Children and Family Breakdown - The Tearfund International ...

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CHILDREN AT RISK GUIDELINES
Introduction
WHAT ARE FAMILIES?
I am married and the father of two
girls and we live together as a family
unit. Is this how a Christian family
should be? We live in the UK. My
wife’s parents live in America and my
parents live in the United Kingdom.
But if we lived together as an extended
family would we be more of a family?
What if my wife was widowed? Is that
still a family? What if she was divorced
from me? What if my wife and I died
of HIV/AIDS or in an accident, leaving our two girls? If they were teenagers and
lived together would they still be a family? What are the responsibilities of the
extended family? What are the responsibilities of the church family?
The conservative Protestant view is to regard the nuclear family, typically with three
or four members, as the traditional model. But this view owes more to culture than
to the Bible, and is far even from a cultural norm.
In Bible times Hebrew families were grouped together in houses. An interdependent
Hebrew household was made up of between 50 and 100 people. These were in turn
united through marriage and kinship and adoption to form clans. Several clans
constituted a tribe and the confederation of tribes made up Israel. According to this
model the family was not just a social unit, but also an economic and political one.
Whole households, including children, worked together on the land. It is a pattern
which has much in common with the extended families found today in rural areas of
the developing world.
In this context marriage was – and is – generally arranged, and a covenant not just
between individuals, but between families. Where parents are loving and concerned
primarily with the welfare of their children, then arranged marriages can be a successful
union of dynasties. They are also a strong reminder that two families are being brought
together and not just two individuals. This can strengthen the bonds with the
community, and relationships are often reinforced by economic ties.
Problems may arise with this model of marriage and family life if parents take decisions
for the children without any regard for their opinions, perhaps choosing a partner on
purely financial grounds. Where dowries are not paid, it is considered the right of the
family to abuse the spouse, leading in extreme cases to dowry burning.
VOLUME 1: CHILDREN AND FAMILY BREAKDOWN
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