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Today is a neighbour's funeral
Aug. 30th, 2019 08:43 amSo booted and suited in sombre dark-grey I shall attend.
But before that I breakfast and read, and this came across my screen:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49508854
And I wondered if the late C19th/C20th idea of family has to undergo a massive change. Families are now as vertical as they are horizontal. Three generations living together co-operatively will become the norm, and maybe we have to adapt our cultural narratives to reflect that fact. We could begin by explaining the advantages. We don't all have a Dower House to retire to, in order that we may always be on hand; but surely that is the ideal? I know we all need our personal space, but I can't help but think that folk in big houses had it right; most space is communal between occupants, and communal between friends maybe, but communal nevertheless. Your library was often a private space, but the parlour, breakfast room, sitting rooms, gunrooms, tackrooms, stables etc were always communal.
Native English and West Indian kids often live with grandparents. Asian kids often live with parents and grandparents. Maybe the cultural narrative about the nuclear family has to change completely. I think that America still believes in the nuclear family as an ideal. I think it is an intrinsically isolationist model dependent upon a belief in the efficacy of small units where every member had a specific function. Breadwinning, homemaking, etc.
I know if I'm still alive when my kids come to have kids, I'll be happy to have them live with me; someone will have to push my wheelchair around, after all. The ideal is of course to live long enough to see them established, and not worry about grandkids; which may happen if I get to 80, but unlikely otherwise.
For six generations now, by patrilineal descent, the chaps have married late. Second and third sons had to establish themselves as they weren't inheriting. Often they needed their commanding officer's permission to marry. Sometimes they were half a world away. I became a father in my fifties. My father became a father at thirty-nine. His father was in his late thirties when he became a father. My Dad was born in 1922. I am only five generations from Waterloo. If not for Chenobyl, I reckon I would have managed into my nineties. As is I reckon I'll be lucky to see out my sixties. The stats have gone from one in three to one in two, after all, and that upswing begins right about there. Nuclear testing and accidents certainly did wonders for our cancer stats. And I still smoke, despite having pulmonary lesions, dammit. It's always just one long suicide note, isn't it?
But before that I breakfast and read, and this came across my screen:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49508854
And I wondered if the late C19th/C20th idea of family has to undergo a massive change. Families are now as vertical as they are horizontal. Three generations living together co-operatively will become the norm, and maybe we have to adapt our cultural narratives to reflect that fact. We could begin by explaining the advantages. We don't all have a Dower House to retire to, in order that we may always be on hand; but surely that is the ideal? I know we all need our personal space, but I can't help but think that folk in big houses had it right; most space is communal between occupants, and communal between friends maybe, but communal nevertheless. Your library was often a private space, but the parlour, breakfast room, sitting rooms, gunrooms, tackrooms, stables etc were always communal.
Native English and West Indian kids often live with grandparents. Asian kids often live with parents and grandparents. Maybe the cultural narrative about the nuclear family has to change completely. I think that America still believes in the nuclear family as an ideal. I think it is an intrinsically isolationist model dependent upon a belief in the efficacy of small units where every member had a specific function. Breadwinning, homemaking, etc.
I know if I'm still alive when my kids come to have kids, I'll be happy to have them live with me; someone will have to push my wheelchair around, after all. The ideal is of course to live long enough to see them established, and not worry about grandkids; which may happen if I get to 80, but unlikely otherwise.
For six generations now, by patrilineal descent, the chaps have married late. Second and third sons had to establish themselves as they weren't inheriting. Often they needed their commanding officer's permission to marry. Sometimes they were half a world away. I became a father in my fifties. My father became a father at thirty-nine. His father was in his late thirties when he became a father. My Dad was born in 1922. I am only five generations from Waterloo. If not for Chenobyl, I reckon I would have managed into my nineties. As is I reckon I'll be lucky to see out my sixties. The stats have gone from one in three to one in two, after all, and that upswing begins right about there. Nuclear testing and accidents certainly did wonders for our cancer stats. And I still smoke, despite having pulmonary lesions, dammit. It's always just one long suicide note, isn't it?
