Article June 26, 1989 Issue

We are all one family

Many people romanticize the so-called traditional family and yearn for "the good old days." And yet from a historical perspective those days may not have been all that ideal. Problems with the family are not exactly new.

So it's useful to get some perspective. For instance, before the Industrial Revolution, it was normal that fathers and mothers both supported the family by working at home, trying to make ends meet in a largely agrarian society. With industrialization, fathers were forced to work outside of the home, which caused enormous adjustments in the family and the mores of work.

Consider that in the 1830s and 40s the education of women was generally viewed as a threat to society. A minister in England wrote: "Neither reason nor Christianity invites woman to the professor's chair, or conducts her to the bar, or makes her welcome to the pulpit .... They claim not for her the right of suffrage, nor any immunity by which she may 'usurp authority over the man.'"^{Quoted in "'The Woman Question,'" Christianity Today, July 15, 1988, p. 20 .}

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