Re: Family structure effects

http://www.familiam.org/pcpf/allegati/1 ... search.pdf

Attempting to paste from this gave a column of individual words, so no quote. Good research by a Mexican sociologist. This is a summary, and it is almost two dozen pages long, so is not for those who want easy reading.

I'm thinking this could apply to the Beowulf and Yeltsin family structures, since he drew on hundreds of international researches.

Also found:

http://www.frc.org/issuebrief/new-study ... s-research

Unfortunately this is highly focused. On the other hand, as is pointed out, most research on this focus is poorly done. Much more readable, but unlikely to apply to the Honorverse.

DDHvi wrote:http://www.familiam.org/pcpf/allegati/1397/Summary_Mexican_Research.pdf

Attempting to paste from this gave a column of individual words, so no quote. Good research by a Mexican sociologist. This is a summary, and it is almost two dozen pages long, so is not for those who want easy reading.

I'm thinking this could apply to the Beowulf and Yeltsin family structures, since he drew on hundreds of international researches.

Haven't gotten too far into it, but it occurs to me that family living among family is likely to be far more typical of Grayson than Beowulf.

Part of that is "person as atom" element of post-industrial societies with lots of personal mobility like we see in the first world today. Beowulf looks like exactly such a society. There, to the extent that family ties remain very important, they wouldn't need to be reflected in where you are living or with whom, because communications and transportation mean you get all the mutual support benefits without any strong need to be living with or near one another.

Grayson is very different. It hasn't had the history of such effective communications and transportation, but more to the point, any living area represents a large capital investment and maintenance effort, so the household of four married adults and a slew of offspring is, if anything, on the small side for an ideal (traditional) Grayson domicile. Your family is the minimum group of people for remaining alive day by day.

Whole domed cities will change that, as will a sex ratio among native Graysons getting back toward 1:1, but knowing Graysons, I imagine they will change things carefully and slowly. Households consisting of two married couples, with one spouse from each couple siblings, for instance, may show up, and if Graysons are happy with married groups having unmarried adult daughters and sisters (or sons and brothers, for that rarer matter) remaining in the family household (no reason they shouldn't), being able to set up a home privately won't mean pressure to do so.

JeffEngel wrote: Haven't gotten too far into it, but it occurs to me that family living among family is likely to be far more typical of Grayson than Beowulf.

Part of that is "person as atom" element of post-industrial societies with lots of personal mobility like we see in the first world today. Beowulf looks like exactly such a society. There, to the extent that family ties remain very important, they wouldn't need to be reflected in where you are living or with whom, because communications and transportation mean you get all the mutual support benefits without any strong need to be living with or near one another.

Grayson is very different. It hasn't had the history of such effective communications and transportation, but more to the point, any living area represents a large capital investment and maintenance effort, so the household of four married adults and a slew of offspring is, if anything, on the small side for an ideal (traditional) Grayson domicile. Your family is the minimum group of people for remaining alive day by day.

Whole domed cities will change that, as will a sex ratio among native Graysons getting back toward 1:1, but knowing Graysons, I imagine they will change things carefully and slowly. Households consisting of two married couples, with one spouse from each couple siblings, for instance, may show up, and if Graysons are happy with married groups having unmarried adult daughters and sisters (or sons and brothers, for that rarer matter) remaining in the family household (no reason they shouldn't), being able to set up a home privately won't mean pressure to do so.

Glad you read it (or at least some of it) Jeff; reading 30+ page papers with as little description as DDHv gave is not my idea of a pleaseant read.

As for Grayson household changes, I wonder, based on your conclusions, Jeff, if the 'linear' family, something like the "Loonies" in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is the next possible evolution.

And as an aside, if you haven't read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" yet, give yourself a dope slap and get thee to a library/used book store/internet and read it. It's not my favorite of all time, but it's in the top 5.

An interesting report.

When examining any report--especially one which is not peer-reviewed, such as this one--it is important to consider the source of the document. In this case, the research appears to have been commissioned by the Pontifical Council for the Family, one the agencies of the Roman Curia. Both authors and most of the experts who conducted the research work for religious organizations.

That said, both authors are indeed professors (at private Catholic universities), and have produced other professional work.

One mild problem when reading the report is that it appears to be a translation of the original. There are frequent errors in punctuation, spacing, and grammar. The consistent errors in spacing around punctuation make me wonder if it was reformatted mechanically. But if it is a translation, I think it is good enough to be readable. Though the errors make reading somewhat harder, I think the intent of the text is understandable without much difficulty.

The researchers initially planned to run their own survey, then decided to do an analysis of existing surveys and census data.

I think the raw data collected by the researchers is fine in itself. Much of it comes from Mexican census data and surveys by the Mexican government. I can't read Spanish, so I can't really examine the original surveys from which the researchers got their data, but I have little reason to doubt the raw data as presented. I am mildly concerned that I have not been able to track some of the sources down, since the website they got some data from (bdsocial.org) appears to have been taken over by a domain pirate who has claimed and is trying to sell the domain name.

I am somewhat more wary of accepting the conclusions of the researchers, regarding the well-being of people in different family environments. I would want to examine the original data closer. If the report were peer-reviewed, I would assume that the reviewers had done some of that examination or were familiar with some of the original sources. Since it is not peer reviewed and I cannot read the original sources, I have no external reassurance that all important relevant sources were used and that the data was interpreted correctly.

So all I can really say is that it is an interesting report. Some of the raw data might be interesting in comparison with Honorverse examples like Grayson and Beowulf. I would be somewhat more cautious in applying the conclusions of the researchers to the Honorverse, but that may not be as productive anyway.

Hutch wrote:

JeffEngel wrote: Haven't gotten too far into it, but it occurs to me that family living among family is likely to be far more typical of Grayson than Beowulf.

Part of that is "person as atom" element of post-industrial societies with lots of personal mobility like we see in the first world today. Beowulf looks like exactly such a society. There, to the extent that family ties remain very important, they wouldn't need to be reflected in where you are living or with whom, because communications and transportation mean you get all the mutual support benefits without any strong need to be living with or near one another.

Grayson is very different. It hasn't had the history of such effective communications and transportation, but more to the point, any living area represents a large capital investment and maintenance effort, so the household of four married adults and a slew of offspring is, if anything, on the small side for an ideal (traditional) Grayson domicile. Your family is the minimum group of people for remaining alive day by day.

Whole domed cities will change that, as will a sex ratio among native Graysons getting back toward 1:1, but knowing Graysons, I imagine they will change things carefully and slowly. Households consisting of two married couples, with one spouse from each couple siblings, for instance, may show up, and if Graysons are happy with married groups having unmarried adult daughters and sisters (or sons and brothers, for that rarer matter) remaining in the family household (no reason they shouldn't), being able to set up a home privately won't mean pressure to do so.

Glad you read it (or at least some of it) Jeff; reading 30+ page papers with as little description as DDHv gave is not my idea of a pleaseant read.

As for Grayson household changes, I wonder, based on your conclusions, Jeff, if the 'linear' family, something like the "Loonies" in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is the next possible evolution.

And as an aside, if you haven't read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" yet, give yourself a dope slap and get thee to a library/used book store/internet and read it. It's not my favorite of all time, but it's in the top 5.

I have, but it's been about 30 years now so recollection is slight.

And I can't claim too much credit, I've only gotten about 2-3 pages in and am a bit distracted since then. I hope DDHvi can fill us in a bit on what he/she takes to be relevant there.

JeffEngel wrote:And I can't claim too much credit, I've only gotten about 2-3 pages in and am a bit distracted since then. I hope DDHvi can fill us in a bit on what he/she takes to be relevant there.

Just the fact that someone is doing decent comparative research on the actual results from alternatives to the nuclear/extended family structure.

Statistics, properly handled can produce good results. However, many prefer distorting the results when they don't like them.

Fiction can handwavium anything, but we live in the real world. If handwavium worked here, we would have interstellar travel, which I've read about since first stumbling on "Mission of Gravity" in Astounding.