Wendell Berry’s newest novel in the Port William series, Andy Catlett, is set to be released on November 28th. I plan to start the book as soon as it arrives, and look forward to discussing it with my friend, colleague, and fellow Berryphile Donald Whitney (Whitney is a truer fan, however, since he actually owns a scythe).
In the meantime, I am intrigued by an interview with Berry in the Summer 2006 anniversary edition of the New Southerner magazine. Writer Holly M. Brockman interviews the novelist/essayist on a variety of topics, most interesting of which is Berry’s view of familial breakdown.
Brockman asks: “Large chunks of what used to be taken care of by family members–caring for children, the elderly, and education–has been outsourced to corporations in the form of daycare, preschool, and corporate sponsorship of education initiatives. You’ve written extensively about this and that these are signs of familial breakdown. Why is it a breakdown and what impact does it have on a family?”
Berry replies:
“The issue here is the extent to which a family is like a community in its need to live at the center of its own attention. A family necessarily begins to come apart if it gives its children entirely to the care of the school or the police, and its old people entirely to the care of the health industry. Nobody can deny the value of good care even away from home to people who have become helplessly ill or crippled or, in our present circumstances, the value of good daytime care for the children of single parents who have to work. Nevertheless, it is the purpose of the family to stay together. And like a community, a family doesn’t stay together just out of sentiment. It is certainly more pat to stay together if the various members need one another or are in some practical way dependent on one another. It’s probably worth the risk to say that families need to have useful work for their children and old people, little jobs that the other members are glad to have done.”
I think Berry misses the mark when he misses the church at this point. But, nonetheless, his diagnosis of the problem is correct. For too long we’ve assumed that familial breakdown is the result merely of a hostile media culture and the sexual revolution. Both of these are key to the kind of familial chaos we have inherited. But there’s more here too.
Many of our pastors are willing to take on abortion, promiscuity, adultery, and sexually-saturated media. A few of them are willing to address directly the issue of divorce, although the numbers are shrinking. But how many men of God are willing to address the issue of successful Christian parents with children tucked away in day-care centers and parents languishing forgotten in nursing homes?
As Berry notes, there are many instances where single parents need day-care (and we should help) and many more where medically-endangered elderly need long-term care. But then there’s the rest.
Corporate outsourcing is one option. But how’s it working out for us?
