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Family's Role and Life in the Real World;
Protecting, and Caring for, the Next Generation;
Causes of Social Break-up


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Family's Role and Life in the Real World;
Protecting, and Caring for, the Next Generation;
Causes of Social Break-up


The Family

For human beings, primitive (reptilian) instinctive urges and behaviour are overlaid by mammalian care and affection for one's young and human care and affection for one's family and community.
See   How the Human Brain Developed and How the Human Mind Works,

Compared with most, if not all, animals we also have much longer lifespans and it takes a long time before a human baby becomes an adult. Born after nine months in the mother's womb, followed by 4 to 5 years as infant, then 8 to 10 years as child being educated, and say 6 to 9 years as adolescent, about 18 to 25 years old when becoming an adult and independent member of the community.

So the role of the family is

To struggle as a family to survive.

To protect and support mother and children until children become mature and independent adults capable of providing for themselves.

To provide a good standard of living and a life of high quality. Which includes struggling against oppression and exploitation. And sometimes one has to fight to preserve a good way of life.

To serve the interests of, and to support, each member of the family. In turn, each member of the family supports the family.


Hence human beings work primarily for their family and members of a family stand by, support and help each other in times of need. The family is the basic unit of society and it looks after the interests of all its members, as individuals as well as collectively. This gives great strength to each member of the family in the struggle for daily bread, security and happiness.


Protecting and Caring for the Next Generation

It is women who generally look after people, after the welfare and well-being of the members of the family. Care, concern, affection and love, feelings and emotions, are important and matter, and women developed, and have, much skill and expertise in such matters. It is generally men who struggle outside the family to secure survival and good living for the family. A struggle for survival in a seemingly hostile environment engineered by other humans.
See   The Will to Work: What People Struggle to Achieve,
and   Motivation Summary.

Primarily the family exists to protect and support its young, and this means supporting and looking after the female bearing the child within her body, through birth and while she is protecting and teaching the young how to behave. It is usually the woman whose role it is to ensure the family provides the young with the humane, emotionally and mentally stimulating environment they need to enable them to mature into socially responsible adults. She is assisted in this by her spouse, depending on her needs and depending on his own work. But it is usually the woman who copes with the personal and emotional problems of the family's members and this is challenging, demanding and difficult work demanding social ability and skills as well as care, affection, understanding and concern for people.

When women are persuaded to regard work outside of the family as more important than caring for the young or the family's members, they are in effect handing over the family's key role to outsiders such as day-care businesses and television programme makers, with disastrous results on the way in which the young perceive home life and adult behaviour.

Such outsiders tend to condition the young into behaving like fictional and unreal role models, for example concerning sexual behaviour. Instead of gaining an adult understanding of the reality of living, of family values and relationships, instead of understanding and experiencing socially-responsible behaviour caring for and living with other people, instead of seeing adults (parents) behave in socially responsible way struggling together in a hostile environment to do the best they can for the young and for each other.


Behaviour and Community

Society corrupts itself when human care, affection and concern for one's own family, and for other people, is weakened, is bypassed by self-interest at expense of others.

There is increasing wanton antisocial behaviour such as vandalism and mugging. There is a loss of internal security, by loss of property and by attack against the person. The quality of life is lowered even further by those who pursue personal gain regardless of its cost to other people.

Destructive aggression, viciousness and brutality of people towards each other, disregard of the value of the individual and of life itself, are not normal behaviour. People who behave in such ways become isolated and divided against each other.


Partnerships and marriages break up when difficulties arise. People leave without regard or concern for the interests of the other members, of partner, spouse or children. They leave when they would be better off alone, when there is illness, when their present partner becomes unemployed, when a younger or wealthier 'partner' becomes available.


Basic is that people behave in a way which enables them to trust and assist each other, that men and women co-operate with each other in a way which will protect and strengthen both, behaving in a way which ensures that all benefit from gains made.

So within a family, between husband and wife, it is the other person who comes first. When each spouse tries to make the other spouse happy, when each will go without something so as to make the other happy, then both can be happy.


Family's Role and Life in the Real World

Human beings work primarily for their family and members of a family stand by, support and help each other in times of need.

Smash the family and you undermine the strength of the people. I understand the resulting disruption was so marked in Russia that they had to back-pedal. One of the first things the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia was to smash the family to make the people dependent on the state.

It is tough when you have to go to work to earn the money, do the shopping, look after the kids and do everything yourself. The one thing you cannot afford to be is to be ill. And you have no time for the kids either. And in a one-parent family, what the children miss is the parent's caring co-operative behaviour, is the example of responsible people looking after each other. The boy being brought up by the mother knows that both of them were left to look after themselves by the father and that is not a good example to model himself on. If you are struggling on your own so as to survive you don't have time or energy to think of freedom or to work for the community or for the betterment of humankind.


In the kibbutzim, that is in Israel's co-operative settlements, children were brought up communally in age groups, away from their parents. One age group would progress together from creche to nursery and then to school, living together during the week and seeing their parents, or living with their parents, only at weekends.

This may have freed both parents for work and defence in the initial struggle for survival. But the practice was continued when successful, possibly to free women for work and so increase production. But it was done at the expense of the family.

Of any group in the country, the kibbutz children consequently showed the highest incidence of mental problems. The kibbutzim have had to backtrack and now give their children a more normal and strengthening family-life experience with their parents.
See   Kibbutzim.


Each member of the family gets strength from the others. Two heads are better than one, and work divided between two people in such a way that each can become expert in his or her own area is done much better than one person trying to do it all. The family gives people enormous emotional and economic strength to overcome life's problems. Husband and wife battle on together back-to-back and they do so successfully regardless of how tough the struggle may be. You cannot win all the battles but what cements the relationship is not just battles won but battles fought together. The depth of such a relationship between husband and wife and the wealth of strength it gives regardless of the opposition, this you know as well as I do. The children follow the example of their parents, gain the same strength and pass it on. It all depends on deep and secure emotional involvement between two people, between husband and wife.


Short Description of Sources

See report
Family, Sex and the Individual; Women's Liberation, Feminism and Community
from which this theme's information was reproduced here.
     
Title   Description
     
Family, Sex and the Individual; Women's Liberation, Feminism and Community   This report investigates casual sex and its effects on individuals, family and community. It examines the role of the family in bringing up children and relates dominance and confrontation within the family to that in the working environment. See  'Press Notices'.
     
How the Human Brain Developed and How the Human Mind Works   This report gives a clear appreciation of what happens during a night's sleep and explains the role of dreaming and the meaning of dreams. The functioning and role of the two halves of the human brain are related to the functioning and control of the autonomic nervous system and the immune system. The report also indicates how human behaviour is affected by the primitive instincts of our reptilian ancestors. See  'Press Notices'.
     
The Will to Work: What People Struggle to Achieve   Major review, analysis and report about motivation and motivating. Covers remuneration and job satisfaction as well as the factors which motivate. Develops a clear definition of 'motivation'. Lists what people are striving and struggling to achieve, and progress made in the struggle for independence and good life, in corporations, communities, countries.
     
Motivation Summary   Reviews and summarises past work in Motivation. Provides a clear definition of 'motivation', of the factors which motivate and of what people are striving to achieve. See  'Press Notices'.
     
Kibbutzim   Kibbutzim are successful co-operative communities now experiencing both practical and ideological problems. So the study looks at what is taking place to find reasons for success and causes of problems.
     


Manfred Davidmann

Manfred Davidmann is an internationally well-known and respected scientist and author of a number of books and reports which have had and are having considerable impact. His work usually breaks new ground and opens up new understanding and is written in meaningful and easily understood language. Outstanding is that his work is generally accepted as factual, objective and unbiased.


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