EUROPEAN ROYALS & THE POWER OF THE FAMILY
INTRODUCTION
“My
grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s
ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”
― Ellen DeGeneres
“I don’t know
half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you
half as well as you deserve.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“Happiness is
having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”
― George Burns
“The capacity
for friendship is God’s way of apologizing for our families.”
― Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages
“When God
Created Mothers“
When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was
into His sixth day of „overtime“ when the angel appeared and said.
„You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.“
And God said, „Have you read the specs on
this order?“ She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180
moveable parts…all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap
that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken
leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands.“
The angel shook her head slowly and said.
„Six pairs of hands…. no way.“
It’s not the hands that are causing me
problems,“ God remarked, „it’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers
have to have.“
That’s on the standard model?“ asked the
angel. God nodded.
One pair that sees through closed doors when she
asks, ‚What are you kids doing in there?‘ when she already knows. Another here
in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t but
what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look
at a child when he goofs up and say. ‚I understand and I love you‘ without so
much as uttering a word.“
God,“ said the angel touching his sleeve
gently, „Get some rest tomorrow….“
I can’t,“ said God, „I’m so close to
creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who
heals herself when she is sick…can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger…and
can get a nine year old to stand under a shower.“
The angel circled the model of a mother very
slowly. „It’s too soft,“ she sighed.
But tough!“ said God excitedly. „You can imagine
what this mother can do or endure.“
Can it think?“
Not only can it think, but it can reason and
compromise,“ said the Creator.
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger
across the cheek.
There’s a leak,“ she pronounced. „I told You that
You were trying to put too much into this model.“
It’s not a leak,“ said the Lord,
„It’s a tear.“
What’s it for?“
It’s for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain,
loneliness, and pride.“
You are a genius, “ said the angel.
Somberly, God said, „I didn’t put it
there.”
― Erma Bombeck, When God Created Mothers
“After a good
dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
“My dear young
cousin, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t
give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.”
― Rick Riordan
“When your
mother asks, „Do you want a piece of advice?“ it’s a mere formality.
It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.”
― Erma Bombeck
“Siblings:
children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get
together.”
― Sam Levenson
“I don’t know
who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will
be.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“A father has
to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority
figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand
the concept of God?”
― Stephen Colbert, I Am America
“There is no
such thing as fun for the whole family.”
― Jerry Seinfeld
“Never judge someone by their relatives.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies
“If a man’s
character is to be abused, say what you will, there’s nobody like a relative to
do the business.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
“I can’t help
detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can
stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories
Raising kids is so hard, it takes grandparents as well as parents to make a good job of it
Grandparents, hug your grandchildren. They just may be the reason you’re here.
Research on the evolutionary roots of human aging patterns suggests that raising human young is so tough it takes both parents and grandparents to do it.
That explains the reason humans continue to live – and work – far beyond their prime reproductive years. It also explains why children’s survival rates increase as they get older and as more resources are invested in them.
The research, which builds on existing ideas of the importance of grandmothers in raising children in primitive societies, was aired Friday (Nov. 14) during the second in a series of lectures on population studies.
The series is sponsored by the School of Public Health’s Deans Office, the Provost’s Office, and the Center for Population and Development Studies.
The lecture, “Rethinking the Evolutionary Theory of Aging: Transfers, not Births, Shape Senescence in Social Species,” was delivered by Ron Lee, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Lee published his work in the Aug. 5 issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lee told the audience gathered in William James Hall’s basement auditorium that he became interested in the question of why we age as we do by accident. He was preparing for a class on aging, and after reviewing research on the biology of aging, was dissatisfied with the research’s conclusions.
FERTILITY AND AGING:
Prominent theories link human life span to fertility. And indeed, people do decline in health after fertility ends, roughly in their 40s.
But fertility alone doesn’t explain why we don’t die more rapidly after we’re done having kids, Lee said.
Lee used the Pacific salmon as an extreme example of a life cycle tied tightly to fertility. The Pacific salmon returns to the streams where it was born, breeds, and then dies.
Fertility also doesn’t explain why infants die at a higher rate than older children. If fertility were the sole driving force in human mortality, changes in the death rate wouldn’t be seen until fertility kicks in during the teenage years, when humans can start having children.
For answers, Lee turned to modern hunter-gatherer bands, including the Ache in South America’s Amazon River basin, whose lifestyle most closely resembles the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that ancient humans practiced.
Lee began studying the transfer of resources from generation to generation, measuring calories transferred to and from individuals. He found that adults in these hunter-gatherer societies produce more than they consume well into old age, until they’re near death.
Children, on the other hand, consume more than they produce until they reach 20 or 21. While the fact that children can’t take care of themselves is not surprising, Lee said the amount of resources that children consume is.
Raising a child to adulthood in these hunter-gatherer bands takes three to five times the resources it takes in agricultural communities. That’s roughly the equivalent of 10 years’ worth of adult consumption.
“Children are not carrying their own weight until age 20 or 21 in these groups,” Lee said. “I was surprised at how costly that was.”
The average age of consumption for these bands is 10 to 15 years younger than the average age of production. Lee said the evidence from these transfers of resources explains human life history far better than fertility alone.
“Investments in children are very large and they continue after cessation of fertility,” Lee said. “Children are very costly…. This explains postreproductive survival because older men and women are continuing to contribute.”
SIMILARITIES TO MODERN-DAY U.S.
Comparing his data on hunter-gatherers to modern U.S. populations, Lee found very similar patterns. The major difference, he said, is that in the modern United States, production from the elderly falls off steeply. Those over age 60 again become net consumers of resources rather than remaining the producers their hunter-gatherer counterparts are.
The emerging picture, Lee said, implies that there may be no natural limit on human life spans. Natural selection continues to work at older ages, though weakly, by improving the survival of grandchildren who are helped by both their parents and grandparents.
Lee described a recent meeting between scientists and the Social Security Administration on future population growth and aging. Though some scientists told administrators they thought humans today are nearing the limits of their natural life spans, Lee said he wasn’t so sure. This mechanism of intergenerational transfer may provide an evolutionary rationale for life spans to continue to lengthen.
“That may be good for us older people and for everyone who’s going to be older, but it does present some problems for Social Security,” Lee said.
Abstract
The structure of family relationships influences economic behavior and attitudes. We define our measure of family ties using individual responses from the World Value Survey regarding the role of the family and the love and respect that children need to have for their parents for over 70 countries. We show that strong family ties imply more reliance on the family as an economic unit which provides goods and services and less on the market and on the government for social insurance. With strong family ties home production is higher, labor force participation of women and youngsters, and geographical mobility, lower. Families are larger (higher fertility and higher family size) with strong family ties, which is consistent with the idea of the family as an important economic unit. We present evidence on cross country regressions. To assess causality we look at the behavior of second generation immigrants in the US and we employ a variable based on the grammatical rule of pronoun drop as an instrument for family ties. Our results overall indicate a significant influence of the strength of family ties on economic outcomes. Keywords: family ties; culture; home production and market activities, immigrants.
https://wcfia.harvard.edu/files/wcfia/files/2007_10_aghion.pdf
Life is busy for everyone. As a result, family time is becoming less likely to happen every day. But family time is very important to children: time together as a family gives children a deeper sense of their own identity, and of where they come from. This has a very positive effect on children’s development. Children need attention from their grandparents, parents and siblings alike.
The more time you spend together, the better chance you have of sharing quality experiences. Eating meals together, talking about the events of the day, sharing joys and defeats, doing household chores and spending some evenings watching movies, are important ways to be with the family.
Having family days also helps to strengthen the family bond and builds trust between family members. Children, in particular, learn about trust mainly from their parents, and every time a child completes a task on her or his own, they build self-confidence and gain trust in themselves. The words of support and encouragement that they receive will build self-esteem as well. These are things that children carry with them. As children develop into adulthood, having a positive self-image, and a strong belief in one’s own individual abilities is vital.
Family structure has a beneficial effect on a child’s life: as children grow up, the influences that they face and the choices that they have to make become more difficult. Knowing that they have a family to talk to, a family that listens, and a family that loves them, will make all the difference for them.
https://www.littleharvard.ie/the-little-blog/the-importance-of-family-time-in-your-childs-life
Cumulative evidence from several decades of research points to several benefits of family involvement for children’s learning, including helping children get ready to enter school, promoting their school success, and preparing youth for college. Read the first in a series of research briefs examining family involvement across the developmental continuum, focused on family involvement in early childhood.
Summary
- Family
involvement can help children get ready to enter school. In the early childhood years, family involvement is clearly related
to children’s literacy outcomes. For example, one study revealed that children
whose parents read to them at home recognize letters of the alphabet sooner
than those whose parents do not, and children whose parents teach them at home
recognize letters of the alphabet sooner than those whose parents do not.
- Family
involvement can promote elementary school children’s success. For school-age children, family involvement is also important.
Children in grades K–3 whose parents participate in school activities tend to
have high-quality work habits and task orientation compared to children whose
parents do not participate. Moreover, parents who provide support with homework
have children who tend to perform better in the classroom.
- Family
involvement can help prepare youth for college. Family involvement matters in middle and high school — and beyond.
Adolescents whose parents monitor their academic and social activities have
lower rates of delinquency and higher rates of social competence and academic
growth. In addition, youth whose parents are familiar with college preparation
requirements and are engaged in the application process are most likely to
graduate from high school and attend college.
- Family involvement can benefit all children, especially those less likely to succeed in school. Family involvement has been shown to benefit children from diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds. For example, low-income African American children whose families maintained high rates of parent participation in elementary school are more likely to complete high school. Latino youth who are academically high achieving have parents who provide encouragement and emphasize the value of education as a way out of poverty.
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/06/07/family-involvement-what-does-research-say
There are different ways of being funny. Sarcasm is intelligent humour. You have read some sarcastic „Family Quotes“ in the INTRODUCTION. Find more of the same quality.
After having studied the links and articles above, write a paper on „The Meaning & the Power of the Family“.
Many cultures put emphasis on the importance of a family.
This project intends to do the same with regard to the Western civilisation, where one can observe a trend which seems to undermine its value.
Among others, tradition and family understood in the traditional way also today belong to the essential values for the European monarchs and aristocracy. Even if they not always have deserved it, the nobility have been the ones envied and imitated by the rest of the society throughout the history due to their privileges and status.
