The importance of families and friendships has been in the news a lot lately. Of course these relationships have always been important but usually in the background as institutions taken more or less for granted. The importance factor has changed in the last few years.
Society cannot exist without families and friendships. Without them the world would be a place of all against all brutality as envisioned by Hobbs’ cruelly barbaric, self destructive state of nature. However, as important as they are, these relationships of themselves are morally neutral. They can exist for good or evil or both. With that as preamble, what is going on?
I took a quick scan of what was out there and found universities overflowing with research, journal articles, and sociology departments focussed on family studies. Public radio and television stations have picked up on it, as have entire armies of pop psychology publishers. Why now? What has boosted the importance of families and friendships to such prominence?
No doubt some part of the change was due to Trump and his use of right wing evangelicals to incite fears that radical left wingers were about to destroy every last aspect of American family values described as biblical. Smoldering since the 1980s under the guise of a so called moral majority, they spun a tale of the nuclear family – husband, wife and two children – being the bedrock of American society, that no other form of family was morally acceptable, and that families were where truth, love, and The American Way were learned. Nice, but a sentimental mirage. As C.S. Lewis noted, charity may begin at home, but so does uncharity. If the home is where values are learned it is also where hate is carefully taught and prejudices welded into the character of children. Nevertheless, the right wingers persisted and waited for the moment when a national leader would rise to take up their cause.
The importance of families and friendships gained renewed importance among the majority of less doctrinaire Americans during the several years of COVID semi-seclusion. It awakened them from a complacent assurance that family and friends could be treated casually, available or not or as need be. Americans stayed home, worked from home, avoided too many social engagements, and traveled as little as possible. The most vulnerable and beloved were often kept in isolation unable to have any personal contact with their families or friends. My wife and I moved from coast to coast in 2020 traveling through vacant airports to arrive in our all but closed new city. What we had taken for granted had been taken from us. The passing of the pandemic unleashed determination to rebuild relationships, re-engage socially, and think more carefully about how important family and friends are to personal and community well being.
In the meantime, many Americans, especially younger ones, substituted mobile phones and tablets in favor of face-to-face, or ear-to-ear as the necessary and sufficient means of exchanging information. Classes, business meetings, religious services, and family reunions by Zoom became adequate substitutes for the real thing. In fact, they became the real thing. However much families and friends have gained in importance, the impersonal electronic interface between persons is rightfully suspected of having a pernicious effect on the collective psyche.
I suspect all of this explains why college family study majors are fully subscribed, researchers are publishing articles and books, and self-help gurus are prospering as each tries to guide the American public toward a new more vigorous appreciation of the importance of healthy relationships in families and among friends.
In like manner, it is clear that unhealthy relationships in families and among friends undermine the well being of society and individuals. There is an increasing awareness that healthy families can take many forms. They need not be a married mom, dad and kids. Families needn’t be related by law or blood. They do not have to be headed by a married man and woman.
The test of their value to society is not their structure but the values and virtues they teach and exemplify. If they are where hate is carefully taught and practiced, they undermine the integrity of society. If they are places where love and respect for the dignity of others is taught and practiced they contribute to the well being of society.
In like manner, friendships, whether casual or close, can be a resource for generating good will for each other and the common good. Or they can be resource for conspiracies, perversion, crimes, violence, and parasitic behaviors that suck the life out of society. Before jumping on the family values bandwagon examine what values are promoted and what are damned. The same is true for friendship. It’s a choice of course. Exercise judicious caution before becoming a friend too quickly. Give some thought to what your better values are and let them guide you. It’s always a choice, perhaps a painful one at times, but always a choice. You are not forced to enter or stay in an abusive, corrosive, parasitic family or friendship. Seek those where love, respect and integrity abide and abound.