Reader Response

Here's the book I'm reading: Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins How Our Family Stories Shape Us, by Elizabeth Stone. It's old, 1988, but good.

The author's heritage is Italian, her great and great, great grandparents coming from Sicily. There was a lot of cousins marrying in her family in those earliest days. I know of no cousins marrying in my family, but we're not Italians and I don't know enough to say for sure such a thing never happened. But I believe it didn't happen.

Here's something to think about. It has certainly made me think:

"In 1983, 5.7 million families were headed by women, which meant that 22 percent of all children were growing up with just one parent, usually the mother. The increase in such families is usually attributed to the increase in divorce, the American inclination to self-fulfillment at the price of commitment and self-sacrifice, and the greater number of women in the work force."

This information comes to support Stone's assertion about women's prominence in the family, that it puts women in the role of caretaker, not only of children, but also of family stories, traditions, sayings, rituals, and so on. 

I have no argument with this assertion, except that I have already written that in my family my father told the stories. But they were not, that's not, family stories. At least I don't remember any. And we were far from a single parent home. My dad was gone some, traveling up and down California to sell life insurance, but he was home a lot, too.

I could say Wow! about those statistics.  

Because can you imagine how those statistics have changed since 1983? How on earth many single-parent homes do we have in America today, in 2014? Good heavens! It's a staggering number, no doubt.  

But this is not the part that struck me most. I'll carry on.

It's that little idea tucked away in the middle that struck me. The one about "the American inclination to self-fulfillment at the price of commitment and self-sacrifice."  I could write a lot about that, and I think I could argue for and against that American inclination.

I have written on the subject already, many years ago, from a very personal perspective. Some day I may find it or write it again. I do remember what I said, how I felt, and I know what I think now.  I suppose I'll have to write it.

Just not today.