THE CHANGING FAMILY UNIT (2)

The family is,indeed, in the midst of institutional transformation. The hope for a new life level of stability lies with the young.our parents-the older generation are very concerned about the changes they see now,because they have witnessed significant disruptions in their traditional family roots. As members of the present generation,we are not as anxious about these changes as are our parents. After all,we are causing them. Our hope lies with the young,our children. Perhaps,by learning from our mistakes, they would strive to do better. With this hope, however,still comes an obvious concern because the next generation may not have the support it needs to guide its relationships. We are not providing good role models.                                                                                                          Everywhere one goes,one hears the family is in trouble. Educators complain they now do the job of physical care and emotional nurturing that belongs to the patents but is left undone at home.this is painful.                                                                                                           In the past, family roles were firmly defined. Expectations and qualilities looked for in a spouse were clear. Most women simply adopted the roles of their mothers and got the the cues for their behaviors from relatively well defined norms. So did the men from their fathers. No wonder the first question most people ask is, "From what family is your spouse?" We know that people change and not exact replicas of their forebears,but our people believe that there is a great chance for a snake to give birth to a creature that crawls.                                                                                                                                                 Today, the family processes are confused by conflicting and sometimes absent family norms. The rules if family behavior have changed. So drastic is this change in some areas that many parents and their children do not know each other's expectations of them nor their children do not know each other's expectations of themselves. How then will they know how to respond to those expectations? In our culture, a child is expected to say "Good morning" to his or her parents as well as the older siblings every day. These days the children pretend they forget and they are gradually getting away with it without the usual admonition that goes with such an oversight. With so many alternative cues to guide behaviors in Western Civilization, for example, confusion is more the rule than proper guidance towards expectations of family relationships