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I do think in the US our culture is individualistic and in some ways built on rebellion. The key "coming of age" story is, as indicated, the adolescent breaking free of their family. In the most extreme case the show Friends, and yes one of the writers specifically said they intended this so I'm not over-analyzing much, was largely based on the premise that family should matter less than friendship because friendship is chosen.
Still the family-orientation can have its downsides too. In some Asian and African cultures getting certain jobs can be difficult if you are not of the right family. The individualism of the US does allow for a certain dynamism about some things. And I think there are times rebelling against parents or family is justified. (I was not a rebellious teen at all, but I didn't universally oppose the idea. I think I just felt rebellion should only be done if you have a legitimate grievance and after other options fail. I loathed "rebellion for rebellion's sake" and still do. I think in some "family oriented" cultures any rebellion might seem bad or unjustified.)
I think this is an example of a great counter-argument, with very good points. Particularly when it comes to jobs, as understood in the context of a modern, free market economy. Looked at from that angle, weaker family ties can make the job market more friendly to a not-so-well-connected average Joe. This is exactly what makes the US superior in terms of job opportunities and the very reason why we are still here, despite living against the local cultural grain.
There are certainly other downsides of a strong family orientation, mainly in some unpleasant, rather extreme personal circumstances. I would never deny that. But all in all, I still think that strong family ties are more likely to bring benefits in the long run than grievances and pain.
No matter how good a job market is, it is very hard for an average Joe family to make it through life without severe stresses if they rely strictly on the job market and a "pay for everything with cash" mentality. Or worse, make it "credit card".
As for the subliminal message of Friends - just another one of those media-driven, social engineering attempts that I, personally, loathe.
Friends could NEVER, EVER replace the solid support of a family tie. It is exactly because friendships are choice-based that they are more likely to be fickle, flimsy and easier to cut off as soon as the individual ceases to perceive a direct benefit for himself in the relationship.
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Originally Posted by Thomas R.
Also, as a previous poster said, we don't want to exaggerate US culture or even white American culture into a monolith. Although living with your elderly parents is rare, it's far from non-existent. And to be honest certain realities, like medical issues or rising life expectancy, are making it rarer than it once was even in Asia. (It's cruel to say, but I imagine it was easier to have your elderly parent live with you when the likelihood was they'd die before developing Alzheimer's or severe Parkinson's.) Further there are plenty of intact families and there are adolescents who are not rebellious in the TV stereotyped way. I think due to the down economy there's even an increase in unmarried adults living with their folks. At least some of them are okay with that too. And I know of family businesses where generations of relatives seem to work together amicably. True I also know of family businesses where they try to destroy each other, but I don't think that negates that for some it works.
Of course there are always exceptions. But we are talking here about a family model that the mainstream tends to want to live up to.
As for the subliminal message of Friends - just another one of those media-driven, social engineering attempts that I, personally, loathe.
Friends could NEVER, EVER replace the solid support of a family tie. It is exactly because friendships are choice-based that they are more likely to be fickle, flimsy and easier to cut off as soon as the individual ceases to perceive a direct benefit for himself in the relationship.
That's true. I have had many great friends. But they quickly come and go, out of sight, out of mind.
As for the subliminal message of Friends - just another one of those media-driven, social engineering attempts that I, personally, loathe.
Friends could NEVER, EVER replace the solid support of a family tie. It is exactly because friendships are choice-based that they are more likely to be fickle, flimsy and easier to cut off as soon as the individual ceases to perceive a direct benefit for himself in the relationship.
This is a good point and I agree. There is something solid and organic in family that it's difficult, or maybe even impossible, to replicate in friendship. Except maybe in those cases of friendships that involved sharing many/most early childhood and adolescent experiences. Like if you were practically raised with a non-relative from 3-16, like maybe their own parents were negligent, I could see that as making the person like an adopted sibling. That might be rather unusual though.
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Originally Posted by syracusa
Of course there are always exceptions. But we are talking here about a family model that the mainstream tends to want to live up to.
Oh sure, but from what I've read two-thirds of American children were living with their married biological parents. This might not seem to square with the divorce rate, but I'm pretty sure divorce is more common among childless couples.
Extended family is rare in US thinking. A noticeable minority of children live with their grandparents, but this is more due to single parent situations or the parent being absent. Still around 39% of grandparents in general apparently have some involvement in child-care at some point in a year.
So living with the folks is a bit uncommon, but the two-parent family with grandparents nearby doesn't seem that unusual at all. I think it's also still what many prefer. Even in popular culture there's been shows that praise multi-generational families or intact two-parents families with grandparents present. In Judging Amy the, granted divorced, judge lived with her mother and daughter. In The Office Pam and Jim are married with baby and their own families still seem to have some role in their lives. (As I recall they live in Jim's childhood home, I think he also listed his mother as his emergency response person in the first or second season, and they've said Pam is very close to her mother even if she disapproved of her dating her boss.) Then there are things more intentionally "family oriented" like Everybody Loves Raymond and The Middle, where the two-parent family had all their kids conceived in wedlock. In "Raymond" the grandparents and uncle literally live next door, which drives them crazy but is also occasionally shown to have positive qualities. In The Middle they are willing to do all kinds of things "for family", some of them possibly stupid but they do seem committed to the ideal.
... jobs, as understood in the context of a modern, free market economy. Looked at from that angle, weaker family ties can make the job market more friendly to a not-so-well-connected average Joe. This is exactly what makes the US superior in terms of job opportunities and the very reason why we are still here, despite living against the local cultural grain ...
... No matter how good a job market is, it is very hard for an average Joe family to make it through life without severe stresses if they rely strictly on the job market and a "pay for everything with cash" mentality. Or worse, make it "credit card".
During one of the happiest periods of my life, I lived in a small village, with more sheep than people, in one of the poorest regions of the EU at the time (EU-15, not EU-27).
I remember one time looking for a store to buy some vegetables and a woman told me "go pick them in the fields". Money was useless.
In fact, most of the money flow was generated by government bureaucracy, a bit by agriculture and furniture manufacturing, and I procured housing and food based on social relationships, not money. I now have a family-type relationship with some of the people whom I met and shared my life with during that time.
At the same time, it is true, many young people had/have to leave the region and go to the capital or abroad to seek money-paying jobs.
There is no easy solution to this dilemma, but better elementary education, strong local culture and telecommunications may help.
But it is precisely strong local culture that is anathema to the consumerist ideology, even more so now that it has gone global.
...Friends could NEVER, EVER replace the solid support of a family tie. It is exactly because friendships are choice-based that they are more likely to be fickle, flimsy and easier to cut off as soon as the individual ceases to perceive a direct benefit for himself in the relationship.
Of course there are always exceptions. But we are talking here about a family model that the mainstream tends to want to live up to.
The key words here are "solid support," otherwise it is nothing but manipulation and old habit patterns, which are decidedly unsupportive and often truly neurotic and destructive.
In my experience my friends have been my friends by choice, and that is the strength in those relationships. They were the people who had chosen me for a friend as an adult, as an equal. Family relationships proved to be weighted down with so much baggage from the past that they were useless to me in adult life. My friends were concerned with ME in a crisis, my family was concerned with their ideas about what they thought should be done based totally in reference to their lives, as if I were a table or rug.
I worked for ten years with terminally ill people, and over and over again it was spouses and friends who really were there for the ill person....and I don't mean physically there, I mean there for the other person as person and not as the object of a family drama. Too many times I saw parents and siblings being totally self-absorbed, centering everything upon how they felt, etc. etc. There were exceptions, but in way over fifty percent of the cases I saw it was the chosen relationships of spouse and friends that provided the unselfish support.
Models are one thing, but I was there over and over again when the poop was hitting the propeller, and in the reality of a death room I saw those lovely ideal family models in action far less than half the time.
The Israeli society is highly family oriented. Israelis take their children with them everywhere. They also spend time with extended family on all Jewish (which are national Israeli) holidays.
No, diablogun. It is YOUR OWN experience that is the exception. While nobody will deny that you have a close family situation, this is NOT the norm in mainstream America, no matter how you twist it.
Syracusa,
I certainly don't think it is an exception, but we all have our experiences to go off. You seem like a good person who has some sharp insight into some of the weaknesses of the stressful, go-like-hell culture here that many partake in, but I see a whole different side of America that doesn't join into that game.
I think if one avoids the big cities and areas that live off of a self-absorbed lifestyle, your ideal can be achieved.
The key words here are "solid support," otherwise it is nothing but manipulation and old habit patterns, which are decidedly unsupportive and often truly neurotic and destructive.
In my experience my friends have been my friends by choice, and that is the strength in those relationships. They were the people who had chosen me for a friend as an adult, as an equal. Family relationships proved to be weighted down with so much baggage from the past that they were useless to me in adult life. My friends were concerned with ME in a crisis, my family was concerned with their ideas about what they thought should be done based totally in reference to their lives, as if I were a table or rug.
I worked for ten years with terminally ill people, and over and over again it was spouses and friends who really were there for the ill person....and I don't mean physically there, I mean there for the other person as person and not as the object of a family drama. Too many times I saw parents and siblings being totally self-absorbed, centering everything upon how they felt, etc. etc. There were exceptions, but in way over fifty percent of the cases I saw it was the chosen relationships of spouse and friends that provided the unselfish support.
Models are one thing, but I was there over and over again when the poop was hitting the propeller, and in the reality of a death room I saw those lovely ideal family models in action far less than half the time.
But kevxu...isn't your account an actual testimony to the weakness of anglo-american families in the first place?
I found Tiger Beer's candid confession extraordinarily telling. When people in Asia ask him puzzled "don't you miss your family??" - he simply says "No, I don't". I agree with him that there is a lot of emotional freedom that comes with this kind of family rapport but I personally would NEVER desire such a freedom neither for myself nor for my children.
Somes ties actually bind - and sometimes... it is wonderful to be bound.
And if one "binding" to only one person - the spouse - was truly all that is necessary, you wouldn't see as many divorces in individualistic countries. The extended family can play a huge role in the well-being of the nuclear family, even if this is counter-intuitive.
However, I myself see a lot of what you reported; but just because I see this here doesn't lead me to conclude that family ties naturally hide mere self-interest and nothing else. When "brewed" the right way, most truly traditional families become strong, are there for each other, sacrifice for each other, through thick and thin, in a way that no friend would ever be able to do.
I, for one, can say that I have no such friend, who would sacrifice for me in the way my family would if "poop were to hit the propeller".
We live in unbelievably competitive, "every man for himself" times, where there isn't a whole lot of room left for altruism, loyalty and attachment.
Friends are busy, always very busy, with a mysterious personal agenda that steals most of their time. Frankly speaking, all I can sense from friends, all the way underneath, in that place words never reach - is sheer competitiveness, anxiety, and a keep-up-with-the-Joneses mentality.
Hardly anything else.
How could I ever believe that such people would actually spare the time, the energy and the sacrifice to help me "clean the propeller"?
My best friend - BY FAR - is my sister. The way we communicate, understand each other, help each other and ..."cheesily" enough, finish each other's sentences, could never be replicated with any friend. We have a life-long history together, 15 years in the same room, nightly conversations, same background, same vibes ... something that I simply could not achieve with any friend no matter how hard I tried.
Traditional families are not simply a bunch of self-absorbed individuals; if some have become like this, that's just a sad development.
As for the spourse, I see the spouse as PART OF the traditional family, even if you get to become family with them by choice. I would never place the spouse in the same category with friends just because they are both "acquired" by choice.
I DO agree however that many families can become dysfunctional and do not manage to live up to such standards of closeness, harmony and support. But if you say you have seen self-absorbed, competitive and ill-intentioned siblings and other relatives...haven't you also seen bitterly divorced spouses or even just divorced? What about "friends" and the ferocious competitiveness that characterize most such relationships today?
I see plenty of those ALL THE TIME. Even more than manipulative parents, self-absorbed siblings and the like.
The Israeli society is highly family oriented. Israelis take their children with them everywhere. They also spend time with extended family on all Jewish (which are national Israeli) holidays.
Agree. This also applies to Jewish Americans whom I perceive to be more family oriented than other Americans (mainstream).
All in all, last time I checked, they were not doing too "shabbily" as a culture - whether in Israel or in the US.
I think if one avoids the big cities and areas that live off of a self-absorbed lifestyle, your ideal can be achieved.
It certainly could result in some improvement.
I just haven't managed to find that area yet.
Small Southern town, big southern city, small Northeast town or big Northeast city.
Where next?
Now...some people told me that my experiences may have been strongly shaped by the fact that we have been gravitating towards areas with "good school districts".
I used to be naive about this, but I eventually learned the complex meaning behind this code.
But I don't mean to get off topic...
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