Strain within the family

The changing fabric of personal relations

During the current era of economic restructuring, the family itself came under great pressure. Because of the fact that in industrialised countries a steady social and economic change is happening, a lot of married people get divorced because they have too little time for each other. Parents have to work away from home and so the children are overseen very less. This causes a dramatic drug and crime increase between teenagers. In the earlier days the families were very small because people died sooner. At the beginning of this century the extended family became more likely because the life expectancy increased. Nevertheless by the 1950´s there were only just nuclear families any more. Nowadays the family itself is taking a new form.

The flexible family

There are also wide geographical and cultural variations and differences between families in urban or rural areas. It wouldn't make much sense to talk in general terms about THE European, Indian, or African family. Furthermore the family is not the same as the household. Members may be spread across several households. In Africa, for example, children are sent to relatives to be fed, clothed and educated. The family has to be flexible. It's very interesting that the situation of the family in Europe and North America is worse than in Muslim countries and in Asia, although the international media is swamping the rest of the world with soap-opera images of the Euro-American ideal model family.

Female - headed households

It is a fact that single parents are generally women in these OECD countries and what seems to be very strange is that since if there is a male over 15 years in the household of a single mother, he overtakes the status as head of the household even if the woman is the mayor breadwinner. I think that sexism like that should be abolished very soon. Nevertheless female-headed households are nothing new. In Brazil, 150 years ago, one in fife women ran a single-headed household and the main reasons are today the same as in the earlier days: divorce, widowhood, migration, abandonment, or just a result of having children outside marriage. Nowadays marriages have become under great strain because of the rising costs of family life; widowhood is also an important factor because women on average marry men who are 7.5 years older and what is more is that men's life expectancy is less than the one of the women. So, one in four of them who are over fifty live as a single. It's very interesting that several studies show that children's nutrition, health and survival chances are better when income and expenditure are controlled by women. Although women face numerous forms of discrimination and disadvantage, even in higher developed countries.

Unequal family partnerships

A fact is that women do most of the work in the family: Taking care of the children, running the household and if they are single-parents or if their husband earns too little to support the family, women has to work as well. But in the working sector they are discriminated because they get paid less than men despite of doing the same job, what is bad for men, too, because a lot of companies sack "expensive", full-time working men to employ "cheaper" half-time working women. In developing countries the jobs of women within the family are the same but instead of going to earn money away from home in a factory, for example, they have to support the family in another way: They have to do the gardening to plant the own food. Daughters must help their mothers by doing domestic work at the expense of their education.

Welfare dependency

Another strange thing is that some politicians blames the women who run a female-headed household for being the head of a "dysfunctional" family which causes the crime rise between bad overseen children and whose welfare money should be curbed. Those politicians don't see that lots of women who are dependent on welfare money are very seldom lazy, most of them are trying to fin a job. A solution of the problem of welfare dependency would be a greater investment in education.

Children under pressure

It's not only the women who have come under great pressure, it's then children, too. While there was a remarkable progress for children in growth rates, health or education by the period between 1950 and 1975, it's now going into reverse. In industrialised countries where both parents have to work and are not able to keep the children under surveillance all day the countries face a study rise in school drop-out rates, physical and sexual abuse of children and rises in teenage violence and suicide, as well. In Australia, for example, the suicide rate for the 15-24 age group per 100,000 people rose 1970 and 1990 from 8.6 to 16.4, and in Norway from 6.2 to 16.3 people. Furthermore, in the U.S.A., the proportion of children living below the poverty live is increasing from 15 percent in 1970 to 20 percent today, what is the highest figure in industrialised countries. Nowadays there are 100 million children under the age of 15 who have to do hard work - children labour is another big problem - especially in Asia and Africa. But not all child-work should be seen as harmful: children in rural areas join in the activities on the family farm from a very early age, learning the skills they may need in later life. On the other side harmful child labour means that children have to live an adult life, working to young under strain conditions, like to long work hours, unhealthy circumstances or very little money. In rural areas children work in plantations or mines, while in urban areas they work in factories. Reasons for child-labour are to little incomes of the parents, for example, and a result of it is that a lot of this children can't go to school but there are also children who earn money to finance their (school) education. Another result of broken down families are street children who are easily drawn into drug abuse, prostitution, or petty crime.

Concluding the crises around the family, a consequence of the too fast changing circumstances, shouldn't cause misunderstanding why so many families break dawn, it should cause amazement why so many of them still stay together.