Families, as they grow, need to develop a culture of purpose and intentionality. Some families have no energy. Children and adults just seem to turn up and go through the tasks of the day in fatigued survival mode Living and partly living.
When partners come together or get married, they potentially move from being post adolescence individuals to a couple hopefully maturing and growing up together. It’s a great and socially defined moment of growing up. They have children. They take on incremental grades of responsibility and sacrifice and a movement away from individual needs. A growing unit, a partners needs and children’s needs becomes a priority. Choice and responsibility and sacrifice brings about an order and predictability. Families cannot live with a continuing neglected pattern of failure or chaos or mayhem. To do so is to be locked into adolescence. People need to grow up, take responsibility and lift a load in their lives. People generally don’t feel good about themselves if they just turn up to any event or work or social situation without any thought. Its not healthy focussing on accomplishing nothing except your own, undisturbed, languor.
Life will happen of course and tragedy and calamity will occur. But where there is a surrender and capitulation to life challenges, a sour legacy of failure and avoidance , can emerge. It damages esteem for adults and damages their resilience and their dignity. It’s not a good legacy for children to observe and emulate.
