A Family-Centered Society

"The Homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only and that is to support the ultimate career." -CS Lewis  

We often wonder, "How can I live my best life? How can I fulfill my dreams and accomplish my goals?" But maybe the better question is, "What can I do to strengthen my family?" Unlike the individualistic focus on self, contributing to our families is not self-centered, it’s actually self-fulfilling. We actually become more than ourselves when we are living to serve our families.

Family is where it all begins, and where it all ends. We grow up in families, we continue our education in the world, date and eventually marry, raising families of our own. Even for those who never marry, family is home. Whether with roommates, siblings, parents, friends or cousins, until we can start our own families. We need each other.

Families can also be dynamic. They can grow or shrink. When we first meet someone, they are strangers to us, then friends, then family, figuratively if not literally through marriage or adoption. Family is the unifying of the race. We combine time, resources, experiences, knowledge, and abilities to progress together better than we could on our own.

Family is a better system for living our best lives than the lone individual facing the big world by themselves. In a family you don’t have to choose between working and learning or living. A father can work for example while the mother cares for children at home, and others go to school or play outside. As normal and basic as that sounds, that is the beauty of a strong family. The collaboration and diversification of labors so everyone can meet their needs both for survival, and individual expression.

Family is the fundamental unit of society. It is the first school, the first hospital, the first government, library, and church. It all begins in the home, and all our life experiences converge in the home. All societal institutions only exist as an extension of the family unit, to aid families in meeting the needs of their members.

A business exists to provide jobs that provide for families, and to provide products and services that meet the needs of individuals and their families. A church exists to supplement the faith learned in the home. A school exists to supplement the education that begins in the home. The hospital, the government, and so on all exist to support the family in caring for individuals.

How did you get a body? How were you raised? How did you learn to love and be loved? Where did you learn to communicate? Most likely, it began in your home, with your family. Family is the ideal learning environment. In a study done by the founders of Paradigm Charter Highschool they found that the ideal teaching arrangement, the Optimal Learning Experience (OLE) was created neither with 1 or 2 male or female teachers, teaching separately, or together. But with 1 male teacher and 1 female teacher, teaching the same subject together, at the same time, to a group of no more than 15 students. Upon further reflection we see that that is also the divine structure of the family. Families are divine.

Families are formed when a man and woman have a child. The woman births the child because of her biological and anatomical capacity to do so, and the man provides for and protects his wife and child because of his biological and anatomical capacity to do so. This exact scenario of a woman nurturing the children while the man protects and provides for them, forms an ideal image of a family. This image is ideal because it appropriately emphasizes the complimentary differences of men and women, and the need for both parents in a home.

Of course not everyone has such a family experience, but none will argue that a good home, with a man and woman committed to working together to nurture, provide for, and protect their children as they raise them to be responsible and contributing citizens, would not be a good thing.

Love is beautiful because it directs our attention to someone else, and something greater than ourselves and simultaneously brings out the best in us. Dating and finding a mate leads us to the formation of families. The very purpose of our relationships is to form families, and grow up together in life. And thus, in losing ourselves we find ourselves.

The ultimate outlet for applying everything that’s learned is in the home and with your family. Education, or rather, learning, is not limited to 4 years, or 10 years, or to any limited amount of time, but is the very purpose of life. It is human development, and human development begins, and continues through families. For an ideal life education we would want to teach universal, life-long principles that strengthen families such as emotional regulation, financial management, relationship skills, health, self-mastery, and serving others.

Family is a sense of "self" that's greater than an individual and gives us opportunities to develop character traits far greater than the empty self-seeking materialism the world offers.

The complimentary differences of men and women, the inter-generational wisdom of families, the divinely inspired optimal learning environment of the family and the home, the life-skills and character traits learned best in the home, and the fundamental influence on child development of parents, all indicate that family should be considered the center of our society and our lives.

We would do no wrong in dedicating our whole lives to support, strengthen and improve our own families and help others do the same. In fact, with many worldly ideologies and forces trying to prevent the formation of, weaken, or destroy families and thus society as a whole, that may be the most important work we could ever do.

Plus, it brings the degree of happiness and fulfilment that no other work ever can.