Introduction
The way we never were by Stephanie Coontz
The book “the way we never were” which is authored by Stephanie Coontz takes a keen look at the two centuries of American family life and creates a series of myths and half-truths that are subject to modern society(Bromley 92). The author places current family dilemmas in the context of far-going demographic, economic and political changes. Coontz puts a lot of weight on contemporary issues such as privacy, love, parenting, and division of labor along with the male and female partner in the family or rather along gender lines. The author goes ahead to talk about the black family, feminism and sexual practice in the family (Reed 08).
Explanation
Coontz is so sensitive to gender and mentions in the third chapter “my mother was a saint”. She analyses the contradictions that are evident in the traditional labor division. She goes ahead to reveal how in a few times the family showed economic and emotional independence suggesting that migration from the community to the nuclear family setup was uncalled for. The book gives a new dimension to the often too debatable agenda-sullied subject. In a certain chapter, she reframes the myth of black family collapse gives another interpretation of the family crises generally, hence putting it in the larger picture of social, economic and political ills.
The book responds to the questions about family crises which are always raised by the illiterate audience she addresses. She does not try to defend traditions in the era of family collapse or to separate the society from its constraint, she analyses through the kind of sentimental and historical thinking that has created unrealistic expectations about the ideal family. A quote, “I show how these myths distort the diverse experiences of other groups in America”, she goes on and writes “and argue that they don’t even describe most white, middle-class families accurately.” the reality of history is that there is no single family setup that has ever protected its people from poverty or social disruption and no traditional undergoing that may provide an executable model for how we might organize the family relations in today’s world.
Americans especially those who are of the conservative nature realize that the fifties are an age that should have never gone by. Schools taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. Sex was confined to the bedroom of the married couples(Bromley 92). The teenager was viewed as virgins and children were docile. In fact, Coontz asserts that the era wasn’t all that innocent since her statistics on teenage pregnancy and shotgun weddings are a real eye-opener. Furthermore, the myth of a suburban two parent, two family child, self-sufficient economically and emotionally was not only fostered and perpetuated for economic reasons but a historical mistake even in America (Reed 08)
Explanation
Since its inception, the religious right has tried to convince America that the world wouldn’t be the same and all of our social problems would be resolved if we could go back to the 1950s as represented in Leave it to Beaver and countless other comedies designed to “imitate” middle-class suburban lifestyle.
Stephanie Coontz points out; this was a movie myth that never existed in real life. Instead, women were maimed from illegal abortions, gays were bashed at an alarming rate, schools were discriminated, the disabled were never shown to the public and sexual and domestic violence did not happen to “good” people. Telling it like it really was is not a PC fairy tale, but a practical reality if we are to finally confront and undo some of America’s social problems
Politicians have successfully exploited this myth for their own personal needs because there have been no people to oppose them in that. If this was possible, we would discover the new left had its roots in the backlash against Senator Joe McCarthy and his communist witch hunts (Bromley 92). The cover picture of him with a Robin Morgan who was young is particularly ironic in the sense that the former star proved her as one of the most prolific and articulates leaders of women’s liberation in the 1960s.
Family Values have become such an emotional issue because we are not sure what they are supposed to mean (Reed 08). Surely, any politician can accept the concept and even make a career out of such claims.
The chapter on teenage pregnancy and unmarried mothers proves that the higher rates occurred before the legislation of birth control and the acceptance of abortion and the only difference is that girls who decided to keep their babies are not taken to maternity homes or forced to terminate school (Bromley 92). Additionally, she points out the young girls who engage in sex are not feminists because they are more likely than non-sexually active peers to have very strong dependence desires as well as traditional roles in gender.
Coontz should have done more research on the existence of childhood sexual molestation and the legal system that allowed it by leaving it to go unpunished. It is ironic that the decade where Americans enjoyed the least of human rights was also the time when childhood sexual abuse was the dominant affair (Reed 08). However, Coontz tried to provide an overview that the subject matter itself could go to the extent of providing material that could be sufficient to write another book on its own.
American families have really transformed in the last 15 years and nearly half of all the families that have children have both parents in a job and the curiosity about change is not called for(Bromley 92). Recently, there has been a lot of decay that has occurred in the society and the Americans are no exception. As Coontz observes, “Twenty-five percent of the people polled in a recent national inquiry into American morality said that for $10 million they would abandon their entire family; a large number of people are evidently willing to do the same thing for free.”
Coontz argues that what we are experiencing now is not so much the family’s dissolution as “an erosion of commitment to social obligations in general, and to children in particular.” Furthermore, things were not as good in the past (Reed 08). Section by sections, Coontz takes on the myths. Divorce may prove to be the end of many commitments today, but mostly due to the high rate of mortality, the average period of marriage in the Colonial times was less than 12 years.
The “Life with Father” Victorian family in which men were the providers and women the domestic workers raised its prevalence to the fact that other families were not rich. Middle-class women often had a lot of time to spend with their children since they would employ workers who took care of the domestic chores. Often these works were immigrants from Germany and Wales were girls as young as 11years (Mistry 02).
Conclusion
Coontz points out that 20% of American children are poor and live in orphanages, she writes, “At the turn of the century the same proportion lived in orphanages, not because they actually lacked both parents, but because one or both parents simply could not afford their upkeep.”
Coontz’s view on the Golden Age of the family–Ward and June, Ozzie and Harriet–is not new to us at all, but it can be worth to be mentioned again (Duda 03). “The apparently stable families of the 1950s were the result of an economic boom and the GNP increased by approximately 250% and per capita income by 35%.”
The book “the way we never are derived from a passionate point to explain to the general public that every social ill that exists in the society comes from the fact that there exist, bad parents, bad parenting shouldn’t be used as an excuse for the social decay (Bromley 92)
References:
Bromley, P. M., and N. V. Lowe. Family law. 8th ed. London: Butterworths, 1992. Print.
Duda, Karen. The American family. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2003. Print.
Mistry, Rohinton. Family matters. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2002. Print.
Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: an American family. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. Print.
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