Is the family in crisis? It depends …

… it depends on the dictionary where you choose to look it up:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/crisis?view=uk • noun (pl. crises) 1 a time of intense difficulty or danger. 2 the turning point of a disease, when it becomes clear whether the patient will recover or not.

The Royal Spanish Language Academy (“Real Academia Española”) http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=crisis provides a less dramatic set of definitions:

1. Cambio brusco en el curso de una enfermedad, ya sea para mejorarse, ya para agravarse el paciente.
2. Mutación importante en el desarrollo de otros procesos, ya de orden físico, ya históricos o espirituales.
3. Situación de un asunto o proceso cuando está en duda la continuación, modificación o cese.
4. Momento decisivo de un negocio grave y de consecuencias importantes.
5. Juicio que se hace de algo después de haberlo examinado cuidadosamente.
6. Escasez, carestía.
7. Situación dificultosa o complicada.

When I look around all I see are people fighting to form a family, to enjoy their existing family or to prevent it from falling apart. Singles search for their other halves at all kinds of places, including the Internet. Dating agencies flourish (check out http://www.itsjustlunch.com/ for busy professionals) and of course if is not just about sex. People continue to get marry (and remarry!); just try and find an available church on short notice! In Spain men may marry men and women may marry women, thus publishing their non-official families. Others families simply live together without the official paperwork.

Unless they are just giving the politically correct answers, nobody recognises to be disinterested in their family, be it a happy or a miserable one. Family matters are raised at all times. Many candidates do not hesitate to assert that “their spouse and children go first, although their work is also important”. When I was interviewing for my first job in 1993, I wouldn’t have dreamt of confessing to something close to that.

People do no matter what to have children. Couples (and singles) undergo sophisticated fertility treatments, burdensome bureaucratic procedures and/or painful surgery to be able to hold a kid in their arms. Never have parents ever been so aware of their offsprings’ education, health and friends … or at least never have they ever said to be so deeply concerned.

Of course, not all is good news. Gender-driven violence and child abuse have unfortunately never been so frequent, at least in Spain. Married couples continue to separate and divorce. Children are left to their own devices in the company of His Majesty the Violent Videogame. Does that evidence a widespread family crisis? I believe not, or at least not more than it evidences a modern society in crisis.

The society is changing at an incredibly quick pace. Only in that sense do I adhere to the cliché that society (and for that matter, family) is in crisis, although not in the worrying Oxford sense. Families and societies evolve, which is exactly what keeps them alive.

Take this challenge: go ahead and define the word “family”. Now you can find out that a family is no longer a mom, a dad and two girls with ponytails. http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=familia


Dedicado a mi madre, por su cumpleaños el día 25. Felicidades.