Time with the Family--Past and Present (5-2)

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The sun was rising. A woman got up from a straw mat on the floor of her simple two-room family cottage. Her husband and their four children were still asleep on the mat. (There were five other children: the couple gave two of them to a family with too few workers; the other three died long ago.) The woman pushed aside the family goats. When she started the fire for cooking, the man and the children got up. While the daughter helped with the housework, the sons went outside to work in the fields with their father. They could see a castle, not far away. The family lived under the protection of the lord and master of the castle. They weren't his slaves or servants, but they paid him taxes. There was no schooling, so they couldn't read or write or get jobs in cities. During the long workday, they took breaks only for meals. Occasionally, they went to the village center, where they laughed and talked and played games. At night, people of the community got together around big fires; they told stories about the past. Most families used to live this way in England over eight hundred years ago.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Japanese family was much more 'traditional" than the typical American family. Young people didn't even use to date; in other words, they didn't go out together as couples. Instead, their parents arranged their marriages. Maybe they fell in love after they got married, and maybe they didn't. Either way, the wife had children and stayed home with them while the husband supported the family financially. He rarely helped in the household; he seldom spent time with the children. He used to make all the rules, and then his family followed them. When they got older, the children had to work on the farm or in the family business. Often, the husband and wife and their children lived in an extended family situation--three generations in the same crowded house. Because marriage was not an individual matter, family life didn't use to be much fun. It was hard work.

Where I grew up, the community on our street was like an extended family. There was no space between our row houses, and they all had front steps, All the children in the neighborhood used to play ball on those steps; on the warmest evenings, the neighbors used to sit outside on the steps to talk. For these reasons, even at an early age I knew about everyone's family forms and situations For instance, our next-door neighbors were two women with an adopted son. To the left lived an older couple, married over forty years; they took care of their grandchildren. Two families lived in the same house across the street: a single mother with her ten-year-old daughter and an unmarried couple with a small baby. Next to them lived a successful businesswoman. She was married, but she didn't live with her husband because he had a better job and a new life in another country. Now I'm married and live with my family in another neighborhood. Even so, I will never forget the families of my community when I was young.

A few years ago, a young woman left her family, married again, and moved far away with her new husband. For this reason, a thirty-six-year-old divorced father has custody of his two children, eleven and eight years old. He usually has to work weekends as a waiter, so he can't spend much time with his son and daughter. Even so, he still takes them to movies when possible. On his days off from work, he goes to a loca1c.ommunity college. He's studying to improve his job skills so he can make more money for his family; at night he does his homework at the same table as the children. But who takes care of them when their father is working or going to school? His "extended family"--his mother, other relatives, and his girlfriend--help out as much as they can. The children used to go to the college child-care center; now they sometimes stay and play at the community sports center Because this hard-working father loves his family very, much, he believes their lives will get better and better.