Family in Crisis? Family Models as an Ethical-Theological Challenge

Abstract

In times of crisis, family comes into focus: On the one hand, the family’s restraining function takes effect when it serves as a refuge for young people against isolation in lockdown and new models of family life together emerge. On the other hand, restrictions on contact at Christmas time threaten the tradition of family get-togethers and family celebrations that has been established in many places, which poses new challenges for all generations. The topic touches emotionally and makes clear how different our ideas of family are. While some experience a temporary revitalization of the family as a protective space of trust, security and community, for others family becomes a danger when physical and psychological aggressions are unleashed behind closed doors: Whether as a trouble spot or crisis support, in times of crisis the family seems en vogue. At the same time, in the twenty-first century one can ask very fundamentally whether also the family as such is in crisis, when some scenarios speak of a disintegration of the family. Scientific developments, combined with the consequences of globalization and increasing individualization of life plans and family models, call self-evident facts into question and raise ethical questions. The increasing pluralism of values not only leads to a strengthening of the ‘secular option’, but also demands new ethical potentials for an individually modern way of life. The concept of family, for example, has changed and pluralized ethically, economically and socio-politically. This opening up of life forms and sexual diversity sometimes meets with resistance on the social and family-political horizon. It is becoming clear that classic family models are being overtaken by sexual-ethical images (including transidentity and homosexuality). These changed constellations have to be reflected ethically. Family and family models are complex and cannot be explicitly summarized or defined in a fixed guiding concept. Standardized images have long been outdated, since the family is a lifelong task that constantly poses new challenges. It is undisputed that the idea of a “perfect family world” is based on utopia, idealism and illusion, and that the concept of family in the twenty-first century must be thought of in terms of diversity beyond the traditional “father-mother-child” image.