Nostalgia for Family Past

by jgnat 19 Replies latest social current

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    There's a conservative element that is yearning for an ideal that never was; the nuclear family with mom in the kitchen, pop putting in his 9 to 5, and two-and-a-half children.

    Vintage Advertising

    The closest America got to hitting this "ideal" was in the fifties. Families move out in to suburbia, college-educated women set aside career ambitions in search of domestic bliss. The result? The Feminine Mystique. Women were miserable! Introduce, Valium. It turns out this failure couldn't even be medicated away. Betty Frieden does a good job of explaining why this was not enough.

    Freud contributed to this mass delusion by offering that all sorts of mental illnesses are a result of a disorder of the mother-child bond. Not too long ago, it was thought that male homosexuality was caused by overbearing mothers. That's debunked today.

    It annoys me when the nostalgic right suggests that this nuclear family model is biblical. It's not. The ancient families were extended family with a patriarch. Grandparents, relatives, and servants all were under one roof. That's a lot more energy, relationships, and interaction than can be offered by suburbia.

  • Xanthippe
    Xanthippe

    Women have worked outside the home for thousands of years often with their babies strapped to their backs. It's ridiculous how people think working women is a new and dangerous thing. The more I read Freud, the more I think, although he did great work on the unconscious mind, he was batshit crazy.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    Xanthippe, as you may know, Freud interviewed inmates from a mental institution to build his model. I prefer the positive psychology trend, to interview healthy people and healthy relationships to figure out how they work, rather than the million ways they can go wrong.

    Pinker in his book the Language Instinct, spoke of the different views of child-rearing in the African-American population. White America has this idea that children are a blank slate that absorb all the data we can feed it. Hence, flash cards for babies. Pinker speaks of the baby's native ability to pick up language, which they do just fine in a household that lets it absorb from the adult activity around it. All babies need stimulation, of course, but it does not need to be force-fed.

    I imagine the tradesman's home in the middle ages, with the shop out front, private space out back, and children running in between. I think children had a much better idea of what work and life was about when they could freely range through it, rather than our segregated system today.

  • *lost*
    *lost*

    jgnat - excellent thread

    Lately, I have been getting intense feelings of nostalgia.

    So many things/reminders from my childhood, happy things, the simple little things that made growing up fun, and created memories.

    Women have been subjucated by men for thousands of years. Thank goodness, we have managed to break down most of those barriers.

    There is an old saying 'it takes a community to raise a child' I think that is so true.

    It just feels like I'm 'feeling' things and 'thinking' things that were, I dunno, shriveled up and dried out,

    now they are getting food and water, they are coming back to life.

  • smiddy
    smiddy

    Hey jgnat , my teen years are chockfull of watching TV shows such as Father Knows Best , My Three Sons ,The Donna Reed Show ,Ozzie and Harriet ,to name a few , no wonder us males ( and I guess females too ) had unrealistic veiws of both sexes and what their roles were .While they were only TV shows impressionable young minds can be influenced to some degree by what they are taking into their brain. It is said that a picture speaks more than a thousand words , then what about pictures /visual images on a screen that is shown regulary on TV. Maybe you can start a new thread along those lines . I`m sorry if I have gone off topic.

    smiddy

  • smiddy
    smiddy

    I too,think this is an excellent thread that sadly wont get the attention it deserves.

    smiddy

  • Phizzy
    Phizzy

    As you rightly say Jgnat, that nostalgia is for a world that never really was, the Golden Years we remember from our childhoods, or are extolled by previous generations, were beset by problems , as is today.

    Different problems, but the positives and negatives of the Golden Age and today are probably in the same proportions.

    Bill Bryson in one of his books writes about his search for a modern day equivalent to the town idealised by TV and Hollywood, ideal families, friendly neighbours and white picket fences etc etc

    He named this place "Smallville" if I remember, and he never really found it. It never really existed of course.

    But, that is the nature of nostalgia and human memory, we blank out the pain that was there in the past, and all seems rosy back then.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    I'd worked for the Social Services department and seen the historical index cards for adoption. There was a time when pregnancy out of wedlock was a shameful thing, as was abortion. The girl was shipped off to a maternity asylum for a nine month "holiday". She could not keep the infant, of course. Back then, too, it was considered the epitome of infant care to be institutionalized for its first year of life before being adopted. That way, formula could be fed to the infant like clockwork, giving it the "best start" in life.

    I used to read the reasons for pregnancy on these index cards, some dating back to the war. There was more than one case of overnight romance where the young man promised marriage and begged for a night to remember, before being shipped off to who knows where.

  • wasblind
    wasblind

    Jgnat This thread is a good read

    My ol' man had a mom who really loved to cook

    folks all around talked of how she could throw down in the kitchen

    I must admit, her food was good but I believe She had the " Aunt Bee " syndrome

    She would get mad if anybody else volunteered to cook

    That's the one problem I have when it come to my Ol' man

    he thinks he should smell something cookin' everytime he walks in the house

    I had to let 'em know, He wasn't in Mayberry, and I ain't his mom

    I do make sure I cook more durin' the holidays

    If not the poor soul will get depressed thinkin' 'bout his mom and dad

    .

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    For wasblind:

    Scentsy

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