Lang III - Article I

FAMILY IS A PRIVATE AFFAIR

08/2010

WHEN we think about the typical family situation in Argentina, images from those Coca-Cola advertisements in red and yellow come to mind: always but always two parents - mum and dad - and two children. However, as a consequence of recent economic and socio-cultural changes in our country, new working tendencies and social life-styles which were formerly unusual, or even considered politically and morally incorrect, have become commonplace and have crafted new family bonds and prototypes that make us reconsider the nature and form of the picture-perfect family. If there exists any picture-perfect family at all, that is.

New Life-Styles and Working Trends

Especially after the economic crisis in 2001, with the consequent decline in the living standard for most of the population, some couples have had to financially support and look after their elderly parents, having no choice but to add them to their nuclear family. Moreover, possibly due to greater sexual liberty but combined with lack of information on birth control, many teenage couples that undergo unplanned pregnancies need to be joined to a nuclear family too; for they are still not economically ready to move out and they themselves and their babies need to be looked after for a little longer.

There are also people who are left alone without a partner and raise their offspring on their own; as well as there are widows or widowers and divorced parents that re-marry and start new families joining the children from former marriages to those who are fruit of a new relationship. Additionally, more and more women in modern society are thinking it twice before saying “Yes, I do” and - even if they do decide to marry - prefer to focus on their careers and put off or even forgo motherhood. At the other end of the spectrum, there are couples, as well as single women or men, who fervently desire to have children but are physically unable to do so and who resort to adoption, in vitro fertilization or less conventional methods such as surrogate mothers to start a family.

New Family Types

These changes in lifestyles are some of the reasons why we are witnessing the emergence of new family configurations: extended families; single mums, single dads; step families; live-in couples; dual-income-no-kids families; adoptive families, disfunctional families. Plus, a bill legalizing same-sex marriage with child adoption rights was signed into law on 26th Thursday, giving reason why further new family types will soon be part of our Argentinian reality. The marketing people at Coca-Cola should bear these changes in mind and rethink their branding strategy since our idea of the mum-dad-Tomi-and-Luli family as the typical family is most likely to change in the future.

Reconsidering the Concept of Family

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that the “red and yellow” model has been agreed to be the very one that represents families only by convention, while it cannot really be said that there is one specific type that stands for them all. Experience shows that rather than be based on what it should be like, i.e its politically and morally correct form, a family’s configuration is based on its nature – what it is. Therefore, we should start to think about the concept of family in more private terms.

The Way Forward

Hopefully, when we think about the typical family situation in Argentina in the future, we will be able to think of a multicolour picture created by the ordinary people in which all family configurations will be included. For those of us who believe that conventionality is not morality, much less commonplace, it is comforting to know that family will no longer be Coke’s affair.

(TASK:
“What is the typical family situation in your country today?

• Have there been any significant changes over the last decade?
• What are the probable reasons?
• How do you feel about these things?”)