- Hardcover: 268 pages
- Publisher: OUP Oxford; 1st Edition edition (23 Nov 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0199267952
- ISBN-13: 978-0199267958
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.2 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 901,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
The Fragmenting Family
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Brenda Almond throws down a timely challenge to the liberal consensus about personal relationships. She maintains that the traditional family is fragmenting in Western societies, and that this fragmentation is a cause of serious social problems. Behind this phenomenon Almond finds a new ideology according to which the family is seen no longer as a natural procreative unit, but rather as a social construction, a set of legal and social relationships. She gives an urgent warning about the danger of legal changes which weaken the contractual status of marriage and discount genetic and biological parenthood. These changes threaten the parent-child link which is fundamental to human life. The Fragmenting Family challenges widespread beliefs about commitment and freedom in partnerships and parenthood. Almond urges that we reconsider our attitudes to sex and reproduction in order to strengthen our most important social institution, the family, which is the key to ensuring healthy relationships between parents and children and a secure upbringing for the citizens of the future. Anyone who is concerned about how the framework of society is changing, anyone who has to face difficult personal decisions about parenthood or family relationships, will find this book compelling. It may disturb deep convictions, or offer an unwelcome message; but it is compassionate as well as controversial.
About the Author
Brenda Almond is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Philosophy of the University of Hull and Vice-President of the Society for Applied Philosophy. She has served on the Human Genetics Commission and with the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority in the United Kingdom and her books include The Philosophical Quest (Penguin, 1990) and Exploring Ethics: A Traveller's Tale (Blackwell, 1998).
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First Sentence
It would be difficult to understand the decline and fragmentation of the family without first taking a broad look at the way conceptions of the family have changed. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
It would be difficult to understand the decline and fragmentation of the family without first taking a broad look at the way conceptions of the family have changed. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Almond is clear-sighted in her examination of the profound changes taking place in our concept of the traditional family. She points to the consequences of these changes in society, some of them dire. Her book is acutely argued and thought-provoking, while avoiding the trap of easy solutions. This is an important book, which should be required reading for everyone interested in the future of the family.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is written by a woman with a target audience of women. The book has nothing to offer men readers since it barely acknowledges their existence. The majority of the book is about the effects of feminism on the family. The front cover of the book shows a woman and a child; no sign of the father. This just about sums up the book; the father gets little or no mention. This is an academic , theoretical , philosophical study and like any modern political philosophy books; barely acknowledges the everyday problems of the real world. Most of the philosophical background to the discussion is based on rich , well educated non-conformists who did not have to worry about the financial effects of their unconventional lifestyles. The transfer of these lifestyles to ordinary working people today has been totally catastrophic with regards to family. There are too many important points made in the book which are buried in the text like throwaway lines where the significance is not discussed properly. An excellent example of this is with regards to adoption by same-sex couples. The author makes the statement that adoption by same-sex couples is not desirable because the couple is more likely to beak up before a different-sex married couple. The author then quickly drops the subject. Having previously made the statement that married couples stay together longer than co-habiting or same-sex couples and that marriage is on the decline ; you would expect remarks that adoption by co-habiting couples in future is likely to be little different to same-sex. The controversy of religious opposition to same-sex adoption is brushed aside in a very offhand manner; strange attitude since virtually all opposition to same-sex marriage and adoption is religious. Like most modern political philosophers , the author seems afraid of the flak which will result if she gets into the real-life problems. The disastrous effect of the CSA on the lives of absent fathers is not discussed. The modern liberated women with numerous children by numerous fathers is discussed superficially. The stereotype of women taking in an unemployed partner , get pregnant and throw out the father because she can get more money from the CSA than the father; vaguely hinted at , but not discussed. The author does try to show an even-handed middle-of-the-road attitude to each chosen subject but it becomes increasingly clear that she lives in an ivory tower and shows no understanding of real-life problems or how to get out of the minefield created by the aloof theoretical philosophers and lawmakers. The book also demonstrates how decisions affecting the family are taken by the university educated upper-classes and imposed without consultation on the peasants with little regards to the disastrous effect they have on their lives. Reading between the lines of this book would suggest that the current unmarried mother with numerous children to numerous fathers will continue to increase. The CSA will continue to criminalise the fathers and ruin any hope these men have to repairing their lives. As unemployment rises and future generations of children are fathered by the unemployed; who is going to pay for this fiasco: not discussed. The current law changes are feminist driven; the lawmakers intend to promote the mother/child family and discourage the mother/father/child family. This would have to be state supported as the father is on the run from the CSA. The existing family is ideal for a low government interference strategy; the new feminist structure requires a high government interference strategy. This may account for it's favoured status by the current ruling classes. Being an academic orientated book, there are references to future reading ; this would be essential as the book is not stand-alone and has virtually no results of studies to back up any comments made in the book. To suit a layman reader this book needs to be able to function as a stand-alone. At the moment this book reads from cover to cover as a series of opinions by various philosophers but there is no indication whether these opinions are backed up with any facts. Long-winded and boring with great distances between the useful scraps of information.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Support for the traditional family
19 April 2007
Format:Hardcover
Almond is clear-sighted in her examination of the profound changes taking place in our concept of the traditional family. She points to the consequences of these changes in society, some of them dire. Her book is acutely argued and thought-provoking, while avoiding the trap of easy solutions. This is an important book, which should be required reading for everyone interested in the future of the family.
Important analysis of the family
9 Feb 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Almond covers a wide range of issues that are of central existential importance to human beings in their personal and political lives. Almond's stated aim for the book is as follows:
"What I hope to show is how largely independent projects in many areas of human knowledge and creativity have combined in what is in effect an onslaught on the increasingly fragile institution of the family" (p. 5).
Perhaps of special interest to philosophers is Almond's brief discussion of the ideals and relationships of three different couples- William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The book's primary focus centers on topics of more universal interest, such as the meaning of family, divorce, same-sex marriage, and reproductive technologies. The ethical framework employed by Almond is a natural law approach that, while consistent with the religious traditions that may share some of its elements, does not look to doctrine or religious authority for its justification. Rather, for Almond, we can find the basis for a natural law approach to sexual morality, commitment, loyalty, and family in the facts of human nature. And she thinks that when we connect sex, commitment, and loyalty, we are more likely to succeed in the human quest for happiness than if we opt for some alternative approach. In the realm of the family, the notion that children like families and that families exist only secondarily as a means of happiness for adults drives much of her argument.
Almond's view is conservative, in a sense, and she makes use of not only philosophical support but also some of the relevant empirical evidence to justify her conclusions. One example will suffice to illustrate this. She notes that contrary to the commonly held belief that children are better off after a divorce than they would be in a family in which the marriage is an unhappy one, there is empirical evidence showing that "short of abuse or violence, quarrelling parents are less damaging for children than family break-up" (p. 143). Moreover, the evidence shows that most divorces are not the result of a high level of conflict between the parents, and that children whose parents have a low-conflict marriage and get a divorce are likely to suffer psychologically and emotionally over the long-term as a result.
Those who advocate the new ideology family, which takes it to be nothing more than a social construct that can be changed as we see fit, need to consider the arguments Almond puts forth in this important book. And anyone interested in the moral and political debates surrounding this institution as well as the potential impact of family policies in the United States and Europe will find much food for thought in its pages.
"What I hope to show is how largely independent projects in many areas of human knowledge and creativity have combined in what is in effect an onslaught on the increasingly fragile institution of the family" (p. 5).
Perhaps of special interest to philosophers is Almond's brief discussion of the ideals and relationships of three different couples- William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The book's primary focus centers on topics of more universal interest, such as the meaning of family, divorce, same-sex marriage, and reproductive technologies. The ethical framework employed by Almond is a natural law approach that, while consistent with the religious traditions that may share some of its elements, does not look to doctrine or religious authority for its justification. Rather, for Almond, we can find the basis for a natural law approach to sexual morality, commitment, loyalty, and family in the facts of human nature. And she thinks that when we connect sex, commitment, and loyalty, we are more likely to succeed in the human quest for happiness than if we opt for some alternative approach. In the realm of the family, the notion that children like families and that families exist only secondarily as a means of happiness for adults drives much of her argument.
Almond's view is conservative, in a sense, and she makes use of not only philosophical support but also some of the relevant empirical evidence to justify her conclusions. One example will suffice to illustrate this. She notes that contrary to the commonly held belief that children are better off after a divorce than they would be in a family in which the marriage is an unhappy one, there is empirical evidence showing that "short of abuse or violence, quarrelling parents are less damaging for children than family break-up" (p. 143). Moreover, the evidence shows that most divorces are not the result of a high level of conflict between the parents, and that children whose parents have a low-conflict marriage and get a divorce are likely to suffer psychologically and emotionally over the long-term as a result.
Those who advocate the new ideology family, which takes it to be nothing more than a social construct that can be changed as we see fit, need to consider the arguments Almond puts forth in this important book. And anyone interested in the moral and political debates surrounding this institution as well as the potential impact of family policies in the United States and Europe will find much food for thought in its pages.
Devastating--terrifying--what's happened to children
4 Oct 2009
Format:Paperback
The last fifty years have been devastating to the health, happiness, and future of children.
Almond's research reveals just how enormous the change has been. From the middle of the 20th century, when divorce and illegitimacy were rare, to the collapse of marriage just a few decades later there has been a seismic convulsion in our perception of marriage.
Modern, reliable birth control methods made sex freer than at any time in history. At the same time, many feminists painted "a picture in which the care of children was seen as an obstacle to a woman's self-fulfillment" (p 66). Not that the idea that children were a burden was new. Buddha famously said, when "told of the birth of his child...'A fetter has been forged for me'" (p 44). Words no doubt his child could treasure.
The research on just how all this has harmed children has been trickling in since the beginning of the change. And now we have studies from almost every country in the world, poor countries and rich countries, developed and undeveloped countries, and the research is painfully conclusive.
Single parenting harms children.
Children raised without both biological parents are at huge risk for drug abuse, early sexual problems, and school problems. The only exception to this pattern is when a parent dies. Apparently, this one exception causes little damage.
Children raised in single or blended families were 200% more likely than children living with their biological parents to commit a crime. Almond quotes Gallagher who wrote, "The negative health effects of parental non-marriage and divorce linger long into their children's adult lives. This health gap cannot be explained entirely by lower incomes or reduced access to medical care'" (p 148). Worst of all, perhaps, research suggests that these children will be dogged with emotional problems throughout their adult lives.
And no, reconstituted families don't help. Those children living with in a blended family are at "more than eight times the risk of abuse than children living with their two natural parents" (p 140).
Research shows that "short of abuse or violence, quarreling parents are less damaging for children than family break-up" (p 143).
There have also been other repercussions of the new sexual freedom. In Europe, the "UN assessment is that the European population as a whole is likely to decline....by almost one hundred million of the first fifty years of the twenty-first century--a fall at least a dramatic as that caused by the Black Death in the 14th century" (p 173).
A very troubling book, but one that needs to be widely read.
Almond's research reveals just how enormous the change has been. From the middle of the 20th century, when divorce and illegitimacy were rare, to the collapse of marriage just a few decades later there has been a seismic convulsion in our perception of marriage.
Modern, reliable birth control methods made sex freer than at any time in history. At the same time, many feminists painted "a picture in which the care of children was seen as an obstacle to a woman's self-fulfillment" (p 66). Not that the idea that children were a burden was new. Buddha famously said, when "told of the birth of his child...'A fetter has been forged for me'" (p 44). Words no doubt his child could treasure.
The research on just how all this has harmed children has been trickling in since the beginning of the change. And now we have studies from almost every country in the world, poor countries and rich countries, developed and undeveloped countries, and the research is painfully conclusive.
Single parenting harms children.
Children raised without both biological parents are at huge risk for drug abuse, early sexual problems, and school problems. The only exception to this pattern is when a parent dies. Apparently, this one exception causes little damage.
Children raised in single or blended families were 200% more likely than children living with their biological parents to commit a crime. Almond quotes Gallagher who wrote, "The negative health effects of parental non-marriage and divorce linger long into their children's adult lives. This health gap cannot be explained entirely by lower incomes or reduced access to medical care'" (p 148). Worst of all, perhaps, research suggests that these children will be dogged with emotional problems throughout their adult lives.
And no, reconstituted families don't help. Those children living with in a blended family are at "more than eight times the risk of abuse than children living with their two natural parents" (p 140).
Research shows that "short of abuse or violence, quarreling parents are less damaging for children than family break-up" (p 143).
There have also been other repercussions of the new sexual freedom. In Europe, the "UN assessment is that the European population as a whole is likely to decline....by almost one hundred million of the first fifty years of the twenty-first century--a fall at least a dramatic as that caused by the Black Death in the 14th century" (p 173).
A very troubling book, but one that needs to be widely read.
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