Family break down 'its causes and impacts'

Aziza Simons

With such a big group of people it's safe to say we all bring to the table our own perceptions and personal experience of what "family" means. While the nuclear family of mum, dad and 2.6 kids may be the ideal, the reality for most is quite different. Single parent, blended families, grandparent or extended family care-givers are often the family that many people experience. For this reason we first need to understand that family breakdown is not just about divorce. The family unit in a sense is the place that children are nurtured and presumably encouraged or lead to becoming socially adjusted adults…

So, when we talk about family breakdown we aren't just discussing marriage breakdown - although this is an important area that warrants significant discussion. Issues like domestic violence, substance abuse or other addictive behaviour are often referred to as reasons or contributors to family breakdown, but they are in-fact INSTANCES of family breakdown. In these instances, a family may still be living together, but is not functioning as a place of nurture and security or stability. Now I'm sure we could all put our hands up and relate the often unabashed dysfunctional tendencies in our own families. But instead of trying to define how dysfunctional is enough to warrant intervention, I think it would be more valuable to discuss our ideals or standards for the role of family in the socialisation and development of children and in the lives of individuals in general. We may then be able to look at family breakdown as living circumstances in which these values, ideals, responsibilities, standards - the functions of family as we see it - are neglected.

I think that perhaps social isolation is the crux of the whole area of family breakdown. Isolation of families and individuals from their communities. Without support networks (friends, neighbours, social groups, clubs, churches) how can we expect people to recognise the warning signals, or express their need for help? In our discussions I'd like to talk about the role of family in the community and the role of community in family. The prevailing trends in western societies are increasingly individualistic attitudes, mindsets and behaviour. The sense of the times is that people are focussed on self-preservation, self-promotion and a 'me-centred' approach to life and success.

Before we can get to the really fun stuff of throwing our brilliant ideas for social change out into the big blue yonder, I want to look for a moment at some the major or most common themes for marital breakdown. I'm focussing on marital breakdown specifically because these are the most obvious statistics I could find on the ABS website, but perhaps these themes reflect the other forms of family breakdown I mentioned before.

Do you know the more common theme associated with marital breakdown is unemployment and work-related issues. Many of us would already understand the strain of financial pressures on a marriage and a family. Then there are also virtually absentee parents, who put long hours in at the office to make end meets or to reach their financial goals. Other high risk factors or contributors to in marriage breakdown include addictive behaviour and domestic violence, like I mentioned, chronic illness or death of a child, blended families, marriage and relationship breakdown in the extended family, redefinition of gender roles, growth individualism (a good one to discuss), poor communication skills, poor parenting, and social isolation.

I couldn't believe it when I read that marriages and families break down because of poor communication skills!  Because of poor parenting skills, financial pressures and social isolation. I don't mean to trivialise this at all, because these are real issues. But my initial response is that there is SO much resource in the world, in the local library and community that address all of these issues. Instead of just reacting and responding to crisis once family breakdown has occurred - we should be increasing the focus on prevention and early intervention.

Some ideas for supporting or preventing family breakdown - to kick off discussions:

Educating and equipping the decision-makers of the future.
I think there needs to be more focus on children's socialisation and development in schools. There are lots of community organisations and clubs that are doing a great job in enlarging many children and teens' social skills set. But the only way to effectively reach ALL kids is to focus on schools. There should be more educational and compulsory extra-curricular programs in schools that focus on social skills - communication skills and relationship skills. We can't assume that these are being learned at home. Socially informed and equipped children grow in socially equipped adults.

With regard to marriage breakdown I think that there needs to be development of Safe relationship or respectful relationship education instead of just safe sex education. As a 14 year old, I learnt that there were 20 different kinds of contraception, but no authority figure told me about the emotional cost of physical intimacy with the WRONG person. Or what a healthy, mutually respectful, enriching relationship should look like, or even that I should try to build one. Children are expected to figure these important things out on their own, often with no-one to guide them except maybe the girls from Sex and the City, or peers who are just as immature! There is no guidance, only reactive measures when things go wrong. What about pre-marriage counselling? Providing a space where engaged couples have an opportunity to discuss their hopes, desires, fears, uncertainties of marriage before they even get there.

Something simple, but that could possibly relieve a lot of pressure on families are financial advice programs. I think this is an area that is sorely neglected in the education system. There is a lot of focus on increasing pay-outs to disadvantaged families or families under financial pressure. You know that saying: 'give a man a fish you fee him for a day, teach him to fish and you fee him for a life time." Well, what is the point of giving people more money if they don't have any money management skills? It doesn't help them, it just increases their dependence. I'm not suggesting we stop supporting disadvantaged families or those in crisis. I am saying lets invest in financial education as well. I believe many people live under intense financial pressure purely because they don't understand how to manage their money. And isn't it ironic that the only institutions that provide financial advice to the public are Banks - who make profit from our debt. I'm talking about teaching about budgets, saving plans, interest, understanding and managing credit debt, superannuation, investments and wealth creation.

Basically, I don't think that the answer in is social control - like making it more difficult to get a divorce or increasing penalties for domestic violence or whatever else we could think of to deter people from doing the wrong thing. We are governed by a democracy, with the guiding principles of freedom and choice. That means people are going to always finds ways to do what they want and probably a justification for it too. Bad things are not going to stop happening, this is the reality of life. I think it's far more valuable to focus on empowering and equipping individuals to deal with what life throws at them.

But it can't just be about throwing more pamphlets at people, change can only be effected if it is implemented on a community level. You can only teach so much in a government funded program - and you can only reach so many. There needs to be a greater focus on community involvement. The onus is on each one of us individually to reach out to others in our community and connect and support and encourage and help one another with the strengths and resources we have. Do you think that maybe this really doesn't have to be any more complicated that investing a little more of our time into someone else's life? Maybe caring about another person a little bit more than we care about ourselves?