“Educators at the primary, secondary and tertiary level have a vital role to play in ensuring we get the family-friendly society to which most of us aspire. We must describe the present, but situate it in the forces and struggles of the past.”

OK, but eventually it becomes necessary to define what types of families generally make the best families, and what types of families should be discouraged.

Consider the following from http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=1036&department=CWA&categoryid=family.

I have taken out the name of this type of family and used the word “this” instead.

· Over half of all first marriages are preceded by [this] today, compared to virtually none earlier in the century.
· Nearly 60 percent of high school seniors supported [this] before marriage.
· A 1992 study of 3,300 cases found that in their marriages prior [this] estimated to have a 46-percent higher hazard of dissolution than [not this].
· [This] increases the risk of domestic violence for women.
· The risk of physical and sexual abuse for children is 20 times more likely if biological parents are [in this] and 33 times more likely if the male is not the natural father.
· Annual rates of depression among [this] couples are more than three times that of married couples.
· Demographers at Pennsylvania State University discovered in a 1997 longitudinal study that [this] increased young people’s acceptance of divorce.
· Seventy-five percent of children born to [this] couples will see their parents split up before they reach age sixteen compared to one third of children born to married parents.
· Children living with their mother and her unmarried partner have more behavior problems and poorer academic performance than children from intact families.

Now if the above is correct, then this type of family should be discouraged, as it represents a backward step for society.

So if academics and educators have a part to play in creating a family friendly society, they eventually will have to state what types of family are to be encouraged or discouraged.

Timkins, interesting post. I'm not sure what you are proposing in your posts on other threads when you talk about "covenant marriage" but in my musings on the topic I have the view that "this" type relationships (I presume you mean de-facto) are at one end of a spectrum of options with a literal interpretation of christian marriage (death do us part except for infidelity etc) being somewhere at the other end of the scale.

I like the idea of spelling out up front what is expected in a "marriage" and what the rules are. At the moment it seems that people can accept many of the risks/consequences of marriage with no specific intention to do so (being in a relationship more than a certain length of time etc). No fault divorce although having its good points means that the party who does the most to destroy the marriage wears no more of the consequences than the party who tries their hardest to do the right thing. The consequences are decided by other factors including child residency and access to legal support.

I think that "this" relationships are seen as a lower risk type of committment at the moment (regardless of what the stats tend to indicate). Maybe if there was more option to tie into a specific type of relationship with the rules decided up front people would take more care about the type of relationship they chose.

Ho hum, yet another Timkins hyperlink to a dodgy website in response to a lucid and reasoned argument with which he disagrees. Instead of a men's rights or dating site this time, it's a far right American Christian mob, who describe themselves thus:

"CWA is built on prayer and action.

We are the nation's largest public policy women's organization with a rich 25-year history of helping our members across the country bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy."

Clearly an objective and unbiased organisation that applies high standards of rigour, unlike the "social scientists" that Timkins decries at every opportunity.

I think that Cannold is on to something here: some education would clearly assist embittered ex-husbands like Timkins to better assess the quality of information with which they try to understand their own experiences. I'd recommend some introductory units in empirical methods, sociology, anthropology, history and psychology for starters.

Garra,
Such language and unsubstantiated inferences.

But there are many people who now talk about family, so what type of families are they talking about:- single person household families, step families, de facto relationship families, co habitation families, separated families, single parent families, married families, single income families, dual income families, welfare dependant families, families in which people take drugs etc.

All of these families have different characteristics, and some would be better than others. If academics want to talk about families, then eventually they have to state what families are to be encouraged, and what should discouraged.

If they don’t have the data to describe the families that should be encouraged or discouraged, then they should establish that data, and make sure it is reliable.

I agree with the essence of Timkins' argument, although linking to religious fanatics' websites is probably not the best way to back it up.

Society does need to decide what the most effective forms of family, but laying down what constitutes that family is plain wrong. The unsubtle subtext to timkins' response is condemnation of gay marriage, single mothers - get over it. That’s what society is, and its not gonna change because you want it too.

I'd prefer educators to focus on guiding principals; loyalty, responsibility, perhaps even love. Young people need to understand what is involved in a relationship, what children need to grow successfully, how to respect and trust their partner.

We need build strong families based on some teaching basic understanding on works at a psychological and emotional level throughout life. I agree with garra that understanding where we have come from is also very important.

Gw, Leslie Cannold

Gw
I am shocked and aghast.

You say that there should be “guiding principals; loyalty, responsibility, perhaps even love”, and then you throw abuse at the ladies from Concerned Women for America by calling them “religious fanatics”, and then you try and dismiss my opinions and deny me voice by telling me to “get over it”, (whatever that means). I don’t think the author would be very pleased.

The information I copied from the Concerned Women for America site originally came from the non-partisan National Marriage Project which was conducted by Rutgers University. http://marriage.rutgers.edu/about.htm

Information about cohabitation or de facto relationships in Australia is typically scarce, (although about 30% of children are now born outside of marriage), but you could try another non-partisan UK site for further information about cohabitation. http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/cohabitation.php . However the information from the CIVITAS organisation is very similar to the information I originally provided.

You can check on all this, but if you find non-anecdotal information indicating that cohabitation in families should be encouraged and taught to children, then please reference it.

Leslie Cannold.
I’m rather curious about “Educators need to ensure their students understand the conditions that led to feminism, environmentalism, Indigenous activism and the emergence of unions.” It is rather strange that feminism is mentioned in relation to family education, as feminists have long wanted families to be cohabitation or de facto relationship type families. However the study data now coming out indicates that these types of families are generally unsuitable, and not to be encouraged.

If someone in the academic world wants young people to be educated about families, they must be willing to state what type of families are most suitable. That way everything is clearly known, and it would help remove the possibility that someone will try to indoctrinate young people into forming unsuitable families.

I’m sure you would agree that such indoctrination would be highly unethical by educators.

Get over it timmy

Kenny,
Get over it,

We have had academics playing around with the education system for many years and the results have been a complete mess, with students passing through high school (and in some cases university) hardly being able to read or write.

Now academics want to teach children about family, and it is more than likely that it will be a complete mess also.

The author not wanting to commit any details regards this "family education" is not a good sign.

Timkins - we rarely agree. On this we do.

I was an external marker for a Q University last year.

I was sacked on the following grounds:

*The failure rate in the subject that I assessed was too high.
*The students complained that I gave them too much constructive criticism - for example: trying to teach them that a sentence requires a verb! I think you would agree that nurses who do not know that a sentence requires a verb could endanger peoples' lives!

Cheers and PS - I did not take payment for my last marking due to my disgust with the system.

kalweb,
Perhaps the students had become too enthusiastic, to the extent that they left out such things as verbs. Perhaps their educators had not reinforced enough the necessity to have verbs, but with education into families, there is also the danger that the students will become too enthusiastic about starting a family, and leave out such things as fathers or a marriage certificate.

The results of leaving out the marriage certificate are now becoming more widely known (eg http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/pubsexwostrings.htm), but the results of leaving out the fathers are becoming more widely known also (eg http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/experiments.php

All contributors, please define family so that once we have an agreed definition, then 'educators' can have something to run with.

If people won't accept Natural Law or any other guideline that is in breach of their personal situation, what hope?

Good luck with this continued educational adventurism / social manipulation. And to think that milennia of social development has led to this?

Reality Check,
I agree that if educators or academics want to start educating children about families (starting from primary school age) then they would have to have a suitable model of a family.

From the available evidence (some of which I have previously posted), the model family would have to be the traditional nuclear family, with two married parents.

Anything else is a recipe for social disintegration, although that disintegration would occur as a downward spiral, maybe taking 1 – 3 generations

Leslie Cannold

I clicked on the link to this article with some hope that it would offer some concrete suggestions about what a family-friendly society might look like, let alone recommend how how we might achieve that in Australia through policy.

I was pretty disappointed to say the least. Are you saying anything other than we should aim for better than what we've got but not forget our past when forming policy? Seems to be a bit trite otherwise. This country needs its academics to actually use their space in the ideas domain to make concrete suggestions to be debated by the public - particularly if we're ever going to come up with something better than the ridiculous "baby bonus" scheme.

As a young professional female, I'm fairly aware that the balance between work and family responsibilities has been raised as an issue in the media ad nauseum (including constant critique of how much of a problem it is, and will continue to be if left unremedied). However, very little is actually changing. Perhaps this is because we have a the dearth of positive policy proposals being aired in the media. How else can we start to debate some solutions?

Hopefully your book has more to say on this subject ... if so, I wish you had offered that in your article instead.