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Posted on 02/25/2008 1:13:10 PM PST by Caleb1411
Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family.
That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can't explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears.
The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic "Family and Civilization," which has just been republished in an edited version by ISI Press, is a chillingly prophetic volume that deserves a wide new audience.
In all civilizations, Zimmerman theorized, there are three basic family types. The "trustee" family is tribal and clannish, and predominates in agrarian societies. The "domestic" family model is a middle type centering on the nuclear family ensconced in fairly strong extended-family bonds; it's found in civilizations undergoing rapid development. The final model is the "atomistic" family, which features weak bonds between and within nuclear families; it's the type that emerges as normative in advanced civilizations.
When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, the strong trustee families of the barbarian tribes replaced the weak, atomistic Roman families as the foundation of society.
Churchmen believed a social structure that broke up the ever-feuding clans and gave the individual more freedom would be better for society's stability and spent centuries reforming the European family toward domesticity. The natalist worldview advocated by churchmen knit tightly religious faith, family loyalty and child bearing. From the 10th century on, the domestic family model ruled Europe through its greatest cultural efflorescence. But then came the Reformation and the Enlightenment, shifting culture away from tradition and toward the individual. Thus, since the 18th century, the atomistic family has been the Western cultural norm.
Here's the problem: Societies ruled by the atomistic family model, with its loosening of constraints on its individual members, quit having enough children to carry on. They become focused on the pleasures of the present. Eventually, these societies expire from lack of manpower, which itself is a manifestation of a lack of the will to live.
It happened to ancient Greece. It happened to ancient Rome. And it's happening to the modern West. The sociological parallels are startling.
Why should expanding individual freedoms lead to demographic disaster? Because cultures that don't organize their collective lives around the family create policies and structures that privilege autonomous individuals at the family's expense.
In years to come, the state will attempt economic incentives, or something more draconian, to spur childbirth. Europe, which is falling off a demographic cliff, is already offering economic incentives, with scant success. Materialist measures only seem to help at the margins.
Why? Zimmerman was not religious, but he contended the core problem was a loss of faith. Religions that lack a strong pro-fertility component don't survive over time, he observed; nor do cultures that don't have a powerfully natalist religion.
Why should we read Zimmerman today? For one thing, the future isn't fated. We might learn from history and make choices that avert the calamities that overtook Greece and Rome.
Given current trends, that appears unlikely. Therefore, the wise will recognize that the subcultures that survive the demographic collapse will be those that sacrificially embrace natalist values over materialist ones — which is to say, those whose religious convictions inspire them to have relatively large families, despite the social and financial cost.
That doesn't mean most American Christians, who have accepted modernity's anti-natalism. No, that means traditionalist Catholics, "full-quiver" Protestants, ultra-Orthodox Jews, pious Muslims and other believers who reject modernity's premises.
Like it or not, the future belongs to the fecund faithful.
Because that's one of the things that makes life fun! I can express my disagreeance, reasonable or not, with Mr. Dreher (whose writing I have always found extremely annoying) and nobody's hurt by it.
I save my agreeance for Real Life, where it matters.
“When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, the strong trustee families of the barbarian tribes replaced the weak, atomistic Roman families as the foundation of society....”
****
I thought St. Augustine answered the question “Why did Rome fall” in his tome “City of God”....
That’s just sick.
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Either way you choose if it is what you want it becomes the selfish choice, so the argument that "No, you're the selfish one" is moot. Unless you are having or not having children against your own personal desire for the benefit of others you are making the "selfish" choice, and if you are having or not having children based upon somebody else's opinion you may be making a choice much more foolish than if you went with what you wanted.
To each his own. If you don't want kids, by all means don't have them. If you do want kids, check your motives twice, be honest with yourself and then procreate to your hearts content. Blessings to those of you who adopt children!
Just don't do what I did and gradually change your mind when it is partially too late to undo the past.
I singlemindedly focused on my career and did not get married until later than most of my friends, children were not something I ever thought about. Then I waited a few years to enjoy being newlyweds. Then I waited a year until I could get part way out of a financial pitfall I got into. Then after a scary pregnancy my wife wanted to wait a bit before having a second child. We are now 2/3 way through a second scary pregnancy and I'm not sure if everything goes well if I'll be able to talk my wife into a third child. With my wife's pregnancy history and her age, I'm not sure if we might be pushing our luck too far if we wait a while after this child to have a third.
Now that it is too late I find myself thinking that since we're making the lifestyle changes kids require of you, we might as well have a house full. Hopefully my previous financial sacrifices will soon pay off and things will quickly improve for us financially and we'll be able to hire a maid or a nanny so that we can still live like we don't have kids some of the time.
Evidently, too many women celebrating being being child-free means eventually being civilation-free. Civilization is the only condition that protects women from the realities of raw nature.
ah but alas Native Son is not yet married and therefore has no children... I have however just secured THE RING so I'm workin' to remedy that
This bunk also. Greece did not stop having babies; the problem with Greece is that she exported all of her population thru war to other places and exhausted herself with civil wars.
Rome is another matter. The Western Empire did not fall apart as Gibbon stated due to Christianity and high taxes. It fell apart because there was one to many coup attempts that led to civil war, which the Germans ended up taking advantage of. Bryan Ward-Perkins wrote an excellent book that details that the empire was humming along just fine until the battle of the Frigidus (which was the last battle in a series between East and West which decimated the western armies). The Germans were able to cross over repeatedly with little restitance and ended up staying.
Here is another issue I have with the Roman empire not having babies. It was becoming Christian in the west very quickly. Christians were known to save pagan babies from exposure and raising them in the faith. Christians generally have lots of kids. It was the pagans that were having smaller families and exposing their children. If the empire was becoming Christian at the expence of paganism, it should have led to an increase of family size, yet the author tries to make the opposite case. Rome and Greece have very little in common in what we are seeing right now. We are now seeing the paganization of the West with the emphasis on smaller families. Rome saw the opposite, they just weakened themselves through civil war and were not able to resist the barbarians after the fact.
Awwwwwwwww....I’m going to pay a gaggle of kitties to sit by death bed.
Or go to Home Depot and hire a bunch of illegals.
That sounds like a pot of slowly bubbling oatmeal....
ping
Like Los Angeles?
Hence, the "simple" command, in the very beginning of mortal probation, Be fruitful and multiply, takes on yet another purpose.......
Ping
Go ahead and move to or live in flyover country.
Our present is your destiny!
btt
Well let see the lady has her own tv show not much private about that is there?
I agree. This “atomistic” thing seems to have come about rather recently, not three centuries ago.
Commonly believed, but quite inaccurate.
The Byzantine Empire rebounded quite nicely from its confrontation with the Arab Empire, recovering much of the territory lost to the Muslims in the 9th thru 11th centuries. During this period it was generally much the strongest Christian power.
Common sense alone should tell us that no nation is "destroyed" in the 7th century but still somehow manages to hang on for another 800 years.
The Byzantine Empire has a long history of getting no respect in the West, but it is a fact that Western civilization sheltered from the Muslims behind it for at least 500 years, giving Western civ a chance to get going. Without the Eastern Roman Empire Europe would probably have fallen to Islam.
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