By Dr. Robert
Goldberg
Professor
of history, University of Utah
In studying the transformation of American
life in the 20th century, we often overlook the
changing roles of the family. A few stereotypes,
if somewhat simplistic, offer insights about
dramatic shifts of relationships within the
family and between it and societal institutions.
In the 19th century, when
the majority of Americans lived on farms,
families performed key functions for members.
Work and domestic skills were learned on the job
at home, with sons and daughters
"apprenticed" to father and mother.
Mother was the prime caregiver and, with school
less a priority, also served as resident teacher.
The family fulfilled social welfare functions.
Not only to the sick and the infirm, but the
elderly were cared for at home. The nuclear
family did not stand alone. It nested in an
extended network of kin that apportioned the
physical, emotional and intellectual needs of the
family to a diverse collection of sisters,
brothers, uncles, aunts and grandparents.
As men and women left the
farm for the city in the 20th century, they
encountered new living patterns and institutions.
Husbands left home for work in the store, factory
and office, splitting the domestic and business
worlds. Women were left to tend the hearth and
provide a haven from the work world for their
husbands. Only in the second half of the century
did married women re-enter the cash nexus and
work to support the family financially, thus
bolstering their power in family decision-making.
Geographic mobility separated extended families,
and new apartment living and suburban tracts of
homes segregated neighbors.
A retreat to the home and
the den has been accelerated by new entertainment
technologies that allow us to play games, watch
movies and even take college courses without
having physically to encounter another human
being. The pressure on the nuclear family to meet
all the needs of its members has become intense.
(At the same time, divorce and other realities of
modern life have weakened the core family and
left it vulnerable.)
The family sloughed off the
educational functions to schools that it had
previously performed. New identities sorted
youngsters into "age ghettos" —
grade school, middle school, high school and
college. There they were exposed to a wide
variety of courses that provided, as early as the
1920s, vocational training, domestic skills and
instruction in "hygiene and health."
Salt Lake high school students now can take
classes in "home arts,"
"parenting" and "marriage."
Peer pressure has become, perhaps, as powerful as
parental instruction in determining dress, speech
and even sexual behavior. Senior citizens also
are assigned to "age ghettos." Leisure
cities and retirement homes relieve the family of
the direct care of grandparents.
A new understanding of
disease, improving technologies and the
professionalization of medical education raise
hopes for successful intervention when there is
illness. The modern hospital is a recent
invention, no longer having the 19th century
reputation as the place one went to die. We now
give our trust to medical experts, perhaps too
willing to relinquish responsibility to their
judgment.
A discussion of changing
familial roles would not be complete without
mention of the "family of last resort"
— the federal government. Those who the
family cannot provide for or those it forgets may
find some succor in the minimal care offered by
an army of government professionals who dole out
social security, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to
dependent children, school lunches and other
necessaries that used to be provided at home.
As the layers of roles have
been stripped away, a skeletal family remains. We
have shed our familial responsibilities to social
welfare, medical, leisure and educational
experts.
In the next century, can
this fragile shell that is the family withstand
the pressure to remain the core institution of
our society?
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