Family pictures

Lutheran, The, Nov 2002 by Esterly, Sharon, Holmsten, Brian, Sinnott, Christine, Daniels, Sharon

Fifty years ago,we thought they looked like Leave It to Beaver, but it isn't-and never was-so black and white

fifty years ago, black-and-white

TV shows taught us about family. Mom contentedly vacuums in high heels. Dad's never too tired to put down the paper to offer his children advice. And children are infinitely respectful: If they blunder, they accept the consequences of their behavior cheerfully. These Leave It to Beaver families lived in neighborhoods surrounded by similar families.

But look closer at these "traditional" families and you find the picture wasn't altogether accurate: None were poor or represented cultures other than white and European. None produced an illegitimate child. Divorce was a word used in narrow fashion, as in, "Wally, please divorce yourself from those chores and go bowling with your friends." Given these holes in reality, did these "traditional" models ever truly define family?

Author Stephanie Coontz (The Way We Never Were and The Way We Really Are; Basic Books, 1994 and 1997) says no. The shape and structure of the U.S. family has changed less than we might imagine. "Leave It to Beaver wasn't a documentary," Coontz writes. In 1960, 40 percent of families fit this image of family.

In the late 1950s, one in three Americans was poor, Coontz writes. In the ensuing decades, a significant number of families saw their standard of living increase, such that only one in five Americans was poor in 1988. Nostalgia tells us that women who entered the workforce in men's absences during World War II happily quit working when their husbands, fathers and brothers returned home. But Coontz reports that 2 million more women were in the workforce in 1952 than at the wartime

Brian Holmsten

Epiphany, Elmhurst, Ill.

My family

My primary family is my wife, my two stepchildren and me, but that's only one branch of the tree. The kids (and, by default, all of us) have two families: the four people who live in our house, and the kids and their father, with whom they live every other weekend. When I became their stepfather, their father became part of my family. Plans, holidays, vacations and birthday parties must be run through two sets of schedules. There's tension, miscommunication, personal agendas and some selfishness, just like any family, Ours must be built upon patience, consideration, compromise, forgiveness, respect and a lot of love.

Please don't say...

"How do you decide where the kids spend holidays?" If I had a nickel for every time someone asked that, I'd be wealthy. Such situations can be awkward, but they aren't difficult. We make concessions and do what's best for the kids. Family means putting those we love first.

My church

We've created a complex life, but church reminds us that complex doesn't mean difficult, troubled or unlucky. Within the church, we're not a blended family or a product of second marriages. I don't get funny looks when I tell people, "The kids are with their dad this weekend." Within the church we're Brian and Lenora and Michelle and Sean. We're loved and accepted, and our family is at home as part of a greater family.

Christine Sinnott

St. Paul, Oakland, Calif

My family

My daughter is my family. But since we both need a village, our family also includes my extended family, her birth father and his partner, and friends from our many walks of life: mom's group, church, school, work, chorus, even longago youth group.

Please don't say ...

"So what does your husband do?" Since I'm single and lesbian, that assumption is wrong on two counts. More painful is the underlying judgment many people have about the "different-ness" of my family. Different from what? The number of single-parent households is growing. My choice-and it was a choice--to be a single parent was neither a tragedy nor morally deficient.

My church

I want a worshiping community full of people who will love my daughter and walk with her on her faith journey. I'd also like some support as I try, within the whirlwind of my life, to maintain a spiritual practice for myself. Churches can also provide resources to parents, their children's primary pastoral-care providers.

Marybeth Peterson

Bethany, Lindsborg, Kan.

My family

I'm an always-single person. Family includes cousins, their spouses, children and grandchildren. I appreciate being included in gatherings with these special people. Family expands to include friends with whom I've built strong relationships over the years.

Please don't say...

"Don't come back until you're married with a family." This comment, which I heard at peak. By 1960, 30 percent of married women worked outside the home.

And Americans were a more ethnically diverse population in the 1950s than TV shows let on. More Mexican immigrants entered the United States in the two decades after World War II than in the previous 100 years, and the migration of a significant number of African American families to northern cities transformed the country's ethnic composition, Coontz writes.

Biblical families 'nontraditional'

We don't find many "traditional" families in the Bible either, In the Old Testament, "the main form of family is the extended family of tribes and clans," says Lisa Sowle Cahill, a theology professor at Boston College and author of Family: A Christian Social Perspective (Fortress Press, 2000). "A nuclear family exists, but overall the perspective is generation-to-generation."