This is the first of three columns dealing with politics and the family. The other two will run the next two Sundays.
"The family is the basic unit of society." Think hard about that cliche for just a moment. If it's true, it should have profound influence on us as individuals and on all the other larger and less-basic units of society. If family is the fundamental and indispensable institution, then every other level and type of institution that we create, from neighborhood councils to nations, should exist and function in order to protect, maintain and strengthen families. Legislatures should look to create pro-family laws, schools should support parents and teach family skills, judicial decisions should reflect the priority of protecting and bolstering families, and politicians and candidates should be measured by what they do and propose to do for families.
Karl Zinmeister of American Enterprise put it this way:
"There is a mountain of scientific evidence showing that when families disintegrate, children often end up with intellectual, physical and emotional scars that persist for life. We talk about the drug crisis, the education crisis and the problems of teen pregnancy and juvenile crime. But all these ills trace back predominantly to one source: broken families."
Problems that are not solved in the home spill out into society and become crises that are impossibly expensive and expensively impossible for the larger institutions of society to solve.
So let's first examine our title phrase more closely and see if we believe it enough to make it the criteria for how we view our larger culture and how we measure the performance of the other levels or elements of our society.
First a definition of terms:
Basic unit: That which the rest is made of, as in the bricks in a brick wall. The most fundamental organization. The closest and most personal level of relationships and responsibility.
Society: Civilization. The order by which we live together and cooperate to work for the common goal. Society is us, the people, organized and divided and governed by our political and cultural institutions.
Family: Despite current attempts to dilute or pervert the word, family will always be best defined as a person with his or her spouse and/or children. Only two events create or add to family: 1. marriage, 2. birth or adoption. Politically and economically, the family unit can be thought of as one, two or three generations of related persons living under one roof. It's fine (and complimentary) to say "My friends are my family," but it is the literal, legal, genetic and living-together family that is society's basic unit.
Now, with our definitions in place, let's return to the question: Is the family truly the basic unit? Does it have to be? Can it be replaced or substituted for? Communist societies have tried to make the commune the basic unit, using parents for "creative" purposes only and assigning communes and classrooms and worker cells to do the nurturing and educational functions traditionally done by parents within families.
In other societies, orphanages have substituted in the absence or abdication of parents. Today, gay "marriages" and other alternative households make their attempts, and unmarried co-habitants try to perform the function of family without the commitment.
None of the other options works as well as family. Statistics and surveys as well as common sense tell us that economically, emotionally, practically and spiritually, it is families, real families, that are the most basic and the most indispensable unit of society.
So what are the implications? Simply that if the bricks in the brick wall are unsound and crumbly, then no matter how well the wall is designed, laid out, constructed, maintained, mortared or organized, it's going to fall down. If, on the other hand, the builders of the societal wall understand and strive to maintain the soundness of the bricks, the whole wall will stand and last.
All metaphors aside, the real reason family is the basic unit is that it is more basic to our individual happiness than anything else. Having a good city council may have some effect on our happiness, and living in a free country certainly does, but no other level or unit of society even approaches the effect that family has on our well-being and our happiness. This is one reason that survey after survey tells us that over 90 percent of Americans say their family is their highest priority and the most important thing in their lives.
Once someone deeply and thoughtfully agrees that family is the basic unit — of society, of happiness and of eternity — there are essentially two things he can do about it: (1.) strive ever harder to better prioritize his family and balance his life; and (2.) demand that the other units and institutions of our society do more to support and strengthen families and less to undermine and tear them down.
Right now is actually a particularly good time to think about both of those things: During this holiday season, while we are with our families (and thinking about them) more than at any other time of year, we can ponder how well we are doing with our balance and our prioritizing. And during the upcoming political season when we'll elect a president, a governor, congressmen and local officials, we can use family as a filter to evaluate everything candidates say, and we can try to elect those who will do the most, directly and indirectly, to protect our families, to assist us in educating, training and building character in our children, and those who publicly recognize and support the importance of parenting.
Richard Eyre, a New York Times No. 1 best-selling author on family, was a candidate for governor of Utah in 1992. Next Sunday: What people can do personally to balance and prioritize their own families.