By: Christopher Williams

The family as an institution is growing weaker. Its authority has become sapped even though as an imagined reality it remains more powerful then ever. This was one of the arguments Ann Swidler explored in a lecture sponsored by the Marjorie Pay Hinckley Chair in Social Work and the Social Sciences Thursday, October 18 at Brigham Young University.

Ann Swidler, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, presented on the topic “Fighting For the American Family: Families in the Crosshairs of the Culture Wars." Swidler drew on her recent book, Talk of Love, and other research about American families, to ask the questions: why the family has been the focus of so much controversy, whose families are actually in the greatest trouble, and what love has to do with it.

Swidler described some of the basic features of a modern family as a compact, unstable unit being somewhat small in scope compared to families from earlier generations, with increasingly blurred lines. She said part of these blurred lines run from the question of just who is, or isn't a family. Is there a difference in same-sex marriage and marriage between a man and a woman? What about biological children and adopted children? Swidler said there are increasingly ambiguous lines drawing what a natural family is.

"You can think of the family as a group of individuals and people who have stumbled together and become financially and economically dependant upon each other or you can think of the family as an institution, and Americans don't know which way they DO think about the family," Swidler said.

Swidler said that there are several contradictory aspirations that lie behind our understanding of the American family, such as the concept of sentimentality.

Idealism about marriage actually undermines the marriage itself, Swidler said. With 90-95% of American teenagers surveyed wanting to marry, the family is still obviously the grounding force of American life, yet so many couples live together refusing to get married, often citing economic reasons or their inability to form what they believe a family should be.

"The fact that they value marriage is the reason they won't marry!" Swidler said.

Swidler said that there has been a collapse in the job market for high school and less-than-high school educated men. This fact, combined with the hollowing out of the middle class, and fewer stable, secure working and lower middle class jobs is creating a growing economic inequality that has stifled and paralyzed many people in their decision to start a family.
Even once formed, families take a tremendous amount of effort to maintain, Swidler said. In a survey among young adults, many cited a belief in the concept of soul mates, but also understood and made note that such a case does not mean that they will not have to work to make the marriage last.

"Those families that do hold strong end up being held together by the enormous effortful work of the souls who compose them," Swidler said.