The idea that it’s “All in the Family” may seem like a notion abandoned in the golden age of the 1950s, but a UF professor is striving to teach Americans that the traditional family structure heralded as ideal doesn’t ensure picture-perfect families.
John Scanzoni, a UF sociology professor, said the topic of families in the United States is a live issue, despite it taking the backseat to economics in the political arena as of late. His book on the subject, “Healthy American Families: A Progressive Alternative to the Religious Right,” was published in April, and he has been studying the evolution of families throughout human history for 25 years.
The Tea Party, he believes, is becoming a more prominent power economically, and the recent debates between the religious right and everyone else has kept family as a formidable political force, he said. They have effectively created the idea that the nuclear family has an inherent sense of morality and that anything besides the husband-wife-and-children model is non-moral.
“People decided that one form wasn’t working, so they made another. Sometimes it’s hard for us to grasp that because we tend to think the family is a rock,” he said. “We don’t realize it’s an artifact that people make and do. People are active in re-inventing families.
Scanzoni used the popular AMC TV show “Mad Men,” which takes place in the early 1960s, to illustrate the point that although there is a facade of stability among couples from that era, there was just as much discontentment and sexual promiscuity beneath the surface as there is today.
“The fact that they didn’t get divorced meant nothing,” he said. “Divorce means to be honest and free; people are simply saying that they don’t want to live that way anymore.”
For Brittany Brave, a second-year public relations major, the archetypal unit doesn’t necessarily make for the healthiest family.
“I don’t think that a good family is defined by gender and sexuality and sexual preferences,” she said. “It’s defined by support, love, loyalty and compassion. You could have two gay dads, and, no, it’s not the standard image, but they could have a perfectly healthy family.”
Scanzoni said it’s the responsibility of the privileged to develop and institute laws to provide the less-advantaged with opportunities to learn about fashioning families that are beneficial to them.
“The important thing is to understand that unlike biological evolution, where we don’t have much control, humans can affect the course of family evolution,” he said. “If we realize we have a part to play, we’ll try to act in an intelligent fashion.”
