Family Conference: Family in Transiton
Pacifica Institute, Cal State University at Long Beach and Loyola Marymount together organized and hosted the Conference on the Family in Transition. The conference was mediated by CSULB’s own Religious Studies Professor Sophia Pandya.
The three speakers were, namely, Ken Canfield (Executive Director of the Boone Center for the Family at Pepperdine University), Father Eric Freed (Director of the Humboldt State University Newman Center) and Funda Turkmen (PhD candidate at Michigan State University).
Mr. Canfield spoke on the “The Invaluable and Strategic Influence a Father had on his Children.” Canfield referred to the current debate as to whether fathers were essential or superfluous to the child’s well-being. He said that the idea that fathers play an essential role is being refuted especially if the father is abusive. Canfield firmly placed himself in the former category and defended his stance by quoting invaluable research data. He pointed out the children from unfathered households are poorer, do less well in school, commit more delinquent acts and are more susceptible to peer pressure. Canfield clarified that by unfathered he referred to households where the father had abandoned his children. Families where fathers were absent due to premature death were not part of his research.
Canfield said that the fastest way for a family to plunge into poverty was via divorce. He went on to note that the South Central Los Angeles gangs were populated by boys without fathers. Children in unfathered households have higher rates of depression, are more susceptible to sickness, experience anomies and struggle with lack of sense of purpose and identifications. He said that sons in particular experience emotional turmoil, act out sexually, have higher measures of guilt and shame and suffer from memory loss. The impact on daughters was similarly negative but of a slightly different nature. He introduced the “sleeper effect” term for daughters of unfathered households. This sleeper effect consisted of an increased desire for attention and affection and loss of support in life’s decisions.
Later in a question and answer session Canfield said that surrogate father figures play an important role for unfathered children. Children turn to the extended family, the faith family or the media in order to search for a surrogate father. Sometimes children are successful in this search and are able to grow up better adjusted with the help of a surrogate father.
Father Eric Freed’s discussion was entitled “New Perspectives Based on an Academic Analysis of the words of the Historical Jesus.” He offered a fascinating view that was held by Jesus Christ on the importance of family. There is the pragmatic image of the family and there is the idealized image of the family. The latter had been embraced by the Renaissance artists who painted Jesus, Mary and Joseph as an idealized family of Christian Tradition. Nonetheless, Father Freed pointed out the historical Jesus does not refer to his family or any other family as idealistic. This is apparent in his use of the word “woman” for his mother, Mary. In John 20 Jesus says to John, referring to Mary “This is your mother.” But Jesus never refers to Mary as his own mother and does not mention Joseph at all, in the capacity of his father or any other for that matter.
Father Freed quoted Luke 14:26: If you do not hate your family, you cannot be my disciple. These words go blatantly against the traditional nuclear family values that are considered the cornerstone of Christianity. Jesus also asks his disciples to love their enemies. Jesus never promotes the idealized family. His disciples do in fact abandon their respective families. Father Freed said that with the editing evolution of the Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying different things at different times. Father Freed, though, based his talk on the words of the historical Jesus. And in that research he had found Jesus Christ to be nothing less than brutal on the confines of the traditional family.
Father Freed brought his talk to a close by telling the audience that Jesus was in fact redefining kinship. In Jesus’s world the extended family was everything you ever needed in life. One was supposed to hate all things outside of that family circle. According to Jesus the family represented the ties that bind you to addictive, destructive behavior and hatred: One depending on the family like a drug and hated everything outside of that family as a means to identify himself or herself in the world. The world outside of the family was “otherized.” Jesus wanted his followers to free themselves from these familial binds and to liberate themselves from them and only then could the disciples ever reach the idealized family.
Father Freed went on to say that all of us engage in the destructive hatred that Jesus was advocating against: we identify ourselves, politically, ethnically and nationally and are taught to hate everything outside of that circle of identification. The idealzed family can only be acheieved we learn to break free of these obligations of hate and destruction.
Funda Turkmen’s talk focused on her doctorate research. Her discussion was titled, “Family Change and Divorce.” He research focused on divorced women in Turkey. In Turkey only 12.8% percent of families were headed by women and out of this 12.8% , 9% were headed by women due to the outcome of divorce. In Turkey divorce rates and marriage rates were both increasing while fertility rates were decreasing. 13% of all marriages in Turkey are remarriages and men make up the vast majority of the remarrying group.
Divorce in Turkey started to climb dramatically after the 2001 economic downturn. Even after the economy recovered, the divorce rates in Turkey remained high. This was due to the fact that spouses were beginning to redefine marriage. Marriage became about fulfillment. A rise in individualism leads to a rose in divorce rates. Spouses were beginning to evaluate marriages in terms of a cost and benefit analysis.
Her research also studied the children in these single parent homes. There was trauma from the physical absence of the father. Ms. Turkmen also believed that her data reinforced the stigma of self parenting. She explained this changing dynamic by referring to the changing republic. Changes in the society lead to a greater stress on families and challenge monolithic structures.