Death of the family ties. . .

The old joke is that if you have only one child, you are not a real parent.  After all, you always know which kid did it.  It is only when you have to stare into the faces of multiple kids, each of which is denying responsibility, that you earn your parent badge.  Yeah, I know.  It is only a joke.  But there is something to it.  Family ties are not simply parent to child and child to parent but sibling to sibling.  As the number of single child families increases and the number of families with multiple children decreases, the shape of those family ties is inevitably different.  

Europe is already well ahead of us.  Half of all families have only one child.  Here in the US it is still about a fifth of all families with but one child.  By choice.  This is not happening among parents who would like to have more children but cannot but is largely driven by a conscious choice to have one and only one child.  That means no siblings for those children.  The family dynamic is radically different with but one child and the child growing up without a brother or sister knows parent and home life in a very different way than one who lives with siblings.

There was a time when two or three children was considered a small family.  In those days children had no expectation of private bedrooms or bathrooms.  Life was shared in sometimes complicated ways that became normal and even routine.  One bathroom for six or eight people was not exceptional but typical.  Toys were shared.  Chores were shared.  Life was shared.  All that has changed.  We call them improvements.  Bedrooms that are no more only for sleeping but have become refuges for the silent and individual life with the screen.  Homes that have enough spaces to avoid bumping into others.  Meals that are short order or fend for yourself kinds of experiences rather than the whole family around a single table with a single menu.  It is different even for families with more than one child but it is radically different for the single child.  

Churches were filled with families that took up entire pews -- no matter how long the seat.  They filled the churches with the sounds of children and Sunday school rooms with boys and girls and VBS classrooms with hot, sweaty kids waiting for the recreation times.  Photos of the confirmation classes were two or three deep with the washed and earnest faces of youth -- girls in white dresses and boys in their first real man suit jackets.  Part of the reason the churches are less full is the smaller size of the families there.  Even with two children, there is plenty of room in the pews for more than a single family.  We see it in the schools of our communities but it is a pivotal factor in the congregation as well.

Could it be that not having siblings has taught us not to get along or, rather, left us without the memory or tools or skills of how to get along with those we do not like or with whom we do not agree?  Could our lack of tolerance and our desire to insulate ourselves from those who have a different view than we do be attributed to the loss of that memory of growing up and figuring out how to make it work in a home with limited bedrooms and probably a single bathroom and shared toys?  Could it be that our quickness to resort to violence is, in part, our inability to figure out how to deal with conflict or disagreement and our limited tolerance of those who dare to challenge us?  I have no data but I suspect that as the family changes, society changes and many of those are not for the better.  Churches are finding the same short tempers and we are more apt to find folks packing up their things and leaving than investing themselves into communities where there is a chance they might be offended.  It spreads to all our institutions.  Even the old civic groups and youth organizations of old are suffering.  We want our thing and we are much less willing to suffer with those who do not want our thing.  No, the death of family ties brings with us unintended consequences all around.