By Dan Gunderson
October 20, 1997

Minnesota Public Radio's Civic Journalism Initiative examined the strengths of the family in its Minnesota Family Strength Project. Although a survey that was part of the project revealed that most families consider themselves to be strong, cultural changes that include a trend of increasing individualism are transforming family life.

Minnesota Family Strength Project

IN ITS EARLIEST INCARNATION, the purpose of the family unit was simple - procreation and survival. The interdependence demanded by the rigors of life in earlier centuries meant the family was more important than its individual members.

But, sociologists say, as the Industrial Revolution and other advances made it easier to sustain life, a culture of individualism slowly began to develop. In recent years, the pace has picked up, and some would say it's getting out of hand.

Stelzer: Everybody is so busy doing their thing. The family unit, as a unit, I don't think exists as we knew it 20 years ago.

Swede Stelzer and his wife, Linda, sit around the kitchen table on a rare night that they're home together. The two children who still live at home are not here tonight.

Swede and Linda both grew up with grandparents very much a part of their lives. Linda's grandmother moved in when she was 11, after her mother died. Swede says as a child he saw his grandparents at least once a week, including an extended visit to Grandma and Grandpa's farm every summer.

Stelzer: I thought I was working. He probably thought I was a pain, but I spent two months every summer on the farm. I learned to drive a '51 Studebaker from Grandma at age 11 - that wouldn't happen today. Grandma was doing that on the sly. If my parents had known - but grandparents spoil kids a little. Kids today miss that. Families tend to have the same values, and grandparents extended family reinforce those values. If kids spend time with extended family, and those values are reinforced, that's a postive, I think We have this tendency to idealize eras that are gone now, and we recall things we thought were pleasant - and we miss, at this point, and we don't recall the other things.

Concordia College Sociology professor Polly Fassinger says the most recognizable change in families in recent decades has been the movement of women to the workforce - a change partly in response to economic reality, but partly because the good old days wfere not necessarily good for everyone.

Fassinger: One of the reasons we've seen these changes in women in the workforce and less time as homemakers - one of the reasons is the way family life was organized early in the century was not necessarily ideal to all the participants.

Fassinger says women's changing role in society is often pointed to as the most significant change, but she thinks a less recognized and perhaps more subtle change has had a far greater effect on the traditional family unit.

Fassinger: I see us as becoming an increasingly individualized culture. We celebrate the individual over the group time after time, you know, taking the kids to hockey camp, taking kids to all these activities which are great for the benefit of their individual development. But what's the effect on the group - they're all sorta rushing past each other. But those are the trade-offs. If you're going to be a culture that celebrates individualism, you're going to lose the benefits that come from life that's more communal.

Fassinger says she sees no change in the trend toward personal fulfillment being the primary reason for the choices people make. But neither does she see the family relegated to the pages of history.

Fassinger: We aren't fleeing from the family in real concrete ways. It's just the kind of families we create - and the meaning they have - are changing. But there's still that desire for some kind of intimate, stable, long-term relationship that people are expressing.

Researchers say increasingly a large proportion of people feel they cannot find those intimate stable relationships and feel isolated. Many of those people are seeking non-familial sources of support, such as the workplace.

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