282 cHAPTER6 .

COMMUNITY

g. Discuss the meaning of the phrase "starved before we are hungry" in sentence 2
In Search of the Good Family
ofparagraph 3.
it was written
10. compa-re the probable rhetorical effect of paragraph 4 at the time |eNn HowARn
with its effect todaY.
as a rhetorical
11. Sometimes even the slightest stylistic feature can work effectively Jone Howord (1935-1996) wos o iournolist who wrote obout the chonging Amer.
and frost and fire" in
strategy. What is the effect of the alliterative phrase "freshet icon scene. A frequent contributor to life, the New york rimes, ond siitisonian,
paragraphT? she is the outhor of Pleqse Touch: A Guided Tour of the Humon Potentiol Movemenl
12. in ttre ctncluding paragraph, Thoreau develops two metaphors regarding time l197ol, A Different womon 11973), Fomilies l197gl, ond Morgoret Meod: A Life
and the intellect. What are they? What is their effect? (1984). The following selection, odopted 1or Atlontic Monthty trom Fomilies,
explores the chorocteristics thot moke conventionol fomilies ond new kinds of fomi-
lies meoningful communities.
Suggesiions for Writing
1. In paragraph 5, Thoreau writes,"What news! how much more important to know
Thoreau's
what that is which was never old!" write an essay in which you evaluate d-ull it a clan, call it a netr,vork, call it a tribe, call it a family. whatever you
how this essay appeals to two \--acall it, whoever you are, you need one. you need one because you are
own writing according to this thought. consider
audiences: Thoreau's contemPoraries and today's readers' human. You didn't come from nowhere. Before you, around you, and presumably
Dis-
2. In this essay, Thoreau extols the virtues of individualism and self-suffrciency' after you, too, there are others. some of these others must matter a lot to you,
cuss how living according to these virtues can
jeopardize the community; consider -
and if you are very lucky, to one another. Their welfare must be nearly as impor-
specific circumstances when such jeopardy might occur' tant to you as your own. Even if you live alone, even if your solitude is elected and
3. Write a response to Thoreau, telling him how modern technology has influenced ebullient, you still cannot do without a clan or tribe.
how wecommunicate. Acknowledge how he did or did not anticipate our modern The trouble with the clans and tribes many of us were born into is not that they
condition. consist of meddlesome ogres but that they are too far away. In emergencies we rush
entitled
4. Using the reflective style of Thoreau, write your own philosophical essay across continents and if need be oceans to their sides, as they do to ours. Maybe we
"Where I Live, and What I Live For" (note present tense)' even make a habit of seeing them, once or twice a year, for the sheer pleasure of it.
But blood ties seldom dictate our addresses. our blood kin are often too remote to
ease us from our Tuesdays to our Wednesdays. For this we must rely on our families
of friends. If our relatives are not, do not wish to be, or for whatever reasons cannot
be our friends, then by some complex alchemy we must try to transform our
friends into our relatives. If blood and roots don t do the job, then we must look to
water and branches, and sort ourselves into new constellations, new families.
These new families, to borrow the terminology of an African tribe (the
Bangwa of the cameroons), may consist either of friends of the road, ascribed by
chance, or friends of the heart, achieved by choice. Ascribed friends are those we
happen to go to school with, work with, or live near. They know where we went
last weekend and whether we still have a cold. )ust being around gives them a pro-
visional importance in our lives, and us in theirs. Muyb. they will still mattir to
us when we or they move away; quite likely they won't. six months or two years
will probably erase us from each other's thoughtsj unless by some chance they
and we have become friends of the heart.
wishing to be friends, as Aristotle wrote, is quick work, but friendship is a
slowly ripening fruit. An ancient proverb he quotes inhis Ethics had it thai you
cannot know a man until you and he together have eaten a peck of salt. Now a

283
 HOWARD . IN SEARCH OF THE GOOD FAMITY 285
284 cHAPTER6'coMMUNffi

more, perhaps, than most pairs And consider our own Unitarians. From Santa Barbara to Boston they have
peck, a quarter of a bushel, is quite a lot of salt
- been earnestly dividing their congregations into arbitrary "extended families"
ff p.opi. ever have occasion tt share. We must try though. We must sit together
other through enough seasons whose members are bound to act like each other's relatives. Kurt Vonnegut, |r.
ut u, -arry tables as we can. We must steer each
that one of us, God plays with a similar train of thought in his fictional Slapstick.In that book every
and weathers so that sooner or later it crosses our minds
other' newborn baby is assigned a randomly chosen middle name, like Uranium or Daf-
knows which or with what sorrow, must one day mourn the
we must devise newways, or revive old ones, to equip ourselves with kinfolk. fodil or Raspberry. These middle names are connected with hyphens to numbers
between one and twenty, and any two people who have the same middle name are
Muyb" such an impulse prompted whoever ordered the cake I saw in my neigh-
like to think automatically related. This is all to the good, the author thinks, because "human
borhood bakery toiave ii frosied to say"Happy Birthday Surrogate." I
not for judge but for someone's surrogate mother beings need all the relatives they can get as possible donors or receivers not of
that this cake was decorated a
jargon, but admirable sentiment. If you di{n't- -
love but of common decency." He envisions these extended families as "one of the
or surrogate brother: loathsome
conceivJm. or if we didn't grow up in the same house, we can still be related, if four greatest inventions by Americans," the others being Robert's Rules of Order,
our fami- the Bill of Rights, and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.
we decide we ought to be. Itis r"r"i too late,I like to hope, to augment
clans. This charming notion might even work, if it werent so arbitrary. Already
lies in ways nature neglected to do. It is never too late to choose new
t0

blood families, each of us is born into one family not of our choosing. If we're going to devise
The best-chosen clans, like the best friendships and the best
But clans that new ones, we might as well have the luxury of picking the members ourselves.
endure by accumulating a history solid enough to suggest afuture.
them' Bet- Clever picking might result in new families whose benefits would surpass or at
don't lasthave merit toJ. We can lament them but we shouldn t deride
tribe than none at all. A few of mylife's most tribally joy- least equal those of the old. As a member in reasonable standing of six or seven
ter an ephemeral clan or
again' This tribes in addition to the one I was born to, I have been trying to figure which
ous times, in fact, have been spent with people whom I have yet to see
dwelling overlong on such sadness does no characteristics are common to both kinds of families.
saddens me, as it may them too, but
times and try to figure out 1. Good families have a chief, or a heroine, or a founder someone around
good. A more fertile exercise is to think back on those
-
times teach us whom others cluster, whose achievements, as the Yiddish word has it, let them
ihat made them, for all their breviry so stirring. What can such
kyell,t andwhose example spurs them on to like feats. Some blood dynasties pro-
about forming new and more lasting tribes in the future?
New tribes and clans can no rnore be willed into existence, of course, than duce such figures regularly; others languish for as many as five generations
teeth and between demigods, wondering with each new pregnancy whether this, at last,
any other good thing can. we keep trying, though. To try, with gritted
might be the messianic baby who will redeem them. Look, is there not something
gira.a loiris, is afte. ill American. That is what the two Helens and I were talking
gubernatorial about her footstep, or musical about the way he bangs with his
Ibout the day we had lunch in a room way up in a high-rise motel near the Kansas
on families' spoon on his cup? All clans, of all kinds, need such a figure now and then. Some-
City airport. We had lunch there at the end of a two-day conference
them among other rea- times clans based on water rather than blood harbor several such personages at
fne two Helens were social scientists, but I liked even so,
shop even more than I did. one time.
sons because they both objected to that motePs coffee
One of the Helens, fromVirginia, disliked it so much that she had brought along 2. Good families have a switchboard operator someone who cannot help
parents'farm
-
but keep track of what all the others are up to, who plays Houston Mission Con-
homemade whole wheat bread, sesame butteq and honey from her
trol to everyone else's Apollo. This role is assumed rather than assigned. The per-
in South Dakota, where she had visited before the conference. Her picnic was the
son who volunteers for it often has the instincts of an archivist, and feels driven
best thing that happened, to me at least, those whole two days'
..If yiu,re viuntarily childless and alonei' said the other Helen, who was to keep scrapbooks and photograph albums up to date, so that the clan can see
proof of its own continuity.
from Pennsylvania by way of Puerto Rico, "it gets harder and harder with the
pas-
sage of time. It's stressful. That's whyyou need suPport systemsi'I had been hear- 3. Good families are much to all their members, but everything to none.
Good families are fortresses with many windows,and doors to the outer world.
inl quite a bit of talk about "support systems." The term is not among my
may be, The blood clans I feel most drawn to were founded by parents who are nearly as
fur,orites, but I can understand its ;;rrency. Whatever "support systems"
Are there not devoted to what they do outside as they are to each other and their children. Their
the need for them is clearly urgent, and not just in this country.
thriving "mega-families" oi as many as three hundred people in Scandinavia? curiosity and passion are contagious. Everybody, where they live, is busy. Paint is
Have not the |apanese for years had an honored, enduring - if
perhaps by our
standards rather rigid custom of adopting nonrelatives to fill gaps in their
-
families? Should we not applaud and maybe imitate such ingenuity? 'Yiddish, "exclaim proudly, especially in boasting about a member of a family.'- Eds.
 HOWAFD-. IN SEARCH OF THE GOOD FAMIIY z,47
286 cHAPTER 6' coMMUNITY

ically neutral fare like smorgasbord, to "forgive" our only ancestrally fapanese
spattered on Mud lurks under fingernails._ Petson-to-person calls
eyeglasses. friend, Irene Kubota Neves. For that and other things we became, and remain, a
Brussels. Catcher's mitts, ballet
come in the middle of iie ,ight from Tokyo anJ sort of family. . . .
,ffi.r, overdue library boiks, and other signs of extrafamilial concerns are 7. Good families are affectionate. This of course is a matter of style. I know
ever)rwhere. clans whose members greet each other with gingerly handshakes or, in what pass
much as
4. Good families are hospitable' Knowing that hosts need guests
as
for kisses, with hurried brushes of jawbones, as if the object were to touch not the
for friends'
go.rt, *.d hosts, they a,. gtt"to'' withhonorary memberships lips but the ears. I don t see how such people manage. "The tribe that does not
late' Such clans exude a vivid
whom they urge ,o .orrr" .u,t] and often a1d-to stay
hug," as someone who has been part of many adhocfamilies recentlywrote to me,
teachers, students, and godpar-
sense of surrounding rings of relatives, neighbors, "is no tribe at all. More and more I realize that everybody, regardless of age, needs
slide into the inner circle' Inside
ents, any of whom at ffitime might breik.or to be hugged and comforted in a brotherly or sisterly way now and then. Prefer-
develops: you give me protec-
that circle a wholesome, iacit emotional feudalism ablynow."
beyond' the jolly
ii.", rff give you fealty.'Such pacts begin with' but soon go farmean that you can 8. Good families have a sense of place, which these days is not achieved eas-
.J".rg."of pie at Thanksgiving o, .uk on a birthday. They ily. As Susanne Langer wrote in 1957, "Most people have no home that is a symbol
you will be in the hospital, and
ask me to supervise yoo, .tiitar.I, for the fortnight of their childhood, not even a definite memory of one place to serve that pur-
that however inconvenient this might be for me,
I shall manage to do so. It means
pose . . . all the old symbols are gone." Once I asked a roomful of supper guests if
dreary, wretched Sunday afternoon a1d f9r
I can phone you on what for me is a anyone felt a strong pull to any certain spot on the face ofthe earth. Everyone was
knowing you will tell me to come right over' if only
yoo ir',t eve of u d.udlirr., silent, except for a visitor from Bavaria. The rest of us seemed to know all too well
" ("To yield to seemingi'as
to watch you type. It means we nee?'not dissemble. what Walker Percy means in The Moviegoer when he tells of the "genie-soul of a
i'i, ,,,u" essential cowardice' to resist it is his essential
Martin Buber2 wrote, ' place, which every place has or else is not a place [and which] wherever you go,
courage..,onemustattimespaydearlyforlifelivedfromthebeing,butitis you must meet and master or else be met and mastered." All that meeting and
never too dear.") mastering saps plenty of strength. It also underscores our need for tribal bases of
5.Goodfamiliesdealsquarelywithdireness.Pitythetribethatdoesrt'thave' the sort which soaring real estate taxes and splintering families have made all but
and cherish, at least one flamboyant eccentric.
Pity too the onethat supposes it
obsolete.
is heir. Lunary, bankruptcy, suicide,
can avoid for long the woes to wiich all flesh So what are we to do, those of us whose habit and pleasure and doom is our
the noblest of clans with an
and other unthinkable fates sooner or later afflict tendency, as a Georgia lady put it, to "fly off at every other whipstitch'? Think in
undertowofgloom.Familylifeisasetofgivens,someoneoncetoldme,andit terms of movable feasts, that's what. Live here, wherever here may be, as if we
than.as.curses' It surely
takes courag" ,o ,". ."riuit' gi""' as blessings rather were going to belong hqre for the rest of our lives. Learn to hallow whatever
givens, too. So-is the battle against
does. Contradictions and incinsistencies are ground we happen to stand on or land on. Like medieval knights who took their
"There's always malar-
what the oregon patriarch Kenneth Babbs calls malarkey. tapestries along on Crusades, like modern Afghanis with their yurts, we must
I don t
key lurking, brbbl., in th. .."pool, fetidbubbles that pop and smell' But pack such totems and icons as we can to make short-term quarters feel like home.
or anywhere else
,* witf, mahrkey'between my stepkids and my natural ones Pillows, small rugs, watercolors can dispel much of the chilling anonymity of a
"nfamily''
in the motel room or sublet apartment. When we can, we should live in rooms with
6.Goodfamiliesprizetheirrituals.Nothingweldsafamilymorethanthese. stoves or fireplaces or at least candlelight. The ancient saying is still true: Extin-
because they evoke a past'
Rituals are vital .rp..i'uily for clans without histories, guished hearth, extinguished family.
i-pfy"future,urrdhirratcontinuity'NolineinthesederserviceatPassover Round tables help too, and as a friend of mine once put it, so do "too many
A clan becomes more of a
reassures more than the last: "Next year in Jerusalem!" comfortable chairs, with surfaces to put feet on, arranged so as to encourage a
(Christmas, birthdays, Thanks-
clan each time it gu,h.., to observe a fixed ritual maximum of eye contact." Such rooms inspire good talk, of which good clans can
to most funerals; those
**r, and so onf, grieves at a funeral (anyone may come never have enough.
rite of its own. Equinox break-
who do declare their tribalness), and devises a new 9. Good families, not just the blood kind, find some way to connect with
parades. sevelal of my colleagues
fasts can be at least as welding as Memorial Day posterity. "To forge a link in the humble chain of being, encircling heirs to ances-
Harbor Day, preferably to eat some polit-
and I used to meet for lunch Ivery Pearl tors," as Michael Novak has written, "is to walk within a circle of magic as primi-
tive as humans knew in caves." He is talking of course about babies, feeling them
leap in wombs, giving them suck. Parenthood, however, is a state which some
was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher and Jewish
theologian'
**u.[trt-1965) -Eds'
7
288 cHAPTER6 . coMMUNtTY
miss by chance and others by design, and a vocation to which not all are called.
Some of us, like the novelist Richard P. Brickner, look on as others "name their
children and their children in turn name their own lives, devising their own flags
from their parents' cloth." What are we who lack children to do? Build houses?
Plant trees? Write books or symphonies or laws? Perhaps, but even if we do these
things, there should be children on the sidelines if not at the center of our lives.
It is a sadly impoverished tribe that does not allow access to, and make much
of, some children. Not too much, of course; it has truly been said that never in
history have so many educated people devoted so much attention to so few chil-
dren. Attention, in excess, can turn to fawning, which isn t much better than neg-
lect. Still, if we don't regularly see and talk to and laugh with people who can
expect to outlive us by twentyyears or so, we had better get busy and find some.
10. Good families also honor their elders. The wider the age range, the
stronger the tribe. Jean-Paul Sartre and Margaret Mead, to name two sPectacu-
larly confident former children, have both remarked on the central importance of
grandparents in their own earlylives. Grandparents are now in much more abun-
dant supply than they were a generation or two ago, when old age was more rare.
If actual grandparents are not at hand, no family should have too hard a time
finding substitute ones to whom to pay unfeigned homage. The Soviet Union's
enchantment with day-care centers, I have heard, stems at least in part from the
state's eagerness to keep children away from their presumably subversive grand-
parents. Let that be a lesson to clans based on interest as well as to those based on
genes.
Exploring the Text
1. Identifr the sentence in which Iane Howard first states the thesis of her essay. Then
note the places where she restates her thesis, and discuss whether you find the rep-
etition effective.
2. How do you react to the traditional terms Howard uses that refer to family (chn'
tribe, kin, dynasty, blood, roots, patriarch)? How do you react to her more contem-
porary terms (network, surrogate mother' support system, extended family)? rl//hat
do your reactions tell you about your own idea of family?
3. What is the impact of the sources Howard cites and quotes? Consider her allusion
to Aristotle (para. 4), her conversation with "the two Helens" (paras. 7-8), her
illustration from novelist KurtVonnegut |r. (para.9), and the quotations from the
authors Susanne Langer (para. 18), Walker Percy (para. 18), and Michael Novak
(para.2l).
4. Examine the various figures of speech Howard
"who plays Houston Mission Control to everyone
uses, such as a family member
else's Apollo" (para. 12) and"a
wholesome, tacit emotional feudalism" (para. 14). What is their cumulative effect?
5. What rhetorical modes does Howard draw on in the overall organization of her
essay? Does one dominate? Explain.
ETZIONI . THE NEW COMMUNITY il
How would you describe the order in which Howard discusses the charqctcrlftl
of "good families"?
ln the years since Howard published Families,how have developmcnts rutrtdl
family and communications undercut or reinforced her thesis?
of the characteristics that Howard lists, which two do you think are mort lnp!
tant to a family?
The New Community
Aurru ErzroNl
sociologisr Amitoi Etzioni (b. 1929) escoped Nozi Germony ond or o taanai
fought in the lsroeli Wor for lndependence. Aher gening o phb from thl Unlwiil
of colifornio ot Berkeley in '1958, he tought ot-columbio Univcrrlly hr nrri
yeors' Loter, he becqme director of the lnstitute for Communitorion Pollcy SludlU r
George Woshington University. He hos written over twenty-four bookj, tneludlrr
The Limits of Privocy (1999), The Moral Dimension: Toword o Nrw roonial
(1988), ond From Empire to community: A New Approach lo lnlarnatlonel
tions l20o4l.ln 1990, he founded the communirorion Network, ducrlbd
ld
cnI
web site os "o not-for-profit, non-portison orgonizotion dedicoted to rhorlnq ui 1|
morol, sociol, ond politicol foundotions of society." rn the followlng .xedpt'f?al
The spirit of community: Righfs, Respo nsibilities, ond the communitortan
Afl6l
(1993), he exomines chonges in rhe concept of community or Amrrlcon
hos shifted from primorily rurol to urbon ond qrgues for ,,new communltlo
fili
l[w-hlt
people hove choices . . . but still mointoin common bonds.,,
[ ,:-h*9 to believe now, but for a long time the loss of communlty wil Ea
J-sidered to be liberating. Societies were believed to progress fr6m dod
knit, "primitivel'or rural villages to unrestrictive, "modern," or urban rcchth
The former were depicted as based on kinship and loyalty in an age in whlch
bOl
were suspect; the latter, however, were seen as based on reason (or,,ratlondlt#
in an era in which reason's power to illuminate was admired with little rthndc
paid to the deep shadows it casts. The two types of social relations have oftrn
bll
labeled with the terms supplied by a German sociologist, Ferdinand TOIM
one is gemeinschaft, the German term fgr communitS and the othcr lr
schaft, the German word for society, which he used to refer to peoplc wh6
3fd
rather few bonds, like people in a crowd or a mass society (comminity and Sx&/
H
- Far from decrying the loss of community, this sanguine approach to tha rii
of modernity depicted small towns and villages as backward piaces that conf,ill
behavior. American writers such as sinclair Lewis and Jolin o,Hara mtlrlll
small towns as insula6 claustrophobic places, inhabited by petty, mean.lpltll
people. They were depicted as the opposite of "big cities," whose atmocphjrr
m