Comments on: Re-evaluating Family Matters

By: Graham Martin

Graham Martin — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:45:59 +0000

Nope, York, UK! The original! I really must check out a few of those texts, so thanks for mentioning them. Can’t say I have much to offer back just at the moment.

By: Alanna Hartzok

Alanna Hartzok — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:15:44 +0000

Just read yours on Biblical Jubilee from my google alert on land rights. in Ownership, Earthly Christian Teachings the author Charles Avila says the 19th century political economist Henry George comes closest to this perspective. I agree. You would find the land value tax policy to be a jubilee justice key. Please check out my Earth Rights Institute online course on Land Rights. Also my book The Earth Belongs to Everyone.
Are you in York, PA or UK? I am in south central PA.
all the best,
alanna

By: Graham Martin

Graham Martin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:11:29 +0000

This is certainly quite a common complaint amongst young people these days. I think some people feel cheated when they see others without the kind of attachments that keep them busy. I suppose they probably don’t want to get rid of those attachments and don’t want to be seen to resent them, so the easy way out is to resent those without them.
I know in Sweden they had to establish an entire new political movement in order to prevent people from feeling crap for not having kids, which I must say I rather like the idea of: the child-free movement, seeing as childless is such a needlessly stigmatising word.

By: Graham Martin

Graham Martin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:29:21 +0000

I think part of the problem is that many people (and here the generational thing comes into play) only understand one kind of relationship between house-sharers that isn’t a blood relationship, and that’s a romantic one: “normally” people only share with their relatives and their spouse (or relatives’ spouse). This seems to be the hardest thing for the council to understand with my current situation (sharing a 2 bed house with a member of the opposite sex). In a sense, its because society teaches the importance of being independent (which isn’t biblical, by the way).

By: Lois

Lois — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:44:45 +0000

I did try not to directly quote that, Greg

And yes, I’d say that historically it was pretty accurate that people moved straight from a parental to a marital home, certainly for women. Men had a bit more freedom (they didn’t have to have their ‘virtue’ protected by their family in the same way) but again they weren’t seen to have fully reached adulthood until they had set up their own household.

Wow, something we all 3 agree on? How rare.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:18:59 +0000

Lois, stop it, your last sentence is making me think of the Blues Brothers. While I wouldn’t go with the anti-capitalist rants as much as Graham, I think we’ve found something we all agree on, which is a nice change.

Since Graham commented about older people (or at least a large subset of them) moving straight from a parental to a marital home (Lois, is this accurate?), I must admit I’ve been getting annoyed all this year about people being unable to understand that where I live is my home. I may not have a wife and kids, but I’m an adult and not a child on an extended leash, so Sheffield is not my home anymore.

By: Lois

Lois — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:30:59 +0000

Thanks for quoting me, and I really like this post. Although I wouldn’t necessarily want to condemn all people who live on their own, (some may just not be able to cope with living with others) I do think sharing has many advantages and that people should recognise it as a valid option, not as something either immature or dodgy. I think that has a lot to do with age and generational differences too- for older people house sharing is something outside their experience, especially when they moved straight from parents’ home to newly-weds home.

And people need to recognise the ties between housemates, and the help they can give each other, as you describe- help that they otherwise wouldn’t get. In a society where independence is promoted, we can sometimes ignore the fact that sometimes we all need someone else.