Albrecht

A comment in defense of
"Living Faithfully with Families in Transition"

Presbyterian Report on Families - All Families

by Gloria Albrecht

[5-22-03]

The Rev. Dr. Gloria H. Albrecht served as a consultant in the preparation of the "Changing Family" report. She is Professor of Religious Studies and Women's Studies at University of Detroit Mercy, and earned a PhD in Christian Ethics from Temple University. Her latest book is entitled Hitting Home: Feminist Ethics, Women's Work, and the Betrayal of 'Family Values' (Continuum, 2002).

As a Presbyterian, a minister, and one of the consultants to this report, I hope that people will read it in its entirety before making their judgements about its adequacy. Readers should also note that the mandate given to the task force was specific - to examine the issue of changing families, the impact of these changes on children, and the social structures, policies, and programs that would enable the church to support and nurture families and children. The proposed policy and its supporting rationale focus on the contemporary characteristics and contexts of families and then turn to biblical and confessional guidance for relevant theological principles to shape policy recommendations for the church's support of contemporary families. So, yes, the document is very preoccupied with the question of family forms and whether form is the key to family well-being.

Dr. Browning and his colleagues in the Marriage Movement have answered this question with a resounding "yes." As he states in his current critique, "…good family process is important, but on the whole, intact married couples do a better job of it. Why? They are on average more invested in both their children and each other." His use of the phrases "on the whole" and "on average" are important in understanding a major difference between his reading of the social science data and that of the Presbyterian report on families. Social science researchers are in agreement that about 90% of the children of intact (married, two-biological parents) families do fine (score in the normal range) in achievement and adjustment tests. About 75-80% of children who have experienced divorce, or are in stepfamilies or single parent homes, also do fine (score in the normal range) in these tests. There is a 10-15% difference to be accounted for.

Here's where Browning makes a crucial error. He accuses the report of trivializing the real suffering of the 10-15% that is not doing fine. He draws the following analogy: "Take cigarettes: would the authors of the report say that the majority of smokers is just fine since only one in three smokers die?" His error is to confuse correlation with causation. We do know how the chemicals in tobacco physically impair a variety of body tissues and functions. Can we say the same about family form? Can social scientists show direct causation between family form and unhealthy outcomes for children? Or, are other factors at play?

One of the family researchers used by Browning and others is Sara McLanahan. In fact, she is a primary source of the statistic noted above. (See Growing Up with a Single Parent) Yet, she argues that about 50% of this 10-15% difference is due to economic factors - that is, the greater poverty that plagues single mother families. One earner families, especially when that one earner is a woman, have less income that two earner families. And poverty hurts in so many ways - see Jonathan Kozol's book, Amazing Grace. McLanahan attributes the rest of the difference (5-8%) to other economically related issues such as the greater housing instability of low-income families.

How should we interpret this data? The Presbyterian report looks at the economic factors that now require families to have two earners in order to sustain economic well-being. Whatever happened to the single-earner family and the belief that a 40-hour workweek should be sufficient to support a family at a middle-income level? For low-income workers earning poverty-level wages, does marriage eliminate the very real, concrete, horrific circumstances they face involving adequate food, clothing, shelter, safety, health care, education, enrichment activities, and so forth, that middle- and upper-income families take for granted? Today even two-earner families are facing enormous stress in balancing employment and family demands while living with increasing economic pressure and uncertainty.

Despite all of this, 75-80% of the children of single-parent families and stepfamilies are doing "just fine." That is, they test in the normal range. Therefore, the Presbyterian report refuses to ignore or stigmatize the faithful work of these families. Obviously they are doing something very right - despite the odds. It proposes, instead, that they be supported in the variety of ways that they need support - sometimes economically, sometimes in understanding different family dynamics at play, sometimes in challenging the idea that these are not good-enough families. Browning's charge of "elitism" is stunningly ironic, then, in light of a report that carefully acknowledges the privileged socioeconomic and ethnic context of most Presbyterians and then documents the concrete differences those families in different socioeconomic and ethnic contexts face and the different responses that their support requires. To value these families does not in any way devalue the good family work of intact, married couple families. What is truly elite, then, is to suggest, as Browning and the Marriage Movement do, that one family form fits all and should be privileged in church and social policies.

What then of our biblical and Reformed heritages? Does the Bible provide us with one, divinely mandated, family form? Obviously not - unless we want to adopt the patriarchal, hierarchical, polygamous family kin system of those ancient cultures. What the Bible does show us is the importance of families, the cultural origins of family forms, and the constant social temptation to give divine sanction to one family form at the expense of doing justice for others. The prophetic concern was for widows, orphans, and sojourners - all those outside the protection of the dominant kin system. It was also for the poor whose families' lack of socioeconomic status put their survival at great risk where social resources were controlled and absorbed by a privileged family. Biblical scholar Richard Horsely suggests that it is in response to this situation that Jesus' strong critique of family ties can be best understood. In place of that system of self-serving family loyalty, Jesus envisions a new family defined not by blood or marriage but by a shared faith in God as Father.

Many African-American, Hispanic and Latino, Asian, and Native American congregations know quite well what it means for the church to be family. Here all the work and concern that is required to provide material, psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being flows unrestricted by biological or legal connections. This is quite a different vision of church than the vision of a gathering of self-sufficient nuclear families. Neither vision denigrates marriage nor the church's teachings regarding the appropriate context for sexual intimacy. But one is informed by the realities of life lived by communities subject to racial discrimination and economic deprivation, where every woman is every child's "other mother" and "auntie." Which vision is more elitist?

Browning charges that the report "pits family well-being and the Kingdom (Reign) of God against each other." That's only true if one agrees with Browning and the Marriage Movement that family well-being requires married-couple-with-own-biological-children families. What the paper actually argues is that the just relations envisioned by the "Reign of God" require a society in which families - whether intact married couple families, single-parent families, stepfamilies, or other forms of families (singles, adults caring for unrelated children, and so forth) - are supported by socioeconomic conditions and policies that sustain their efforts at being good families. And we need churches willing to challenge the social and economic forces so destructive of that work today. This is the truth-to-power that the Presbyterian report on families speaks. I can only hope that there is the courage to listen.