Talking about family values

The idea of "family values" seems to be a perennial point of contention in our national elections.

On one hand, I am more than a bit worried about how this phrase gets thrown around. Too often it seems to be used as a standard used to condemn and exclude. It becomes a code word for a certain, and rather narrow, way of understanding what a family is and how it ought to work.

On the other hand, I am encouraged to see our society taking a look at the state of our families and how public policy affects them. We do need to better understand what a family is, what role it plays in our private and public lives, and what we can do to support and strengthen it.

The reality is we are not even all that sure how to define "family." Though various public and private agencies and groups regularly convene conferences and gatherings on "the family," often they struggle to merely come up with a definition of what a family is.

That may sound silly because we all have an idea of family, but, in fact, it is crucial to our understanding of families that we have some sort of common understanding of what we're talking about. Is a family a mom, dad, and kids in the tradition of Ozzie and Harriet and "Father Knows Best" television series? If you start with this definition, you exclude an awful lot of people who think of themselves as families, including some of our own friends, siblings, sons and daughters, perhaps even ourselves.

When it gets personal like that, we start to broaden our definition a bit. Yet we do have to draw the line someplace. For example, a single person living alone probably can't be called a family if the word is to have any real meaning.

Some people, then, have come to see the family as a social unit headed by one or more adults whose primary purpose is the raising of children. A couple is just that - a couple; a single person is a single person.

Notice I didn't specify "blood" ties, or living arrangements, or who's head of the household. Often we tack on the word "traditional" to the phrase "family values" when we want to get specific about that. We usually mean a family headed by a man who is the sole wage earner, with the woman taking care of managing the house they all live in and raising their biologically related children.

Actually in just trying to define family some of the issues in the debate over the family become evident. Is the traditional family the best way to be a family and do the things a family is supposed to do? Or are some of the other ways of being family - single-parent families, remarried families, adoptive families, interracial families, families headed by homosexuals - also effective ways to do the work of families?

Which brings us to yet another facet of the debate: Just what kind of children are families supposed to raise? All sides of the debate correctly realize that the sort of family a child is raised in does play a significant role in forming that child's beliefs and lifestyle. As a society we do have a right to think about the sort of citizens we want and what type of families do the best job of raising such our citizens.

You know, this is a lot more complicated than it seems; and perhaps a lot more important than we realize.

I'm not going to tell you how to define family, what sort of citizens we need, or what families are best at raising them. You need to decide that for yourself - and vote accordingly. I am going to add one cautionary note.

We can't just look to the past for answers to these questions. The "traditional" family that we have assumed was the norm in this country not too long ago did not actually exist for a vast majority of people. The statistics suggest most of us grew up in families that simply did not fit this mold.

So unless you're willing to write off most of the adult population, there do seem to be different ways to raise decent people. What sort of families today's children need, and how to support such families, is the real "family values" question we need to talk about.

• The Rev. Ken Potts is a pastoral counselor and marriage and family therapist with Samaritan Interfaith Counseling Centers, Naperville and Downers Grove. His book, "Take One A Day," can be ordered at local bookstores or online.