Family Values In The 21st Century

The importance of marriage and family is obvious.  These institutions are found throughout the world in some form or another in virtually every existing culture.  Marriage and family are often intertwined with sacred rites and rituals or considered a holy sacrament.  Within the secular realm, America has legally embraced same sex marriage in order to extend the obvious benefits and protections of marriage to gay citizens.  In light of all this, can one seriously doubt the value and importance of marriage and family?

If it is easy to see that marriage and family are important, it is far more difficult to answer the following questions:

What is marriage?  What is family? 

There was a time when, for Americans, marriage and family were demonstrated by the June Cleaver/Donna Read model:  A head-of-household husband, a cookie-baking-stay-at-home-wife, and their biological offspring.  A simple glance at any newspaper or magazine will quickly demonstrate that this model is no longer the norm.  In fact, statistics show that a two-parent, heterosexual, in-tact marriage model of the American family is now a minority — having been eclipsed by single-parent, same sex and divorced families.  Even in families which remain within a two-parent married-with-children model, rough patches can be expected which in times past might well have resulted in divorce.  The line between married and divorced is, consequently, blurred.  And it becomes important to maintain family relationships regardless of the label which might be applied to any given family at any particular point in time.
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In such an environment, we have two choices:  (1) We can try, futilely, to escape back into the past, or (2) We can embrace and shape our future.  If we choose this second option, we must consider what impact our various actions and inactions have upon our American families.  One huge area wherein such efforts can have an immediate and profound effect is in that of  Divorce & Family Law.

Consider this question:  Can a family unit remain in tact following divorce?

One of the most challenging aspects of divorce is preserving friendship and family in the face of whatever  irreconcilable differences which are prompting divorce.  Conventional divorce does not address residual relationships between adults other than to mandate respectful cooperation where children are involved.  The goal is to sever marital bonds and send everyone off to “get on with life.”  No real effort is directed towards healing wronged parties or addressing wrongdoing between adults.  We are in a “no fault” environment.  Fault is irrelevant!  The former marital relationship, where it is acknowledged at all, is treated as a “mistake.”  Even elderly individuals, who have spent their entire lives together and share intricately overlapping extended families as well as children,  are encouraged to break and depart — as though their entire lives up to that point have been lived in error.

Clearly such an approach is not in the best interest of the parties, their children, friends, extended families or, for that matter, society as a whole.