People believe that they are spectators of their love, when they are protagonists
The family can not be reduced to a theme, a question, or a fashion. It influences all the primary human realities and is transversal to many aspects of human experience. It is also the basic cell of society.
With the aim of addressing the crisis that the family is going through, it becomes necessary rediscover the family, make a diagnosis of their deficiencies and diseases and offer rehabilitation proposals. And that is precisely what Rediscover the Family (Ed. Palabra) aims to achieve, book with a positive message, which responds to the need to tell the good things about marriage and family.
It presents three transversal ideas: the hope of the family, the idea of the family as Dependent beings of each other, and the public dimension of the family.
Nicolás Álvarez from Asturias, editor of the work, and María Álvarez de las Asturias, author of the same, respond in an interview for the program La Linterna de COPE to interesting questions about the book.
Is the family or the person in crisis?
Nicolás: The family certainly does not, what happens is that the desire that people have to have a family, and therefore have a place where they are loved for what they are, is difficult to achieve. Men adapt, over time, to very hostile means. And it is clear that today to form a family there are a host of hostile elements for which we must have creativity and imagination, and achieve it.
Mary: Nowadays family life is not easy, for many reasons. Daily life is a maelstrom, between economic difficulties, the difficulties of reconciling work - if you have it, if not even worse - with family life ... day to day is a stress and a very big difficulty. If we add to that, in addition, sometimes, decisions to get married come with a lack of maturity, real commitment, to support the given word and fight for that commitment, then we find that all this is still harder to live
Then, there is a crisis of values.
Nicolás: There is a crisis of values and there is a dysfunction between a desire and being aware that this desire requires on our part a series of weapons or elements that allow us to achieve it. In the background, many people think they are spectators of their own love and they are waiting to see how long it lasts. And they are not aware that in love, as in many important things in life, we are protagonists.
Why rediscover the family, is it hidden?
Nicolás: The family is, but it is the great absentee: in debates, in politics, in conversations ... Putting it in value and being aware that it is a wonderful asset, not only against the economic crisis, but for so many facets of the person It is the rediscovery of the century.
Mary: The family is beginning to demand prominence. It is true that the family has sustained the crisis, because through the family it is where the most vulnerable people are cared for, but now that the crisis is beginning to go back a little, the family is calling for a leading role in civil life, conciliation policies, aid, family policies are requested, and that is taken into account in political decisions of all kinds.
Why is there so much failure, what is happening, what is the diagnosis?
Nicolás: You get regular marriage. In the same way that we need to train ourselves to develop many dimensions, we need a training to relate, to persevere, to fight for someone we love, to respect, etc. That is one of the reasons. Another reason is that life is becoming increasingly difficult and you have to know how to know how to get ahead and who to tell ... many times the problem is knowing who to ask for help.
Mary: I am very concerned about the pessimism with which one goes to marriage and to the family. As we unfortunately realize that many marriages and many families are broken, we are seeing that young people come to marriage with the conviction that this is impossible, that sooner or later it will break. If we wait for a difficulty enough to break the marriage, we will find it.
Many times crisis means total rupture, right?
Mary: That is another mistake. A crisis is not synonymous with reason for rupture, except for exceptions. A crisis is an alteration of the balance in which people grow. Grow means effort, sacrifice, put many things on your side and fight with selfishness, which is not easy. In a situation of stability, a factor can be introduced that destabilizes that equilibrium. For example, the arrival of a child -cannot be better news-, introduces a very large destabilizing factor: schedule mismatch, lack of sleep, change the domestic organization, modify the relationship of couple, etc. For one thing, we have entered into a crisis.Normally we have enough resources to restore the order that has been lost, but when not, what you should do is ask for help.
What are, in broad strokes, the proposals that you collect in the book?
Mary: Initiatives that have emerged from fieldwork. Accompanying marriages, people, families, initiatives to respond to what these families needed. Sometimes it is help in difficulties, sometimes it is help in daily life that does not have to be difficulties: to be accompanied, to be supported, to be helped in the education of children... They are proposals that are already tested. This that we presented in the book has worked. And it has worked for good. That is why it seems necessary to tell us, at a time when there is discouragement and lack of hope.
How can laws help sustain the family?
Nicolás: The book points out that the family needs a suitable habitat. That habitat can be protected or it can be corrupted. The law can protect an environment in which the family is viable and give specific assistance or can corrupt that environment by distorting family life or making it very difficult.
Mary: What we propose as a solution to the crisis of the family is, on the one hand, training, which does not guarantee the success of a marriage union but helps a lot; not be alone, be accompanied by other families, schools of parents, groups of friends, etc. Being alone makes the day-to-day battle and the wear and tear it produces very difficult. And on the other, ask for help when something is not right, not when one is thinking of separating, but when things are not going well and when we have not been able to solve a problem that initially was not very serious, but that if we let it get fired and what it is doing is distancing the couple .
You can listen to the full interview here.
Isabel Martínez
