my father had died?" zesponds thepatient."No. I guess you didn't," says the doctor."I'm terribly sorry. I suppose I just took itfor granted. How old is your father?"

"Well," said the patient. "He's 85 and in verygood health.""Excellent," replies the doctor. "Perhaps youcan tell me, then, how old yonr grandfatherwas when he died.""Did I say my grandfather had died""No. Again, I just took it for granted" repliedthe doctor somewhat flustered. How uld is-ur grandfather?

"s 105. And, as a matter of fact, he's justbeen married for the second time.""Amazing," says the doctor. But, why would aman of his age want to get married again?""Did I say he WANTED to get marriad?

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Without wanting to diminish what we might call the "downside" of family life - the conflict, divorce, violence againstwomen and children - it is important to remember that, for betteror worse, the majority of Canadian marriages do last for alifetime. Despite a recent drop in marriage rates, it remains apopular institution - so popular that many Canadians marry 2 or 3times. And, the most likely consequence of divorce remainsremarriage although rates of remarriage remain higher for menthan for women and there has been a recent decline in remarriagerates. Marriage does not, as perhaps it once did, necessarilyimply a willingness or desire to bear and raise children. Therehave been notable increases in the rates of cohabitation andintentional childlessness. Canadians do, according to attitudesurveys, say that their family relationships represent the mostimportant dimens_on of their lives. When asked by Gallup orDecima or whoever, we customarily declare that our families aremore important to us than our jobs, salaries, politicalconvictions and religious commitments. Needless to say, theseresponses actually tell us more about the people we would like tobe than about the people we are and the behaviours we practice.

The vast majority of young adults hold strong and quitetraditional aspirations for their own family futures - most tellus that they expect to marry (ONLY ONCE) and that they hope andexpect to have at least two or three children. Only 4 in every1000 young people tell us that they expect to experience divorceeven though present trends would indicate that 396 of them aretoo optimistic. This optimism has been maintained by these youngpeople despite the fact that a very large minority of them havealready experienced the divorce of their parents and, in turn, amajority of those who have experienced divorce have also livedwith a step-parent.

Although the latest official figures reveal that 43% of allstatistics are totally worthless, a comparison of a few factsabout 1939, the year of the founding of the Canadian HomeEconomics Association, and about the present are interesting andreveal both patterns of stability and change. As we all know,the arerage number of people in Canadian households has declinedin the last fifty years; using the famous statistical concept ofthe partial person, the decline has been from 4.4. to 2.8 peopleper household. Related to this decline in household size are:the aging of the population and the decliLe in fertility. in1939, the median age of the population was 26.6 years and it hadrisen to 31.5 years by 1966. The average life expectancy in 1939was 63 for men and 66.3 for women; by 1984, these had risen to72.7 for men and 79.7 for women. One of the most dramaticchanges of the last fifty years (and one that has contributedsubstantially to the increases in life expectancy) is thereduction in infant mortality from 61/1000 births to 7.9/1000 in1985.

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It is often assumed that our society is aging because welive longer, but, in fact, increases in average life expectancyplay a very, very small part in the overall process of societalaging. The only significant reason accounting for societal agingis the proportionate decrease in the number of young peoplebrought about by declining rates of fertilits:. In 1939, thetotal fertility rate was 2.7 and today, women bear, on average,1.7 children during their reproductive years. Women and men haveeffectively taken control over their reproduction and, like thepeople of practically all industrialized nations, have chosen tobear fewer children than are neceasary to replace themselves.Shortly after the turn of the century, more Canadians will dieevery day than are born and the role of immigration in sustaininga stable population base will grow increasingly important; themulti-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-linguisticchlracter o: some Canadian communities will become morepronounced and such changes will pose significant challenges aseducational, health and social service systems adapt to them.

There is no epidemic of adolescent pregnancy. It is truethat in comparison to 1939 when only 3.9% of births were tounmarried women, the proportion of 16.7% calculated in 1984 showsa dramatic increase in births to single women. But, we do needto recognize that the rates of both pregnancy and childbearingamong adolescents has been declining in recent years and that theincrease in births to unmarried women reflects far more thebehaviours and decisions of women between 20 and 35 years of agewho may or may not be involved in stable cohabitingrelationships. The illusion that Canada has an epidemic ofadolescent pregnancy has been fuelled far more by three quitedifferent factors: first there is what I might call free trade inAmerican statistics; second, there has been a tremendous decreasein the number of shotgun marriages; and, third, a remarkableincrease in the number of young women who, once having borne achild, choose to raise the child themselves rather than give thebaby up for adoption.

In addition to unmarried motherhood, it is separation,divorce and death that are the avenues toward lone-parenthood.Fifty years ago, more than 12.2% of Canada's families were headedby a single parent and the comparable figure in 1986 was 12.7%;back then, approximately 10% of children were, at any one time,living with a lone parent while today approximately 14% ofchildren do so. Of course, in 1939, approximately 70% of loneparents were widows or widowers while today almost 2/3's of lone-parents have been separated, divorced or unmarried at the time ofbirth. Still, it is important to recognize that: cingle

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parenthood within our society is not novel; that approximately1/3 of our single parents are widows or widowers; that loneparenthood is not the product of the 1970's and feminism; and,that our society has in the past met the challenge tocollectively support lone-parents and their children.

Last but not least, one of the most dramatic differencesbetween the founding year of your association and the present isthe dramatically-increased participation of women in the paidlabour force. In 1939, some 18% of women held paying jobs whiletoday, 60% of all women do so.

This mess of facts, figure:: and trends cannot provide aportrait of the Canadian family. In place of a singularrepresentation, we see more a gallery of diverse images.Families differ from one another by virtue of: their structuresand the characteristics and capacities of their members; theirheritages of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic traditions; theirsocio-economic resources and circumstances and the ways in whichthey divide responsibilities among members to ensure economicsurvival or prosperity; the ages of their members; and, thecharacteristics of the communities, locations and regions inwhich they live.

Despite this diversity of family forms and the diversity ofpatterns of family functioning, many individuals, organizationsand governments continue to labour under a taken-for-grantedpicture of so-called "traditional family life."

We carry with us from the 1950's that image of family lifeas it was portrayed through popular culture in FATHER KNOWS BEST,and as it was nostalgically retembered in HAPPY DAYS. Theseprograms and perhaps our own recollections lead es to take it forgranted that the traditional family was composed of two parents,a male breadwinner who worked for wager; in thA marketplace, hiswife and their children to whom she devoted almost all her timeand energies. This family drove a station wagon because it leftenough room in the back for Spot, the dog.

Today, in contrast to this straightforward image of whatfamily should look like and should behave like, we have theplurality of images of family life as portrayed on television insuch series as:

WHOSE THE BOSS? (ex male athlete employed ashousekeeper/nanny by successful female advertisingexecutive);

MY TWO DADS (who inherit jointly the custody of a teen-agegirl when her mother dies and paternity isunclear-definitely not a show of the 50s);

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FULL HOUSE (three young men sharing responsibility forthe child of the one who is a widower);

KATE AND ALLIE (two divorced single mothers sharing a homenot just for economic reasons but for companionship andintimacy);

OUR HOUSE (a widow lives with her children in herfather-in-laws' housa); and,

GROWING PAINS (househusband to media personality who doesa little psychiatry on the side to earn some pinmoney).

And, of course, last but not least, there are e Keatorsand the Huxtables of FAMILY TIES and THE COSBY SHOW who, in fact,are the closest approximations we have in the 80s to theconventional nuclear family of the 50$. But, even with theseshows the conventions have canged significantly. In each, thehusbands play the somewhat endearing fools while it is theMothers who know best but more significantly, these are both dualwage-earning families thereby confirming that it is this form offamily functioning that has become the statistical norm in thesedays of women's labour force participation. (Curiously, eventhough the Keatons and Huxtables have four professional careersbetween them wh3ch certainly provide the wherewithal to support acomfortable life, their careers seldom seem to get in the way offamily fun to the same extent as do the careers of most of thedual-earner families I know).

It is now customary for researchers, helping professionals,teachers and others to declare their interest in families, notTHE FAMILY. Today, it is what families DO rather than what theylook like that provides us with a basis fror which to acknowledgethat single wage-earning families, dual wage-earning families,blended families, extended and three-generation families,single-parent families are all variations on a common familialthere. In the midst of all this diversity are the needs andaspirations and rcsponsibilities that are common to all families,regardless of form. No matter what they look like, families arethe primary places where we care for each other, where weproduce, consume and distribute goods and services, where we tryto satisfy the emotional needs of individuals and so on and soforth.

It used to be that one would, upon meeting another adultesk how many kids they had; today, it is in fact far moreimportant to ask kids how many parents they have. This is animportant consideration for teachers, for family professionalswho really do need to know whether the child has one or tworesidences, whether or not the child has siblings and, if so,whether or not those siblings have the same surnames. Recentdecades of social and family change involving, among othertrends, high rates of divorce and remarriage, make it impossibleto safely take-it-for-granted that the adults who take on primary

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financial and legal responsibilities for a child would al3one,Jessarily assume responsibility for the emotional, social orlinguistic development of that child. Emotional support may beprovided to one another by a child and an adult who do not livetogether. The socialization of children is now frequently aresponlibility of adults who are not biologically related tothose children. When we see a family enjoying an afternoon in apark, we do not know (as perhapn we once did) whether or not thechildren live together and, if so, for how many days a week;whether or not the adults are married, used to be married, areliving together or are simply friends.

The proliferation of different family forms has led some tolament the decline of family and the erosion of: true familyvalues. Yet, it is wise to remember that the tradition from whichthese different family patterns is said to depart was a veryshort tradition indeed, one that could not have lasted for muchmore than 50 or 7b years within a quite specific period in thehistory of industri..lized societies.

The image of the single wage-earning nuclear familyisolated in suburbia inv-'es what is, in essence, a model ofupper mide a class family life in Victorian England andmistakenly assigns to it the status of an historical constant.Its applicability was limited to industrially-based societies,and even so, it served more as an aspiration than as a realityfor the vast majority of the populations of such societies. Notuntil after the Second World War did such a life appearattainable for the working classes within which the economiccontribution of women, through agricultural, industrial orinformal service production, had always been a requirement.Furthermore, the return of women to the labour force did not, aswe often assume, begin in the late 60s and 70s in the light offeminism. In fact, women started to return to the labour forcetoward the end of the 19508 essentially to pay for the collegeeducations of their adolescent children because such highereducation became a much-valued consumer commodity in the post-waryears.

What is truly notable today is the proportion of YOUNGwomen with children who have entered or who have remained in thelabour force while their children are young. Over the pasttwenty years, their numbers have more than doubled such that by1986, 70.4% of married women of daldbearing age were employed.Between 1976 and 1984, the proportion of women with childrenunder the age of three who were holding jobs, rose from 32% to52%; 57% of those with children between the ages of 3 and 5 were

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holding either part-time of full-time jobs and fully 64% withchildren between the ages of 6 and 15 were active in the labccurforce. The bottom line is that it is now the majority of motherswith dependent children who hold jobs. The so-called traditionalsingle wage-earning family is now outnumbered.

I have a number of reasons for speculating that women arein the labour force to stay.

First, there has been a dramatic change in the economics ofthe home. Over the past years, what was once called the "familywage" has all but disappeared. This idea, once strongly defendedby the labour movement and the churches but now badly out offavour, was based on the assumption that the average industrialwage paid to male employees should be sufficieot to supportfinancially a number of dependent children and afinancially-dependent spouse whose primary responsibility was thecare and upbringing of children. It was upon this assumptionthat men, for a restricted number of years, could assert that "Nowife of mine will ever have to get a job." And, it was upon thisfoundation of the "family wage" that the sex roles associatedwith it evulveul. Yet, today, the average wage paid to a maleemployee is no longer sufficient to meet the financial needs ofan equal number of dependents as was the case dlring the 1950'sand early 1960's. Accordingly, statistics revual that theaverage purchasing power of Canadian families has deteziorated inrecent years and this despite the fact that, over this sameperiod of time, there has been a dramatic increase in the numberof dual wage-earning families. Today, according to the NationalCouncil of Welfare, the number of low-income families (851,000 in

1986)) would rise by 62% if the wages of women could not berelied upon to make ends meet.

Obviously, the consequences of this trend toward dualwage-earning families as statistically normal and culturallynormative for those families which cannot rely on two incomes aresevere. Mothers who are lone-parents and their children are 4times more likely to be poor than are families with two parents;six in ten female headed lone-parent families live below thepoverty lines or officially-designated low-income cut-offs. Thefemale lone-parent cannot, by definition, rely upon the financialcontribution of a spouse, and, as well, suffers from thegenerally disadvantaged economic status of women, insufficientand/or defaultel upon support payments and a lack of vocationaland training opportunities, job experience and often inadequatesupport for the care of her children. The income differentialbetween one-parent and two-parent families has been growingdramatically.

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Societal aging will also impose pressure on all persons ofso-called 'working age,' be they male or female, to participatein the labour market in order to help sustain the proportionatelylarger costs associated with the income, health and socialsecurity of our older citizens.

In the context of modern economies that are addicted togrowth in the rates of production and consumption, suggestionsthat today's adults are simply greedy in insisting on two wagesper family are, although quite possibly correct, fundamentallymisplaced. There is within the economies of modern industrialstates a systemic need for individuals to increase theirappetites as consumers. The purchasing power of families isregarded by economists as a major 'engine' of economic growth anddevelopment. Thus, the modern citizen is reminded, on a monthlybasis, of the number of housing starts and the levels of consumerconfidence because of the importance of such factors for the'health' of the lumber industry, the automobile industry, themanutacturing and commercial sectors of the economy. In fact,contrary to popular belief that holds that stable families arethe backbone of a strong economy, separation and divorce havebeen, for the past twenty years, a boon to tha economy. Theyhave Jbecome, after all, one of the main reasons for whateconomists call household formation and when two householdsreplace one household, we will consume an extra sofa, livingroom suite, microwave oven and what have you - at least untilremarriage creates from this consumption the inventory forgarage sales. Indeed, from a strictly economic point of view,one would now have to fear the re-emergence of stable familiesand the collapse of what has been labelled the "divorceindustry."

Without-doubt, the economic factors that have led to thecommitment of women to the labour force have been complementedand reinforced by significant changes in the expectations andaspirations of men and women, especially those of young men andwomen. Attitude surveys and opinion polls reveal that our youthraintain, perhaps surprisingly, quite traditional values withregard to marriage and children. However, young women alsoindicate that they do not expect that their family commitmentsand child care responsibilities will necessarily occasion asignificant interruption of their occupational careers.Furthermore, in what amounts to a 180 degree reversal ofso-called traditional male attitudes, many young men indicatethat they are not prepared to assume responsibility for afinancially-dependent spouse over any prolonged period of time.

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There is one further reason that I will cite that helps usto understand why both men and women must now commit themselvesto the labour market. The modern state has, it seems, anever-expanding appetite for tax dollars. Our Canadian system oftaxation is based primarily upon the taxation of personal incomein contrast to other possible systems of taxation that could bebased on wealth, consumption or production. The state's need foran increasingly broad tax base is nothing more nor less than aneed for more people with incomes to tax, a need, in short, formore employees. Not surprisingly, it is this particular fact,cynical though it may be, that proves more convincing than allthe sociological, economic and ethical arguments one can musterwhen debating with those politicians, policy-makers and citizenswho naively assume that the world would be a better place ifwomen would just return to and stay in their kitchens. Afterall, it quickly becomes apparent to them that whatever problemsthey might have now with deficits would pale in comparison to theshortfalls they would experience if they could not rely on thetaxes collected from employed women. My own crude arithmeticindicates that roughly 25% of all taxes collected on the basis ofemployment-related income (including wages and salaries,commissions, unemployment insurance benefits, Canada and Quebecpension plan benefits, other pensions and superannuation,business income, professional income, commission income, farmingincome and fishing income) is paid by women and in 1985 amountedto just under 10 billion dollars collected by the federal andprovincial governments.

According to Letty Cottin Pogrebin "The essence of family iswho it is, how it feela and wi&dt. it does." We've talked a littleabout who it is and what it looks like and we've talked somewhatabout what famill4s do. Let's turn now to what it feels like.

It Js rry impression thatleftovers of human energy andtheir tiredness more thanmaterial routine of the nowfamily. It may be faxiliar to

today's families often live on thecommitment as their members sharetheir liveliness. Consider thetypical young dual wage-earningsome of you.

Up early in the morning in time to get kids dressed,lunches made and kids delivered to daycare or school beforemother and father must arrive at their places of employment.Then, tl)ere proceeds a regular day of busyness, meetings, phonecalls, clients, assembly lines and memos before rushing to pickup the kids by a pre-arranged time so that their care givers donot charge us with breach of contract. Then, home to prepare ameal while T.V. babysits the kids. Once a week, we're off to thecommunity college to take a course on Introduction toMicroprocessing for the sake of career advancement, at least oneother evening is devoted to some school or daycare advisorycommittee and, if we can .tit it in, we try to make it to an

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exercise class now and then trying to keep our bodies fit enoughto pursue this pace. Baths and Homework are supervised prior toour scheduled amount of time for spousal interpersonal relatingbefore we watch the National News which, thank God, now comes onat 10:00 p.m. because the CSC shrewdly realized that few of uscan keep our eyes open past 10:30. Weekends have assumed theirown schedule, often even tighter than the weekdays as we set offto Canadian Tire to purchase the insulating materials that willoccupy us o- Sunday before, if we can manage it, friends arrivefor dinner. Those of us who are in the sandwich generationtrying to assume either financial or social and emotionalresponsibility for our aging parents as well as our kids try tosqueeze in a visit with Grandma of Grandpa on the weekend too.

As we accommodate to the demands on our time, our lives athome have started to resemble nore and more the factory and theoffice as we try to transfer the time-management techniques ofthe workplace into our family lives. I understand the reasons whywe need and I understand the value of family meetings and I knowwhy family professionals tell us how important it is to meappointments with our kids and to keep those appointments and Iunderstand why we write ecich other MEMOS. I can assure you thatmy fridge and bulletin board look at least as messy if not moreso than your own cluttered as it is by reminders of schoolmeetings, dentist appointments, shopping lists and so on and soforth. Still, I've got to question whether or not theseworkplace routines that are designed to ensure optimalperformance, maximum honefits over costs and efficientutilization of time don't contradict the fundamental notion offamily togetherness and amount to an indictment of a culture anda society and a people that make families interact (if I ca:1 evenuse the word in this context) in this wav. We do live in whatCheryl Russell has characterized as:

...the culture of the overnight expressdelivery, the two-hour Concorde, eyeglassesin one hour, pizza delivery in 30 minutes, 15minutes of fame, the 10-minute lube andfilter, the I-minute news crkgest, or the 20second commercial that will save your life

It's true that, as individuals, we no longer devote 481 44or even 40 hours a week to our jobs. But, family memberst whenconsidered together, are now spending 60, 65 or 70 hours a weekin the workforce to make ends meet. And, we have to rememberthat the average purchasing power of family incomes hPs remainedstatic now for more than a decade at precisely the same time whenthat income has been generated, for the majority of families, bytwo wage-earners. Families, are having to work harder, some

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almost twice as hard, to stay basically even with their relativelevel of prosperity of ten years ago. And, of course, now thathouseholds have grown more ard more dependent on two incomes, itmakes the situation of those families who have only one incomelike the single-parent family even more tenuous.

So What? So time is at a prerium for today's families.What's the big deal?

In contrast to the often taken-for-granted assumption aboutfamilies as static and unchanging institutions, time and thechanges its brings are built into the fabric oi family. AsPogrebin has suggested: "We are our dinnertimes." She goes on toask:

What is it? What happens between people tokeep them as "close as family?" One can givea thousand different answers - commoninterests, shared work, trust, adventures,exchanged confidences, a sense of humour, andso cn. But, underneath them all, in :.;he

purest, most profound sense, love and timeare all we have. Familial friendship isembodied in the means by which love isexpressed between and among us, and the wayour time is spent together.

Families are, in fact, the embodiments of change. Eachfamily has its own history, its own set of interwovenbiographies. Families mature, grow old and die as the places ofone generation are assumed by the members of the next. If we payattention to all the little, mundane and even silly rituals,celebrations and traditions unique to our families, we see thatwhat these rituals do is acknowledge change, development andgrowth. They illustrate the curious fact that a family is neverthe same from one day to the next, yet, it remains, over time,the same family. Birthdays, anniversaries, tooth fairies, BarMitzvahs and confirmations, piano recitals, driver's licences,graduations - all these are acknowledgments of change.Each familydemarcates the passage of time by embroidering theseculturally-prescribed rituals and making them their own. Thesefamily traditions become the stuff of memories, the memories ofour times together and of our membership in a family. The samebox of Christmas decorations gets brought out year after year. Ayear has passed but the box occasions in us recollections ofChristmLres gone by and serves to reconfirm that our lives arelives lived with others, that our experiences are shared andimportant to others and are part of the lives of others. Thephotograph albums are pulled out by the kids on a rainy day. "Was

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thP.t really what I looked like? It can't be. I couldn't haveb,.e.en so small." And, the parent responds, "Of course, that's you.Haven't you grown big? Still, you're my little 'pumpkin,''munchkin,"kicido' or whatever other names of affection eachfami1y uses to affirm its special relationships.

Ironically, men and women are now spending less time inpatterns of family interaction which 3s, according to attitudesurveys, the source of their greatest satisfaction. I'vealready mentioned how the economy makes it difficult to devoteour time to our families. But, we can't lay all the blamethere. Many people used to think of family as a place that oneescaped INTO from the pressures of the public worlds ofcommerce, industry and civic affairs. It seams to me that,today, many of us no longer seek refuge within oul: families but,in fact, seek refuge FROM cur families, from the intimacy of ourrelationships, from the obligations and responsibilities thatthey entail. We withdraw into our workaholism, into excessivelyindividualized leisure time pursuits and into televis!on thatironi-. lly finds its way into the FAMILY ROOM. Picture in yourminds the patterns of interaction and human communication amongfamily members as they at-e lined up watching the tube. "Shush!""Pass the popcorn!" "Stop hitting your brother (because) I can'thear the television." "Can't we watch something else."

As Urie Bronfenbrenner has observed:

The primary danger of the television screenlies not so much in the behaviour it producesas the behaviour it prevents - the talks, thegames, the family festivities and arguments,through which much of the child's learningtakes place and his (or her) character isformed.

It has become difficult to coordinate our roles andresponsibilities as workers, as family members, as neighbours andcitizens. There is a logic, a pattern, that we can discern fromamong the interwoven patterns of economic, social, demographicand cultural change that impinge upon families today. Incontrast to traditional societies in which the members offamilies achieved whatever minimal degrees of material well-beingand security BECAUSE they were members of a family, today, one'seconomic well-being is achieved IN SPITE Olc familyresponsibilities and commitments. We are employed as individuals,not as family members. There is a stigma attached to those whobring their family concerns into the workplace too oLviously ortoo frequently and it is, by and large, women who suffer most theconsequences of these attitudes. I have been told, for instance,that personnel managers have begun to quantify the decline inproductivity on the part of female workers at 3:30 p m. when

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their ?reoccupations shift from those of the job to questionslike: "Is there anything out of the freezer for dinner tonight.gand "How am I going to pick up the kids from daycare in time ithis meeting goes on much longer?"

If it is the father who is called by the school nurse toofrequently to come and collect a sick child, it is a pretty soundindication that he is not on the Yuppie fast track to success.Believe it or not, secretarial schools still advise theirgraduates to hide their marriage plans from prospectiveemployers recognizing that candour in this regard might welljeopardize their chances for labour force entry

:11 the world of public affairs, despite how important wesay that family is to us, we know that our identity and ourstatus and our security is no longer tied to our membership inelementary structures of kinship. Industrially-based societieshave been organized around the central place they accord toemployment. The way I am introduced to you in this kind ofgathering defines me by reference to my job. In traditionalsocieties, it would have been far more important for you to knowme as the son of Glenn Glossop who was himself the son of abutcher in Huntsville, Ontario, a member of such a such a parishand so on and so forth.

James Ramey once remarked that:

For the first time, the family is no longerthe basic unit of society, having beenreplaced by the individual.

We have succeeded, perhaps 11 too well, in what PhilipSlater once called our "pursuit of loneliness." And, yet, mostpeorde, most members of families still refuse to think of theirfamily commitments and obligAtions as superfluous.

Ironically, now that we have managed to create an economyand a society in which families are no longer central, the ideaof family is being rediscovered at the end of this 20th century.In fact, we have been told that the gauntlet has been thrown downand that a 'war over the family' is now being waged witheconomists, academics, feminists, so-called REAL Women,bureaucrats, political rightists and leftists encamped on thebattlefield.

It is notfamily is beingthroughout thecontraction andeconomic order.to believe the'

merely coincidental that the significance ofrediscovered at a time when industrial economieswestern world have been experiencing seriouswe face an increasingly competitive internationalUntil quite recently, we had allowed ourselves

the 'modern' family had evolved into a

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specialized unit of emotional and psychological commitmentsustained principally by love, affection and the prospect of goodsex. We naively forgot that families have always been and arestill economically significant. The relationships of men andwomen have always been based, in part, on economicinterdependence and too oftw on dependence and exploitation. Astwo wages become increasingly required to sustain a family, thisrelationship becomes more obvious but it was always there. Forexample, child care, whether it is done for wages or apparentlyfor free is an economically productive and vital form of workthat sustains a society. We are kidding ourselves if we think wecan get out of the present child care crisis, cheaply. You canpay men enough to support economically productive but financiallydependent wives to care for children, or you can pay women enoughto support househusbands (I have no particular preference) or youcan pay friends, ,..elatives or professionals to care for childrenbut, as a society, we cannot escape from the necessity of thismost vital investnent.

After years of relative neglect, the modern state has begunto rediscover the _family as a potential agent of healthpromotion, provider of care for the aged, sick and disabled, asthe principal loci of attitudinal and behaviourial change and asthe first source of economic and financial support for itsmembers. Regrettably, there is all too often a romanticized andunrealistic image of the family that permeates these suggestionsthat it is the family that will deliver us from thecontradictions of the modern welfare state by picking up thepieces and doing again, for free, what families used to dothirty years ago. Who, one must ask, is at home anyl onger tocare for the sick and the old? When 50% of the populationchAlges residence once every five years such that we have'Ictually come to believe that a phone call is the next best thingvo being there, how can we provide any genuine support to thedispersed members of our families and communities?

If, indeed, we are to make a place for families in thefuture, we w311 have to devote ourselves to a fundamental andlikely critic 1 assessment of patterns of economic developmentthat require such high rates of geographical mobility, ofpatterns of income distribution that severely marginalize anyonewho is not active in the labour force, of policies and programsthat condemn more than one million children to live in povertyand, of patterns of work and employment that are, by and large,insensitive to the family responsibilities of employees.

As we take up the challenges of the next century, we shallcommit ourselves (perhaps first and foremost) to our own familieswhich, for better or worse, are the mediums in which we grow to

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become who we are. We will commit ourselves, as well, torecognizing and respecting the diversity of family forms andbeing sensitive to the uniqueness and particular circumstances ofthe families which we seek to help and support.

We will commit ourselves to working to strengthen theimmediate social networks or self-help groups and communitysupports that influence dramatically the dynamics of familyinteraction. W4 will commit ourselves to working together no'only to help parent3 and children to better accommodate to thecircumstance:, in which they find themselvea but, also, to alterthose circumstances. We may find ourselves having to respond tothe incidcnce of childhood poverty or to tax reform proposalsthat fail to ackizentledge the important contribution that familiesmake to this society. We may, find that we have to say somethingabout Sunday openings, housing, income security programs and soon. We will recognize not only the need to respord as individualsto the changes that surround us, but as well to work together tomeet the challenges of the next century and to make the changesthat will be necessary if families alre to be accorded tangiblerecognition and support for the work they do on behalf of theirmembers and on behalf of us all rather than mere rhetorical

endorsements.

thank you for the opportunity to join you here in yourwork and to partake of the commitment to Canada's families thatyour diszipline rid: always demonstrated. Happy Anniversary.

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