Balancing family life with work has become a great challenge under the circumstances created by the modern welfare state. The consequences are more than obvious. The society we are living in is based on cultural progressive ideas, which promote a peculiar type of development, supporting the free individual rather than of the family. And where does this path lead us?.
For the past decade we have assisted to an alarming increase rate of divorces, unemployment, and single-parenthood. Two weeks ago I had the honor to attend a lecture entitled “Equality versus Freedoms and Rights” held in the European Parliament where Mrs. Helen Alvare, a distinguished law professor from George Mason University in the United States of America, highlighted the number one indicator of poverty among women is represented by the single-parenthood phenomenon. A proper understanding of the importance of the family as a fundamental institution, indispensable for the proper development of the modern society, is needed. It is a basic fact of life that strong and united families are of the utmost importance in building up a competitive socio-economic environment. Parents should share a common responsibility for raising and upbringing up their children, because the foundation of the children development is found within the family they grow up in. The main role of parents is to be exemplary, and teach them how to live in and enjoy genuine freedom. A strong family is essential in maintaining the social fabric of a healthy society and it represents the place where future generations get the moral grounding to lead in the future.
Balancing work with family life is crucial. You cannot separate the means from the ends, and it is important that the parents have the financial means to achieve the right balance between work and raising their children. To be a parent has become an increasingly complex matter in the present society. We are witnessing how traditional patterns of living and relations are progressively replaced, step by step, by a more individualized society focused on the autonomous individual rather than on human beings living in inter-dependence. In this case parents need to know how to organize their work and family time, to be able to educate their children to achieve their full potential in life.
A strong family is the cornerstone of a free and democratic society. Investing in families is one of the most important answers to economic recovery in a society struck by recession and greed. We need a responsible action based on a proper understanding of the reality, and that people are human beings entitled with intrinsic dignity living in relations and inter-dependence.
By Victor Ciumac, a WYA member in Romania.
