Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

Healthy Family Life I

The consuming family: enslavement or liberation?

One of the changes brought about by the industrial revolution over the course of the twentieth century is that families have been transformed from being producers to consumers. It was not too many years ago that many households – even in the small backyards of the industrial northeast – maintained vegetable gardens. Bread was baked in the homes. Dinners were prepared from fresh ingredients; one could go to the local butcher and get a fresh killed chicken. Singer sewing machines were fairly commonplace in homes. Families tended their yards. Families even knew how to entertain themselves: "the old homemade Saturday nights, when they would carry the furniture out into the yard and roll up the rugs and dance until sunup" (Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow).

By the end of the twentieth century MacDonald's had sold "billions and billions" of hamburgers and eating out/ordering take-out is booming; Singer got into aerospace and electronics as the demand for home sewing machines shrunk; and perhaps the closest thing to a homemade Saturday night is sitting in front of the television watching Saturday Night Live munching on popcorn popped in the microwave. More significantly we and our children are regularly seduced into buying this, that, and the other thing. Up and down the socioeconomic spectrum, children and teens learn to expect cell phones, DVD players, and the list goes on. Too often, parents themselves get caught up into consumption. Parents struggle to maintain their lifestyle, work long hours while their kids get caught up in their own activities. There is little time for the family.

A recent study published by the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine looked at an ethnically and economically diverse group of teenagers from Minnesota’s Twin Cities area. Fully one third of the teens had one or no meals with their families in a typical week, while only one fourth reported having at least seven meals per week with their families. Those who rarely or never ate meals with their families were particularly at risk to smoke and use alcohol. Girls were, in addition, more likely to use marijuana and experience depression. These girls were also more likely to do poorly in school and more than twice as likely to attempt suicide than the girls who had seven or more meals with their families. The researchers suggest that family meals serve to "provide a formal or informal 'check-in' time during which parents can check in to the emotional well-being of their teens, particularly girls." They also suggest that family meal times may "serve as a marker" for teens who spend proportionately more time with their families relative to with "negative peer influences or youth culture more generally."

While I am not saying that we need to return to the nineteenth century, we do need to take a close look at how the family as extreme consumer affects us and our children. We need to more closely look at our routines, how we spend our money, our time – in sum, what and who get our time, attention and resources? Is the home computer a technology used as a time saver, or do we end up spending so much time on it that our most intimate relationships– including that with God - suffer.

In this series we will examine ways in which family life is threatened by current cultural mores and what can be done to counter these often very strong forces.