Are Families Necessary
As human children are unusually (1) for an unusually long time, it’ s obvious that every society must provide a domestic context fur the children. The problem is that we assume that the family ought to be the same as the family considered as parents and children.
In present day English, "family" has two meanings:
1. the (2) group of parents and children;
2. a (3) of relations, for example, the set of people who might be expected to turn up at a wedding or a funeral.
Despite some modifications over the last century, the wife is still presumed to be very much the (4) in a marriage, his normally the wife’s career that has to be reshaped to fit the husband’s, not the other way round. The dependence of children on their mother is exploited in a wholly unreasonable way to make the wife-mother the slave of the household. This is all tied up with the fact that, in our industrial system, job- changing and commuting tends to (5) the members of a family, and the harassed wife-mother finds it more and more difficult to rely on her relations for practical assistance.
As (6) become more isolated, families of relations become more dispersed. Ideas about the status of women have been (7) . But perhaps they are more thoroughly enslaved to their children than before. The point is that there doesn’t seem to be any solution. There is a genuine (8) between the fight of the woman to be treated as a free and self-respecting individual, and the fight of the child to demand care and attention.
We have created for ourselves three ideals:
1. social equality of men and women;
2. (9) of the marriage;
3. lifelong love and cooperation between parents and children.
However, we have created a social system in which it’s quite impossible for these factors to (10) .