Many countries have constitutions or some sort of founding document.
What about families? Would a family constitution be a good thing?
"One of the most difficult things about being part of a family, after all, is that it is an informal, unregulated space – a failed state-in-waiting, you might almost say. No one can agree whether it should be a democracy or a tyranny or benevolent despotism. Certainly it is a kind of oligarchy, as the parents are always richer than the children. Matters are complicated further – at least in families with two parents – because, unusually for governing bodies, there are two first ministers with theoretically equal powers.
Plato wrote that the state is the individual writ large. He might as well have made the same observation about the family. But no one could govern a state the way a family is governed, ie making it up as you go along. So perhaps families could learn something from political states. Perhaps families, like many states, should have a constitution that would define what its purposes are as well as its aims, goals and legal presumptions.
Such a family/state would, I confess, look very little like most nation states, because the types of power being wielded are only partly economic and legal. The cudgels are of a symbolic nature (though nonetheless effective for that). Power is played out not only through what one might call practical power, which is what the adults have – being able to drive a car, controlling the family bank – but also emotional power. This could include sulking, tantrums, emotional withdrawal, and, on the other side of the coin, radical cuteness. The family constitution in most cases will fall into two sub-categories, power being negotiated between party 1 (the parents) and party 2 (the children), and also between parent A and parent B.
Both negotiations will tend to throw up particular dilemmas. One part of the polity, the children, tend to live under the political myth that they inhabit a democracy, whereas the first party, the parents, know that party 2 are actually living in an autocratic state (which may be disguised by smiles and hugs – what you might call soft power).
Meanwhile, party 1 are equally in a state of confusion, as who wields the royal seal is always in dispute. Who has the final say? In Guardian-reading households, of course, decisions are maturely negotiated and consensus reached. In all other households, either one or the other of the partners implicitly gives up their power to the other, or they bicker endlessly about who is in control.
However, under a written family constitution, certain rights/duties might be defined specifically and in advance as falling to one or other parent – perhaps choosing a holiday or deciding on the finances, or defining how the children are to be brought up, or putting up shelves. A summit could be held at the beginning of a marriage or parenthood, and these negotiated functions and powers written down then framed in the front room, as a source of reference and authority. Where interpretation was ambiguous, a third party – perhaps a mediator – could be brought in where no agreement could be reached, using the constitution as a template.Amendments could be made to the constitution with the agreement of all key parties."
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/26/families-should-have-constitutions-too What do you think? Something to consider for your family?
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