When Organizations and Families Collide

Most Americans continue to find their greatest sources of nurture, support, and meaning within their family experiences.

In our modern society, however, we are spending an increasing amount of time in bureaucratic organizational involvements, away from our families.

Organizations, while offering support and services for families and individuals, may challenge and compete with family involvements. Organizations may view members as commodities to expand and increase the organizational program, with little thought or concern about how the involvements may affect relationships within the family unit.

Social analyst, Eugene Litwak, contends that both organizations and strong family relationships are essential for the maintenance of an industrial society. He notes that organizations provide efficient, objective, transitory, and specialized services, while the family and kinship units provide the personal, emotional, diffuse, and permanent support and guidance necessary for personal development. 1.

THE FAMILY REALM IS DIFFERENT

The family realm differs from relationships in bureaucratic organizations. The expectations for interactions within these two realms are usually quite different.

Researchers in the Department of Family Sciences of Brigham Young University identified seven characteristics that distinguish the 'ideal' family realm from organizational experiences. 2.

1. Family relationships are generational and permanent.

* Organizations have specific goals of interest for a limited time period.

2. Family relationships involve 'whole persons' for better and worse with respect for the unique qualities of the members.

* Organizations involve people in a 'role' relationship, structured to avoid
contradictions.

3. Family relationships are multidimensional. Many processes are occurring at once, often becoming irrational and disordered. Actions and feelings must be juggled simultaneously.

* Organizational activities are focused, sequential, ordered, and temporary.

4. Families develop emotional intensity that includes not only feelings of love, but also feelings of concern worry, and anger.

* Feelings toward organizational colleagues are less intense and holistic.

5. Family relationships focus on measures of the quality of 'being' in an ongoing process of nurture.

* Organizations focus on quantity measures of achievement, profit, performance,
ratings, and rankings.

6. Family relationships include a sense of sacred responsibility and duty to other family members.

* Organizations include agreements and contracts for mutual advantage.

7. Family relationships are based on processes of caring, nurturing, persuading, and training to foster the growth and development of the members.

* Organizations treat members as commodities where people are hired, fired,
managed and manipulated.


LEARNING HOW TO LOVE FOREVER - EDUCATION FOR HEALTHY MARRIAGES AND FAMILIES

Our social education programs are failing to educate citizens in the skills necessary for the success of healthy marriage and family relationships. Without the ability to care and share, listen and communicate, manage anger, resolve conflicts and forgive, relationships within families become destructive and broken.

In 1995, the Council on Families, which includes prominent social researchers and proponents of religious and social policy, issued a report entitled Marriage in America: A Report to the Nation. They contend that "The divorce revolution...has failed. It has created terrible hardships for children, incurred unsupportable social costs, and failed to deliver on its promise of greater adult happiness... Making marriage in America stronger will require a fundamental shift in cultural values and public policy. No one sector of society is responsible for the decline in marriage... We are all part of the problem, and therefore we all must be part of the solution." 3.

The Council on Families concludes that educational, religious, civic, business, political, and health organizations must all work together to regain the personal
and social value of marriage and family relationships.

In light of the importance of continuing family relationships for personal support, and concerns for the tragic breakdown of family relationships and social cost to individuals and society, it is essential that our educational organizations, including our schools, churches and other community support groups, offer training in the unique processes that support marriage and family nurture and enrichment.

WE CAN LEARN TO LOVE FOREVER! It's time to move forward and make it happen!


REFERENCES:
1. Litwak, Eugene. "Extended kin relations in an industrial society." In
Social Structure and the Family: Generational Relations.E. Shanas and B.F. Streib. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall. 1965:290-323.

2. Beutler, Ivan R., Wesley R. Burr and Kathleen S. Bahr. "The family realm: theoretical contributions for understanding its uniqueness." Journal of Marriage and the Family. Vol.51(August)1989:805-816.

3. Council on Families. Marriage in America: A Report to the Nation. 1995.
www.americanvalues.org/html/r-marriage_in_america.