Family Roles and Moral Growth

As far back as our knowledge takes us, human beings have lived in families. We know of no period where this was not so. We know of no people who have succeeded for long in dissolving the family or displacing it… Again and again, in spite of proposals for change and actual experiments, human societies have reaffirmed their dependence on the family as the basic unit of human living-the family of father, mother and children.1

Margaret Mead

Family relationships are essential for realizing key moral aspirations. The family is "the institution which most effectively teaches the civic virtues of honesty, loyalty, trust, self-sacrifice, personal responsibility, and respect for others," concluded a diverse board of experts.2 Sociologist Brigitte Berger says that the stable family is "the culture-creating institution par excellence."3 This is why efforts to shore up and support the family are well worth society's investment-in fact, they are crucial to society's long term well being.

Schools are an important part of that effort. Effective character educators respect the powerful influence of the family and are concerned with issues relating to marriage and family. They encourage parental participation and model their schools and classrooms after good homes. They help students gain the skills necessary for developing healthy marriages and families. Such education counteracts and prevents a host of social problems, fostering productive citizens who have a greater chance for personal success and happiness.

The Family: Crucible of Character

By the time they come to school, children are already well on their way in their moral education. As Berger notes, family life has already exposed them directly or indirectly to the most elementary emotions of human nature-love, hate, longing, anger, sacrifice, selfishness, loneliness, honor, etc.4 Their moral foundations have largely been formed. The family will continue to be a lasting and deeply felt influence throughout their lives. Effective educators and community leaders seek to facilitate the healthy aspects of this influence.

Family interaction invariably teaches moral lessons that have repercussions in growing children's futures. The seemingly minor incidents of family life accumulate over the years of growing up to affect the way family members relate to others for the rest of their lives. People's view of themselves and the way that they relate to their spouses and children, authority figures, subordinates and friends are all influenced by the moral and emotional subtexts coursing through everyday events in their families of origin. Indeed, the family is a veritable melting pot of emotional and moral learning-the crucible of character.

Universal Pattern

People find themselves in all sorts of families, and all families, like all individual human beings, deserve to be treated with respect. Yet single parents know that children need a mother and a father and often feel called upon to try to play both roles. They intuit that the family has a standard form, a structure that is grounded in nature. (See Chapter 8)

Dutch historian Jan Romein termed the family "the common human pattern."5 Even when people reject or bypass the traditional configuration of father, mother and their children, people tend to follow its patterns anyway, as if the family were a groove from which humanity cannot escape. A young man at Woodstock in 1992 said that he was there, among strangers, because of his yearning for a family. Homeless youngsters often form bands in which they take care of each other as well as they can on the street, calling themselves little families.

1Margaret Mead and Ken Heyman, Family (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 77-78.

2Marriage in America, A Report to the Nation, Council on Families in America, March 1995, p. 4.

3Brigitte Berger, "The Social Roots of Prosperity and Liberty," Society (March-April 1998), p. 43.

4Berger, "Social Roots of Prosperity and Liberty," p. 5.

5Quoted in Berger, "Social Roots of Prosperity and Liberty," p. 44.