Since the 1960’s, an increasing number of mothers and fathers have favored “time-intensive, child-centered” parenting approaches. Intensive parenting is a favored approach for parents who want to be involved with their children’s lives by guiding them, spending time with them, and preparing them for adulthood, with the understanding that these are also lifelong relationships. Though this hands-on vision of parenting has at times strengthened family unity, the stakes have been so raised much for family relationships to succeed at a time when there is a rapidly-expanding generational gap in values, politics, and expectations.
Family Fallout
Unfortunately, as psychologist Joshua Coleman observed for The Atlantic, parental estrangement has become increasingly common in an America divided along generational fault lines. Cases of parental estrangement are overwhelmingly initiated by adult children who cut off contact with their parents for reasons of abuse, breach of reasonable boundaries, “toxic” behavior, or lack of acceptance regarding identity and life choices. Parents and adult children are likely to offer differing accounts, with children citing repeated instances of offensive speech, behavior, or “gaslighting” and parents citing children’s revision of the past, false accusations, and “failure to acknowledge love and commitment.” Contemporary differences of political opinion only serve to deepen these divisions amongst children and their parents, but in the absence of physical, verbal, or emotional abuse, there should be no reason for the complete severing of family ties.
Pressure for Perfection
Stephanie Coontz, who serves as director at the Council on Contemporary Families where Coleman is a senior fellow, penned the book Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, which traces the historical development of the love-centered marriage (later called “soulmate” marriage) and how it superseded economic marriage. Coleman quotes her argument that something similar has happened to families today:
“Never before have family relationships been seen as so interwoven with the search for personal growth, the pursuit of happiness, and the need to confront and overcome psychological obstacles. […] For most of history, […] parents or children might reproach the other for failing to honor/acknowledge their duty, but the idea that a relative could be faulted for failing to honor/acknowledge one’s ‘identity’ would have been incomprehensible.”
In spite of the overemphasis of identity acceptance in keeping family together, the family is still a site of personal growth, the pursuit of happiness, and the need to confront and overcome psychological obstacles. Families in the past were not purely economically motivated just as families of today are not purely identity-centered. To love is to fulfill one’s duty as a parent, child, or sibling, and the idea that love means absolute acceptance of everything each family member does (however imperfectly or badly) fails to account for the importance of the family as the place where human beings are taught to live and love selflessly.
What Makes a Family?
So what makes a family at a time when individual identity is prized? Coleman believes that much of the conflict that leads to estrangement is resolvable. He writes in the absence of “grave scenarios” such as physical, verbal, or emotional abuse, our preoccupation with
“the needs and rights of the individual conceals how much sorrow we create for those we leave behind. We may see cutting off family members as courageous rather than avoidant or selfish. We can convince ourselves that it’s better to go it alone than to do the work it takes to resolve conflict. Some problems may be irresolvable, but there are also relationships that don’t need to be lost forever.”
No family is perfect, and no family is in perfect agreement about every topic under the sun. What makes a family is not a complete lack of conflict, but the presence of love in a household where responsibilities are clearly delineated and met, where individuals have the freedom to be who they are knowing that love will not be withdrawn from them. American families would do best to strive to live together according to the historical understanding that family relationships are duty-bound. They would also do best to strive to understand identity as consisting in such relationships, rather than opposing them.
