The changing American family -část2

In the next century the child-bearing and child-rearing years may well be considered as valued a time of life as the retirement years. It is possible that workers who are the parents of young children may be encouraged to take a kind of sabbatical, dividing their time between family care, part-time employment, and further education or training. Parents of young children may be allowed and encouraged to collect some of their social security during the regenerative years.

The work week may be shortened and employment patterns over a lifetime may continue to change for both males and females to accommodate changes in family circumstances. Health care support for the young and their parents may become as accepted as Medicare and public education. As people live longer, patterns of living, working, and thinking about one’s lifetime will continue to change. More men may find diversity in work and family life as satisfying and challenging as have some of the current generation of mothers and grandmothers. Equality between men and women, once tasted and experimented with, may be appreciated and even savored.

We may understand and acknowledge the fact that raising a child and participating in family life breeds wisdom and satisfaction. Caretaking also teaches skills like management, prioritizing, and negotiation that are transferable and might be rewarded in the future, or at least valued. As family life and children – the future incarnate – become more fully appreciated, new concepts of success may emerge that equate the successful raising of children with career achievement.

People of all shades of the political and racial spectrum live in families. Let us hope that we can use this common ground on behalf of families and children as a basis for new social innovations in the 21st century comparable to the technological advances of the 20th century.

Arvonne Fraser is a Senior Fellow at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.