CONTENTS

• JUST VISITING
• FEATURE ARTICLE: BLESSINGS AND PROBLEMS IN AN EXTENDED FAMILY
  Part Two - Additional Changes in Extended Families
• WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

  ABOUT CHILDREN'S TELEVISION
  ABOUT PRAYER AND BLOOD PRESSURE
  ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
  

Sometimes new things aren't better. A few weeks ago, we began using a new mailbox. It had the advantage of making composition easier. Unfortunately it did not make it easier for some of you to read the newsletter. You got numbers instead of apostrophes, quotation marks and dashes. After several unsuccessful attempts to remedy the problem, we've gone back to the old mailbox. We hope this week's issue will be easier to read for those of you who have encountered difficulty.

Our subscription list continues to grow. We are especially happy to welcome many new International readers. Nearly 13 percent of our readers live outside the United States. Here is a listing of the top fifteen countries.

1. Australia
2. Nigeria
3. South Africa, Canada (tie)
4. Singapore
5. Malaysia
6. New Zealand
7. United Kingdom, Brazil (tie)
8. Thailand, Germany (tie)
9. Mexico
10. Sweden, Indonesia (tie)
11. Philippines

By Norman and Ann Bales

In last week's newsletter we discussed the influence of extended families during adolescent years. It was at that time that changes began to take place as aunts, uncles and cousins began to move to other parts of the country, Grandparents died and our own family moved to another part of the country. We even see these same changes taking place in biblical families. We see a decline in the influence of extended family in today's Western culture. In today's newsletter we will look at the value of maintaining contact with one's extended family and discuss the blessings and problems that arise with this association.

The most important social and spiritual dynamics taking place in the lives of Old Testament people occurred in families. When Korah rebelled against Moses and God retaliated by opening up the ground and having the earth swallow him alive, the Biblical text says ". . . the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their household . . . ." (Numbers 16:32). In Joshua 7 the story of Achan's sin is related. After the goods he had stolen were recovered the scripture says that Joshua and all of Israel "took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had to the Valley of Achor" and they stoned him and the "rest" (that means the extended family) and burned them. When David was forced to leave Jerusalem because of the insurrection perpetrated against him, by his rebellious son, Absalom, 2 Samuel 15:16 describes his entourage. "The king set out, with his entire household.

Curses and blessings also follow the New Testament households. In Mark 3:25, Jesus said, "If a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand." You see an indication of the power of the family patriarch in the healing of the government official's son in Cana of Galilee. According to John 4:53, "he and all his household believed." Some of the early congregations actually consisted of extended families. Of course we're all familiar with the fact that the first Gentile conversion consisted of a household - the household of Corneilus. Acts 16 records the conversion of the household of the Philippian jailer and in that same chapter, we even have a household headed by a woman - Lydia the seller of purple. In Romans 16, Paul speaks of the church, which met at the house of Priscilla and Aquila. He also makes mention of the "household of Aristobulus" in verse 10. In verse 11, he extends a greeting to the "household of Narcissus" adding that they are "in the Lord." According to 1 Corinthians 16:15, the earliest converts in Achia were in the household of Stephanas. In 2 Timothy 1:16, Paul speaks of the "mercy of the household of Onesiphorous."

These ancient households were not what we today call the nuclear family - father, mother and children. It was that, plus anyone who lived in the family community. It even extended to servants and temporary guests in the home.

Biblically, it involved children, other relatives living in the home (Remember Peter's mother-in-law lived in his home.) and even servants. Our experience is somewhat different. The family form most familiar to us is the nuclear family. The nuclear family basically consists of a man and woman living together with one or more children. No one else lives in the home. The traditional extended families can be observed in two forms.

This involves older parents, sons and their wives (in modern western society it could involve daughters). In China, for thousands of years, custom decreed that when a young man married, he brought his new bride to live in his home. It was understood that she would live not only with him, but also with his brothers, their wives and his mother and father. Her role as a wife was to serve "her husband and his mother." (Source Stephen L. Nock. Sociology of the Family.)

The joint family consists of several brothers, sisters and their wives living together. This occurs in societies where the inheritance cannot be divided.

In the purest sense, we do not have extended families in American society, except perhaps in some closed ethnic communities. We tend to think of close knit families as extended families.

Extended families involve aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. We don't usually live in the same house with our extended families, but those people generally remain more devoted, loyal and involved with us than other people in society. You might be able to borrow money from an uncle. You probably wouldn't be able to borrow money from your neighbor down the street even though you see your neighbor much more than you see your uncle.

Beginning in World War 2, in many communities (and even earlier in some places like Oklahoma in the dust bowl days), people began to move around much more than they had previously. As a result extended families no longer lived in close proximity to one another. In the previous article, Norman mentioned the fact that most of his father's family lived very close together prior to the middle 1950s. A few days ago, he talked with an aunt who still lives in that area. Out of an extended family that once had forty or fifty people living in the same general area, today there are no more than five or six and yet the extended family numbers well above a hundred. This has happened to families all across the country.

Extended families are important to us. The help provide accountability, support, and rootedness. We will discuss some of these advantages in coming issues

In our next newsletter we will discuss some of the problems encountered in maintaining significant contact with close knit families.

• ABOUT CHILDREN'S TELEVISION: "The problem with today's entertainment aimed at kids isn't just that the behavior they'll imitate is far less benign than Clarabell's seltzer-squirting ( Clarabell ,the clown was a part of the 1950's "Howdy Doody" show). It's that these shows attempt to introduce kids to the complex world of adult reality, rather than encourage them to linger in a fantastic protected preserve just for them." - Michael Medved - author of the newly published book, Saving Childhood.

• ABOUT PRAYER AND BLOOD PRESSURE: "People who attended a religious service once a week and prayed or studied the Bible once a day were 40 % less likely to have high blood pressure than those who don't go to church every week and prayed and studied the Bible less." - Robert Davis reporting on a study conducted by the National Institute of Healthcare Research, published in the International Journal of Psychiatry and Medicine.

• ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: "We are not born with character. It is developed by the experiences and decisions that guide our lives. Each individual creates, develops and nurtures his or her own character. Being a man or woman of character is not an easy task. It requires tough decisions which put you at odds with the more commonly accepted mores of our time." - General C. C. Krulak, commandant. U. S. Marine Corps, explaining why the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes adultery unacceptable.

If you have questions about marriage and family relationships, you can "ASK THE COUNSELOR." Address your questions to Mikal Frazier. Her address is mikalfraz@aol.com

Norman's e-mail address: nlbales@allaboutfamilies.org