The Crisis of Meaning: In Culture and Education

5 Look Who's Talking: Contested Narratives of Family Life

LOOK WHO'S TALKING CONTESTED NARRATIVES OF FAMILY LIFE It occursto me that much organizational grief could be avoided if peopleunderstood that partnership in misery does not necessarily providefor partnership in change: whenwe get the monsters off our backs all of us may want to run in very different directions. —June Jordan1 "Thank you for not talking about your relationship," reads the opening cartoon in John Callahan's book Digesting the Child Within.2 In recent years, Callahan has achieved cult status for his cynical views of New Age introspection and twelve-step quests for "wellness." His favorite target is the family, as in his portrait of "The Dysfunctional Family Robinson,"3 or his image of a politically correct marriage ceremony : "I now pronounce you man and wife, ifyou don't mind putting a label on it."4 Callahan's humor portrays an era inwhich the family, especially the conventional nuclear family, is an object of scrutiny and contest. This cynicism over the discourse of "codependency" and dysfunctional relationships reflects a growing resentment about the normative implications of contemporary therapeutic practice.5 It points to a bitterness felt by families who increasingly find themselves beset by experts offering corrective regimens. Not only do such programs suggest a return to an oddly conservative-sounding set ofvalues, they also depoliticize social ills by psychologizing them within a private sphere set apart from the "real" world. Human dilemmas are rationalized as personal shortcomings rather than considered as symptoms of broader, communityproblems. Any impulses for change or improvement are directed toward the self. In other words, the approach is good old Yankee individualism with a kinder, gentler face.6 This therapeutic solution creates an atmosphere inwhich political issues are consigned to the realm ofpersonal perception. Impressions and rhetoric outweigh any actual social consequences in an era of image consultants and spin doctors. Within the struggle over what has been termed "the politics of meaning," no symbol has been fought over more than the family. And nowhere has it been more contested than in the ubiquitousmedium ofphotography. In genres ranging from advertising 75 FIVE and entertainment to journalism and art, professional image makers argue over what they perceive the family to be. These debates are enmeshed in deep ideological conflicts. Although modern feminism deserves most of the credit for foregrounding the oppressive potentials of the traditional family, the rise of gay rights, Civil Rights, and labor movements helped legitimate alternative forms of it—single-parent families, communal families , interracial families, homosexual families. In this context it becomes clear that the national controversy over the well-being of the American family is actually about one highly specific definition of it.7 Monolithicassertions of an idealized heterosexual union are pitted against claims for sexual and familial plurality. The growth of alternative models has eroded the primacy of patriarchal households to the point where traditional nuclear families no longer constitute a majority in the United States.8 Not surprisingly, conservatives increasingly blame these "new" families for contributing to everything from rising crime statistics to declining national productivity. In the cultural realm, the struggle over representations of the family has never been more intense, as religious fundamentalists and right-wing extremists have assaulted progressive filmmakers, writers, artists, and record producers. These tensions result from the recognition that attitudes toward personal relationships and sex are culturally influenced.Within this scheme families defined by so-called special interests are measured against the "traditional values" ofthe "mainstream." But what are the epistemological grounds on which such notions are constructed? We cannot exactly define this mythical American family, but we do know that it is not Asian, Latino, African American, or Native American. We know that it certainly is not gay, lesbian, or bisexual. We also know that it is not disabled, sick, old,young, abused, addicted, out of work, homeless, hungry, or poor. This is a family that, in fact, includes almost no one. Nevertheless, such fantasized renderings are extremely useful in affective terms, because they claim to offer membership to all.Anostalgia for a fictional past is projected onto the future in such profamily themes as "the new morality," "the new abstinence," "the new femininity," "the new baby boom," and "the return of the good girl." This was the gist ofthe recent NewTraditionalist advertising campaign developed by Hearst, Incorporated's Good Housekeeping magazine.To resuscitate a publication dedicated to a hopelessly outdated domestic ethos, Good Housekeeping reworked its image of the ideal mom. Accompanying portraits of well-dressed women flanked by...