Family Social Welfare

Helping Troubled Families

Frances Scherz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351520324
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política social

Our changing cultural environment and societal attitudes are subtly but unmistakably altering the personality development of the individual and the functioning of the family. The increasing complexity of the emotional and social problems of their clients is requiring social workers to understand and meet the needs of the entire family group as well as of its individual members. Two nationally known experts in the field have collaborated in writing the first comprehensive work to deal with this new trend in social work.

The authors' many years of experience in practice, teaching, and observation throughout the field are reflected in this lucid and systematic book, which introduces the reader to what is known about normal and deviant behavior in the context of family life, how families can be helped to lead normal lives, and how disrupted family structures can be rebuilt. In addition, the practitioner will find in this pioneering volume important new diagnostic insights and valuable guidelines for his work.

The case material used throughout the book, in brief form, for illustrative purposes, is drawn from various social welfare agencies. In general, the cases were chosen because each has applicability to the work of different kinds of social agencies. Selected reading suggestions have been compiled with respect to each section for the reader interested in enlarging his knowledge about human behavior, our society, and the giving of help to troubled families and individuals. These reading suggestions include not only relevant nonfiction, but also fiction-old and new-that offers valuable insights into certain behaviors and circumstances of troubled individuals and families.

Of immediate usefulness as a text in all courses in social work and sociology dealing with the family, this book will prove equally valuable to social workers in voluntary agencies as well as to those in public social agencies at local, state, and national levels, to teachers, and

PART ONE

The Family in a
Changing World

1

The Idealized Family

A FAMILY is a unit composed not only of children, but of men, women, an occasional animal, and a common cold. This Ogden Nash definition conjures up an idealized image of the American family. It is an image repeatedly reflected in motion picture and television portrayals of family life; it is an image which, with the exception of the gratuitous common cold, is perceived as the inspirational and aspirational standard for many segments of American society. It depicts a comfortably middle-class family, its likeness reasonably within the reach of most families who are part of a democratic nation.

In the idealized model the father, whether proprietor of his own business or employee—the executive or sub-executive or (at the very least) supervisory level—in someone else’s business, supports his family by means of work for which he is equipped by education, experience, and temperament. His work holds seemingly endless opportunities for advancement in status and income; and it is employment which he chooses, motivated by qualities of industry, enterprise, and self-fulfillment, and by acceptance of his role as family provider and protector.

The mother fulfills her maternal role and her role as marital partner with wisdom and equanimity: she operates her household smoothly and efficiently; she chauffeurs moderately well-behaved children to orthodontists, Scout meetings, dancing and piano lessons; she shares with composure and encouragement the large and small problems confronting husband or children or household; and she carries out with aplomb her responsibilities to the community as an active participant in PTA, church and welfare functions, civic affairs, and so on.

Whether this model family occupies a suburban single dwelling—for which mortgage payments are made painlessly and promptly—or lives either in an urban apartment building with central heating and automatic elevators or in a modest family neighborhood in the heart of the city, the home contains relatively modern conveniences and, above all, arrangements for the privacy to which any family member might wish to have access. The family possesses at least one car of recent vintage; the younger children have skates and bicycles, the older ones probably have some kind of “jalopy.” When confronted with an occasional crisis, this family draws on resources-savings or some form of insurance or other negotiable asset—plan-fully accumulated to protect the family members against a range of possible emergencies. Or it turns for help to willingly cooperative relatives possessing similar familial characteristics. Under all circumstances the members of the idealized family are industrious, ambitious, thrifty, socially and emotionally well adjusted in their inter- and intra-personal relationships—and happy and independent.

Some of the details in the picture evoked by the Nash definition may be altered by highly personalized and cultural experiences, wishes, values, and expectations: to her other roles the mother may add that of being a member of the professional or other vocational sector of the labor force, contentedly performing employment tasks from which she derives a sense of fulfillment and contribution to society while concurrently and effectively meeting the needs and demands of family and household. To his other responsibilities the father may add serious participation in civic affairs; or—even and—he may be a Little League or Indian Guide father, devoting a substantial portion of his “free” time to these and other parenting tasks. Some families may place special emphasis on the educational achievement of their members. Others may stress early financial independence above continued education. Some households may continuously or periodically include a grandparent or other relative (ideally as guests who have independent means). In other situations there may be grandparents who are financially, emotionally, and geographically independent of the family, but whose warmth and wisdom are readily accessible in time of family need or for celebration of holidays, birthdays, and other special events that lend themselves to a little “spoiling” of children without their actually being “spoiled.” But the matrix of the idealized family generally comprises a married couple with children—a family unit socially and economically productive, its members emotionally secure within themselves and with each other.

Society’s Expectations

This idealized image of the American family is the receptacle in which are stored essential values prevalent in our democratic, affluent, industrialized society. We value the qualities of loving and working that are expressed in the paternal role of family provider and protector, in the maternal role that assures continuity of relationships, and in the attachment of father and mother to each other and to their children. It is in the climate created around these qualities that the family is held together as a group in which the children progress from their early dependencies to mature adults who themselves will fulfill the idealized paternal or maternal roles.

In the United States, we value the qualities expressed in independence and self-reliance, in ambition for increasingly higher levels of family living (more education, good jobs, utilization of economic goods and services, good health), and in resourcefulness that translates these ambitions into achievements.

We recognize clearly defined societal barriers and expectations with regard to family life; we confidently believe that the majority of families in fact do fulfill these expectations. Accordingly, we ascribe various functions to the family: meeting of survival needs—food, shelter, and clothing; providing for the care, protection, education, and rearing of children; creating a physical, emotional, social, and economic setting that nurtures the development of the individual members within the family, provides for an affectional bond among them, and helps each member to become a contributing member of the family as well as of the wider community. It also is to the family that we turn for social control of the individual’s behavior—a task which the idealized family unquestioningly performs.

The Family’s Expectations

This idealized family, in turn, holds some fairly clearly defined expectations of society. It expects to be able to avail itself of opportunities to educate its children. It expects police and fire protection and other community services—libraries, public parks, public health protection against the spread of communicable diseases, emergency hospital or other medical services, etc. It expects the market economy to make available opportunities for jobs and job advancement as well as goods and services designed to enhance the conditions and comforts of daily life. It expects to be able to participate in the election to public office of persons whose political opinions and integrity the family respects, and to have a voice in the direction and content of local, state, and national government. And it expects that needed community arrangements will be established to aid the family to carry on its assigned and inherent tasks and obligations as a family unit.

Imagery or Reality?

But in actuality, how prevalent is the pattern of this traditional ideal of the American family? What in our society reinforces this pattern? At what point does imagery give way to reality? Or congruence cease between the characteristics imputed to the idealized family and the qualities typical of the family in the community at large?

Does the idealized image reflect the goal legislators envision when they enact laws that specify objectives “to strengthen family life”? When ministers, publishers of newspapers and periodicals, citizens in general demand that schools, legislators, social agencies, police, and others “do something,” is it because they measure shortcomings among the poor, the actual or potential juvenile or adult delinquent, the “disturbing” elements, and others, against a standard inherent in this image?

And when social workers define as their objectives in working with troubled families the protection and strengthening of family life and the enhancement of the social functioning of various family members, what criteria for adequate functioning do they derive from this image?

The dominant ideal of the American family differs conspicuously from the facts. There is no single “good” model. In the American population there are many patterns of family life and composition. The “goodness” of the respective models, though less than ideal, may be unrelated to the wide variations in family composition. There are many families with only one parent in the home; one or both parents have remarried and children live intermittently with one set of parents, then the other; children often live with relatives other than their own parents; several generations live in some households. There are, furthermore, differences in ethnic origin and social class—differences that have a decided impact on the roles and relationships of the parents and children, and affect the quality and content of family life. There are major disparities in economic, social, and psychological functioning—disparities shaped by societal attitudes and environmental conditions, singly or in combination with each other and with individual physical or psychological ingredients.

These variations not only deviate in substantial ways from the idealized image of the American family; they do not blend into an “average” family. Nevertheless, they frequently are consistent with what is “normal” and, therefore, do contribute to a broader standard than that represented by the single conception that a proper family is middle-class, its contentedly and continuously married parents providing their several children with comforts and a reasonable degree of luxuries and “advantages” consistent with their favorable social status and economic standing in a stable, well-established community.

The idealized version of the American family, then, is more representative of the strivings than of the prevailing pattern. Many families have only the vaguest of notions as to how to move closer to the achievement of the idealized model. Indeed, many families, particularly in the lower echelons of our society, do not know what it is they are striving toward—if striving they are. Increasingly, however, altered modes of communication, television for example, have been bringing the idealized version closer to people even in the most remote geographic and social situations in our nation. People with severely limited kinds of resources are becoming more and more aware of what is portrayed via television as the resources and opportunities and experiences of the so-called model version of the American family. They may see only the materialistic comforts that appear to be the measure of achievement of middle-class life, but the portrayal of these kinds of achievements stimulates a desire on the part of poorer families for the same kinds of material possessions. And it is because of such yearning among troubled and poorer families that we are able to reach families in order to help them acquire a higher level of social competence.

The Helping Goals

In a real and changing world, families who are troubled—or who trouble the community—can truly be helped only if the goals for improvement of their social, economic, and psychological competence are realistically rather than idealistically conceived as acceptable both to the family and to the wider community. The setting of intermediate and of long-range goals requires that those in helping capacities be alert to the many “normal” variations on the theme of the idealized image of the American family and on the different aspects of the idealized pattern that various families in our society are motivated to emulate. This awareness, in turn, places upon those in helping capacities the responsibility for taking cognizance of factors that fashion the variations and that impel families and individuals toward or away from the dominant ideal. With such cognizance to arm him, the counselor—be he social worker, teacher, minister, or representative of another helping profession—is better able to assess the impact and interaction of external and personal elements that may interfere with the family’s attainment of a reasonably comfortable level of functioning. He is also better prepared to mobilize these elements in assisting the family members to reach a less troubled state. In accordance with this assessment he can aid the family—perhaps, if indicated, by enlisting the help of the community—to move closer to the dominant ideal.

It is the aim of the following chapters to paint the backdrop against which the assessment of family problems and the implementation of plans for their mitigation or resolution can be conducted. They acknowledge the wide array of variations that exists among American families with respect to their composition and the way they fulfill the major functions attributed to them in our modern Western society. They recognize some of the societal attitudes and environmental conditions that make it possible for some families to move closer to the idealized model, yet contribute to the problems of others to the extent that they are either impeded or prevented from also emulating the model—or are not at all motivated to match it. And then they call attention to the arrangements our society has created for the purpose of aiding troubled families to deal with problems that confront them. These community social welfare arrangements provide the setting in which the social worker carries out his helping role either directly with the family or in conjunction with some other social institution such as the school or church. It is under the auspices and with the support of these community social welfare arrangements, public and voluntary, that the social worker endeavors to help the family master the problems that contribute to its discomfort or dysfunctioning or unhappiness and impede their attaining a closer approximation of the appropriate and desirable aspects of the idealized family image.

2

The Modifiers

She walked inside, ran her hands across the new stove, inspected the sink with faucets, bounded up and down a couple of times on one of the four beds in the spacious 21 x 17-foot room, and sat in the one straight-backed chair next to the only other piece of furniture, a small table.

“First time I’ve ever been inside a new house, leastwise ever stayed in one myself,” said the young woman. “It’er be the fanciest place I’ve ever stayed in.”

Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1966

THE SIGLEY FAMILY featured in this news article—a twenty-four-year-old itinerant farm worker, his pregnant twenty-one-year-old wife, and their two children under four years of age—in most respects is not typical of American families. In a number of ways, however, they do represent a sizable segment of this nation’s families. Except for the “occasional animal” the Sigleys fit the Nash definition (even to the “common cold”), as well as the more general dictionary definitions, of a family as “the group of parents and their children.” This young father expects to support his family by his labor, and has sought to do so by following the crops, as he has done since leaving school in the eighth grade. His vocational mobility has been facilitated by his ownership of a car which, though dilapidated, has served as a means of transportation as well as a shelter for his family. His earning power has been limited by lack of education and by his attachment to a form of work that, in our economy, is characterized by low and seasonal wage levels and by work opportunities steadily lessening by encroaching technological advances. But his motivation to be “independent” and to provide for his family through “steady work” is high. His motivation to emulate the dominant ideal of the American family also is high.

“All my life I’ve worked hard and steady and earned a good living,” Don Anderson bitterly told the employment interviewer. “I’ve been deacon in the church; I’ve been payin’ off my mortgage regularly. I made my children finish high school, which I couldn’t do, having to get out and hustle for a living; my neighbors had respect for me, and so did my kids. How do I explain to my family and to my neighbors that I want to work, that I need to work, that I’m young and strong enough to do almost anything, but I can’t find a fellow to take me on?”

Here, too, is recognition of the role assigned by a society that places high premium on independence evidenced in the fact of work and in the management of one’s financial affairs. But here too is a sense of helplessness in mastering environmental elements that interfere with Mr. Anderson’s fulfillment of this role. For at the age of forty-seven, Mr. Anderson is in his second year of unemployment following twenty-four years during which he progressed from common laborer to steel puddler, only to be “retired”: the steel mill no longer needed his skills, and the judgments that he was too old and lacked a basic education precluded occupational retraining. A few years earlier, Mr. Anderson and his family of four children had resembled closely the idealized image of the American family; now they are alike only to the extent that the Andersons are a nuclear family.

The Andersons’ and the Sigleys’ modes of living differ, but their attitudes and their aspirations have much in common. Moreover, both have been caught up in the whirlwind of change. This whirlwind has revolutionized our economy: it has influenced family life; it has exposed to bolder focus the consequences of stress and dysfunction with respect to family life; and it has revealed both the positive and the negative impact on American families of the benefits brought by the changes. It has, for example, made available goods and services not even dreamed of a decade ago, and has put many of these within the reach of most families—for the Sigleys, improved housing; for the Andersons, home ownership and education. At the same time, it has altered the job market in terms of both kinds of work available and kinds of pr...