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Analysis: Extended families and
family reunions in American life Some of us imagine a wonderful past when
family life was defined by a glorious compound where three generations lived
and helped each other. Others thank God every day
that our parents are indeed a phone call away and not in the room next door. Family: they define us, they love us, they drive us
crazy. But how much do we incorporate our extended
family in our daily lives? How much do we want to? And how has that changed over time? Later on in the hour we'll talk about the
compulsion of so many families to gather annually for reunions, from 15 to
500. A look at how reunions shape family life and
some practical tips to give a good one. But first, extended families. Why do we need them? When do we
need them? And is our need that different from our
ancestors? Take a look at your own family history. How has the interdependence on extended families changed? Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And our
e-mail address is totn@npr.org. Joining us now from his home in Minneapolis
is Steven Ruggles. He is a history
professor at the University of Minnesota and the director of the Minnesota
Population Center. Welcome to the show, Professor Ruggles.
Professor STEVEN RUGGLES
(University of Minnesota; Director, Minnesota Population Center): Thank you. NEARY: Let's start with definitions. What do we mean by the extended family? Prof. RUGGLES: Well, I guess that
most people mean any kind of relatives other than Mom, Dad and the kids, and
that could include elderly parents, adult siblings, nephews, nieces, aunts,
uncles and so on. NEARY: Anything
beyond the immediate nuclear family then. Prof. RUGGLES:
Yeah. NEARY: Has that definition changed at all
over times? Prof. RUGGLES: Well, I think that
some people use it to mean the co-residential group, the group that actually
lives together, and other people use it to mean the kin group, regardless of
whether they're living together or not. But I don't
think there's a systematic change in the term, but I think there's a huge
amount of change in the family itself. NEARY: Yeah. How
has Americans' dependence on their extended families changed over the years? Prof. RUGGLES: Well, you know, for
about the last half a century sociologists have been stressing how the
extended family relationships are continuing to be extraordinarily important,
and I think they're right. For many people, extended
family relationships play a vital role in their lives. But
I also think that there's a huge amount of evidence that the strength of
extended kin ties has declined dramatically over time. I
think one of the best pieces of evidence we have for this is the living
arrangements of elderly people. In 1850,
three-quarters of people over the age of 65 lived with their grown children,
and that declined steadily to a low point of about 15 percent in 1990. And that's just a huge transformation.
Since 1990, there's been a little bit of a
pickup in that. Some people argue that if you just look at
living together, that doesn't' really tell you what's going on because people
can have very important, close ties, even if they don't live together. I do think that living together is critical, and it
makes more difference to your life if you see somebody every morning at
breakfast than if you call them three times a week. But we also have evidence on kin ties
outside of the household, and that only goes back about 40 years, but it also
shows the same trend. For example, in 1962, about
half the elderly reported that they saw their adult children at least once a
day, and now that's only about a quarter. And we've
got similar evidence for telephone contact, financial assistance, other
measures of interaction between parents and their grown children. NEARY: Well, the myth--and it may be a
reality--is that when extended families were strong, they raised children
collectively, they helped care for the elderly. Is that
true or false? Prof. RUGGLES: Well, I think more
often than not the elderly were helping care for the kids. I
mean, I think that throughout the--as far back as we can measure, which is
the middle of the 19th century, it looks like the dependent generation was
more often the younger generation than its older generation. NEARY: But now is it the older generation is
the more dependent generation? Prof. RUGGLES: No, no. The current evidence shows that transfers of wealth and
assistance of all types are much more likely to go from the elderly to their
adult children than the other way around. NEARY: Mm-hmm. Well,
what are some of the forces that have shaped the way we relate to our
extended families now in a different kind of way? Prof. RUGGLES: Well, I think that the
big factor, as far as I'm concerned, is the transformation of the American
economy. You have to keep in mind that 200 years ago
the family was the unit of economic production. Eighty-five
percent of the population was engaged in agriculture in 1800 and that's only
about 2 percent today. And the people who weren't in
agriculture back then were also pretty much self-employed. They
were shopkeepers, craftsmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, tavern keepers, so on
and so forth. And so what's happened is we've had this
extraordinary growth, as a result of industrialization and economic
development, of wage-labor jobs in manufacturing services and so on, and that
really has undermined the economic logic of the extended family. You see, under the old system, the best economic
opportunity that the younger generation had was to stick around and inherit
the farm or the family business, and with the growth of job opportunities, a
lot of young men left the farm. They were looking
for the high wages and excitement offered by town life. And
that meant that fewer and fewer parents could also offer the incentive of
agricultural inheritance, or leaving them the business, and without the labor
demands of the farm or the business, the older generation really didn't have
any incentive to want to keep the kids around anyway because they didn't need
the labor. So I think that that transformation is
the most important. Of course, there's
cultural changes, but I suspect those kind of follow the changes in
the structure of the economy. NEARY: We're talking about families,
especially particularly extended families today on TALK OF THE NATION. The number, if you'd like to join the discussion: (800)
989-TALK. Let's go to Angela in--I believe it's in
Oregon. Hi, Angela. ANGELA (Caller): Yes, Philomath. Hi. I heard your discussion and
it just brought to mind the own dynamic between me and my parents. It's that I somehow, somewhere along the way, developed
a streak of independence, and they're having a really tough time to grapple
with it. I'm 27, and, you know, they always say,
`We'll come. Let's help you. Let's,
you know, help you remodel your house. Let's do this. Let's do that.' And I accept
their help to some degree, but I have a really, really tough time with it. And their argument is like, `No, that's our job. As parents we're supposed to be here for you to help you
unclog your toilets, help you, you know, gravel your driveway.'
I'm like, `No, that's my job.' NEARY: So sometimes
too much family is not such a good thing. ANGELA: Yeah. But to
them I'm really getting the sense that that's just the way they were raised
and that's the way that they see their families to be. And
somewhere, I guess, and it may be my own cynical generation, it's got to be
more individualistic. My husband, to some degree, is
the same way. Maybe we're just both independent, but
I'm definitely getting a generational gap here. But
I... NEARY: All right. Thanks
for that call. And let me ask Professor Ruggles,
you know, that's sort of a classic kind of conflict that happens, I think,
and indicative of the way families are now. Prof. RUGGLES: Well, I think it
reflects what I said a moment ago about most of the financial and practical
assistance flows from parents to children rather than children to parents. And I think that also is connected to the uptick I mentioned a moment ago. From
since 1990, there's been some growth in multigenerational families, and I
think that that's mostly because of the extraordinary decline in the income
of young adults. We've had a tripling in the
percentage of young adults making less than $10,000 a year over the last
three decades, and so more and more you're having the young people move in
with their parents after they've gone to college or something like that, and
that's being reflected in the statistics. NEARY: Steven Ruggles is the
director of the Minnesota Population Center. And
joining us now from member station WUNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is
Laurence Basirico. He's
the author of "The Family Reunion Survival Guide: How to Avoid Problems
With Your Family Without Avoiding Your Family." He's
the chair of the sociology department at Elon
University in Elon, North Carolina. Thanks for joining us, Professor. Professor LAURENCE BASIRICO (Elon University; Author, "The Family Reunion Survival
Guide"): It's my pleasure. NEARY: Why would you say, first
of all--a simple question: Why do we need to stay in touch with our
families? Prof. BASIRICO: Well, families--I think
probably the best way to describe families would be the way that the
sociologist named Charles Horton Cooley described them in 1909. He described groups called primary groups, and primary
groups are the groups that are really the most important groups in our lives. They're primary in the sense that they give us a
fundamental sense of our primary ideals. They orient
us to life. They give us a good sense of who we are,
our values and our beliefs at the most fundamental level.
And certainly families are not the only primary groups of which we're
members, but it's certainly what I would say are the most important primary
group for us. NEARY: What's the
biggest challenge in blending adult families with the family in which we were
raised, which is essentially the extended families? Prof. BASIRICO: Yes. That's
a great question, and it's really the premise of my book and what I talk
about. I talk a little bit about issues that develop
at family reunions, and the basis for that really is that we're all members,
as adults at least, of two families. We're members
of our family of childhood. The sociologists would
call that family of orientation. And it's really
your family of orientation in that that family orients you to the world in
its most fundamental levels for you. It orients you
to your political beliefs, your religious beliefs. It
gives you your sense of relating to one another. And
in that family of childhood that you have, or your family of orientation, you
and your siblings and your parents have your own way about how to act with
each other, your inside jokes, your common languages
and everything. Now when we grow up and we develop a new
family, and sociologists would call that your family of procreation--a
simpler term is family of adulthood. There were two
sociologists back in the 1960s who wrote an article called Marriage and the
Construction of Reality. Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner, and they
contended that when two people get married they're essentially strangers, not
strangers in that they don't know each other but they really don't know their
spouse's family of orientation that well. So when we
get married or we're with a partner, we create a new reality, a new family so
to speak, and that is just as real and powerful as our original one. So every one of us then has these two
families, and I would say that in the healthiest of marital relationships or
partner relationships, that family that you've created as an adult is going
to be different than your family of childhood. If
it's not, then it's a very unbalanced relationship because one of you is
buying too much into that family of childhood. So
when you return--I'm sorry. NEARY: Go ahead. Go
ahead. Prof. BASIRICO: So when you return to your
family, for example, for a reunion or an extended vacation, you have a little
bit of a natural issue built into it. On the one
hand, the purpose of reuniting is to bring back to life that original family. That's the purpose of it. Yet,
as I was interested to hear Angela's comment a little while ago when she
talked about the differences between her and her family, when you go back,
you are no longer the same person and your values, your beliefs might be
slightly different. You've got different ways of
doing things. And you are remembered for the person
that you were, yet you are now an adult with different ways. NEARY: Steven Ruggles, let me
just ask you one last question. What do we get from
extended families? I mean, if they're
not as strong as they used to be, what's lost? Prof. RUGGLES: Well, I think that we
have to be careful about romanticizing the extended family of the past. I mean, kin ties may have been stronger, but I don't
think that any one of us would like to be one of those kinds of families. You've got to keep in mind that the 19th century family
was based on physical force and force that was sanctioned by the state. Child beating was virtually universal, corporal
punishment for wives was very common. In most
states, wives didn't have the right to own property. It
was essentially an authoritarian, violent situation, and it was held together
over multiple generations by the power of the patriarch. Now,
you know, talk about claustrophobic. It was worse
than that. And I think that the current arrangement
is a lot more appealing. Obviously kin do provide
lots of services and assistance to one another in both directions across
generations, and that's valuable, but it's a tradeoff, I suppose. NEARY: All right. Well,
thanks so much for joining us today, Professor Ruggles. Prof. RUGGLES: Thank you. NEARY: Professor Steven Ruggles
is from the University of Minnesota. He's also the
director of the Minnesota Population Center. We're talking about the ways in which we
connect with our families. We're taking your calls
at (800) 989-TALK. And when we come back, we'll be
talking about family reunions and how they help us to stay connected with
extended family. Send us an e-mail at totn@npr.org. I'm Lynn Neary. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. (Soundbite of
music) NEARY: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington. We're talking about extended families and
family reunions, which some of you may be attending this holiday weekend. Join the discussion. Do you
have a great family reunion story? Does your family
hold them annually? Does the thought of getting
together once a year make you nervous? Give us a
call at (800) 989-TALK, and our e-mail address is
totn@npr.org. Our guest is Laurence Basirico. He joins us from member station WUNC in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina. He's the author of "The Family
Reunion Survival Guide: How to Avoid Problems With Your Family Without
Avoiding Your Family." Let's take a call from David in Miami Beach,
Florida. Hi, David. DAVID (Caller): Hi. Ms.
Neary? NEARY: Yeah. Go
ahead. DAVID: Thank you for taking my call. I felt compelled to call because I am part of an
extended family, value it very highly. My household
consists of my parents, two grandparents, an elderly aunt. Various
kinds of other family has come to stay with us, and most of our entire family
lives within about, I'd say, you know, 20 to 50 miles. NEARY: And do you see each other all the
time? Are you in and out of each other's houses all
the time? DAVID: Oh, yes. All
the time. All the time. NEARY: And do you ever get on each other's
nerves? DAVID: You know, at times it can be trying,
but again, as the other gentleman had stated, there are tradeoffs, you know. And it seems that where we're most apt to put our
elderly in institutions for care, this was kind of contrary to what my family
believes. And, you know, two weeks ago I drove to
Ft. Myers, picked up my grandparents, brought them back to our home. They stay with us during the summer months. They're away for about two months in the winter. But all in all it's been a
wonderfully enriching experience and one that's unique in this time, I would
say. NEARY: All right. Thanks
for your call. DAVID: Thank you. NEARY: Laurence Basirico,
is this typical, do you think, of the extended family experience? Prof. BASIRICO: I think it's fairly typical,
yeah. I think the extended family experience can be
a wonderful experience and usually is, yet at the same time, people have the
expectation, because they place so much value on the family and because it's
so important to their sense of well-being, that if issues do emerge, I think
it's possible that they either bury them or they think that those issues are
a reflection of a family that is in trouble. And the
point that I try to make is that the closest of families, and perhaps even
the healthiest of families, have differences, and when we have those
differences, we need to recognize that there's nothing wrong with those
things and that, first of all, those things can be avoided.
But those are natural differences between family members. NEARY: All right. Let's
take another call from Andy in Indianapolis. Hi, Andy.
ANDY (Caller): Hi. I,
first of all, wanted to say, you know, I congratulate the previous caller for
taking in his extended family the way he has 'cause it seems to me that we've
replaced most of the functions with institutions, either from government or,
like, when you talk about institutionalizing people, we tend to use our
worth, you know, the money we make in our jobs and so on, to find a way to
put our people away when they're, like, disabled, elderly.
And I'm just afraid that we have a tendency to delegate too much to
government, and that programs like Medicare and so on have changed the
dynamic of how we care for our elderly to a degree that I think is probably
detrimental. NEARY: Laurence Basirico,
what's your take on that? I mean, have we given up
some of these functions that once belonged to the
family, turned them over to the government? Prof. BASIRICO: Yeah. I
think that's true in many of the cases, yet I still think that in most
families there is still the pull toward feeling the responsibility as we grow
up. And one of the values that we've learned from
our family of orientation and that primary group is that we still feel in the
role of the responsibility and that one of the roles and obligations, let's
say, of the child in the family realizing that there is an obligation to the
family. So even when we grow and we grow older and
we may have changed, and even though those services may be taken over by
others, we still feel that tension and that responsibility, which could add
to some internal conflicts with us. NEARY: Yeah. Thanks
for your call, Andy. I want to just turn the discussion a little
bit because I know you've studied the role of family
reunions... Prof. BASIRICO: Yes. NEARY: ...in the life of a family. What's their importance? What
do they offer? Prof. BASIRICO: Family reunions, I think,
are crucial. They go back to the functions of the
family. Family reunions can serve as a source of
identity, especially for individuals, giving us a psychological anchor. I think, very importantly, they give us a sense of our
history and our cultural roots and a connection to that. Family
reunions can provide us with a sense of acceptance. And one
of the things that I really focus on is that family reunions can serve as a
source of affirmation of our adult identities and roles, which is a little
bit of a double-edged sword because, again--I'm using Angela's comments
before--as we go back to the reunions, we're seeking that affirmation, yet we
are remembered as the person we were when we left the family. NEARY: Yeah. Some
family reunions, though, are really huge, I mean,
and they may involve relatives who never knew each other at all, had no
relationship to each other at all, right? Prof. BASIRICO: Yeah, exactly. It's hard to pigeonhole a family reunion, and often I
think when we think of family reunions, one of the common perceptions of it
is this huge 300-people day in the park with people wearing name tags. And I think, more and more, family reunions have changed
over the last 10 years or so in which that family gatherings themselves can
serve almost as a source of a reunion. I think what
makes it a reunion is that people get together to celebrate that particular
family and the roots of that family. So that can
take place over a holiday vacation or returning home from a distance. It's not just getting together, but it's getting
together to celebrate that family. NEARY: How's that different from, say,
getting together for Thanksgiving dinner? I mean,
how is the reunion specifically--or is it the same thing that you're saying? Prof. BASIRICO: I think it really depends on
the intention. One of the ways that I use to make
that distinction is there's a movie called "Soul Food"--I'm not
sure if you're familiar with the movie--and it's about an African-American
family. And I think--and for most people I don't
know that they would consider that a reunion--they get together about every
two weeks or so, but when they get together it's really to celebrate their
family rather than just hanging out at somebody's house, and they do that by
focusing on the way Mama used to cook her meals, and everybody will buy into
that. And so is that a reunion? Of
sorts, I think, yes. NEARY: Yeah. We're
talking about family reunions, and we're talking about extended family and
how you relate to your extended family. Give us a
call at (800) 989-8255. And let's take a call from Tony. He's in Newport News, Virginia. Hi,
Tony. TONY (Caller): How
you doing? NEARY: Good. Go
ahead. TONY: Well, we never had family reunions in
our family. I mean, I used to always think it was
something that just happened on "The Waltons"
or "Little House on the Prairie" until I actually grew up and moved
out. I mean, whenever our--I mean, I love my family,
but whenever we get together, it's a massive fight. My
father's a Russian-Austrian Jew and my mother was from Puerto Rico, but she's
Portuguese-Arab descent. And I could never, ever see
her side of her seven sisters and brother getting together with my dad's
family. I just thought it would always be a disaster. And, I mean, I see it happen all the time where people
get together and seem to enjoy themselves, but even getting together just for
a weekend holiday is like, you know--it could be happening in Beirut. NEARY: Well, we've got the right person here
for you. He's written "The Family Reunion
Survival Guide." Laurence Basirico,
what's your advice here? Prof. BASIRICO: I think we need to go back
to what I was speaking about before, and we need to recognize that we're all
part of two families as adults. There's the family
in which we grew up, our family of childhood or our family of orientation,
which has a certain way of doing things, and you are a certain person within
that family, and there is the family that was created in your adult life. And when two people get together to form a family, there
are two of those, and each has their own family of childhood, yet they've
created a new one. Now when you get together for a reunion,
it's usually to celebrate one of those, and people need to remember and to
recognize that we shouldn't just adhere to one set of beliefs, one set of
rules, and we need to be tolerant of each other and understand that my views
on things, of course I think they're right because that's what I've developed
with my spouse, and that might be different from those of my siblings or my
original family of orientation. NEARY: But what if fights break out? Prof. BASIRICO: Well, my advice there is
that planning is essential to having a reunion, to prevent those kinds of
things. In fact, in my research I found out that the
most well-planned and the most highly structured and most organized reunions
tend to be the most successful in terms of satisfaction of family members at
those reunions, and the reason that is, is because that eliminates
possibilities at the reunion for decision-making or for those little
...(unintelligible) can come up. But if things are
worked out before the reunion--it takes a lot of planning to do those kinds
of things, but it's--it reminds me of a quote that Paul McCartney made in one
of the last songs, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the
love that you make." So when those reunion are
planned and structured, there's less opportunity. In fact, when I think back about our most
successful family reunion, it was at a place in Pennsylvania where we had
activities from morning till night, which eliminated
the possibility of anyone having to make decisions, which is, first of all,
very liberating, and it's in the charge of someone else. NEARY: OK. Well, I
should point out that the Fourth of July is the most popular time for family
reunions. And so we've asked Edith Wagner to join us
now. She's the editor of Reunions magazine. Welcome to the show, Edith Wagner. Ms. EDITH WAGNER
(Editor, Reunions Magazine): Hi, Lynn. NEARY: I know you help people think through
reunions. We just heard Laurence Basirico
telling us that the best planned reunions are the best reunions. How do you begin planning for a family reunion? Ms. WAGNER: I think that that question isn't
just how do you begin, it's when do you begin and where are you going to go
when you do that? Everybody does it a little bit
differently, but what they have to do first is decide they're going to have a
reunion. That may seem like a very simple statement,
but there's a lot that goes into that. They have to
decide who the family is. Is it, as Dr. Basirico suggested, that it's the grandparents and their
children and spouses and their children? That's
three generations right there. But many reunions,
particularly the ones that you were citing before that are 300 or a thousand
or whatever, frequently, they are people who are descended from several
generations back. The reunion that's in the Guinness
Book had 2,500 people, and they were all descended from a couple that settled
in Lake County, Illinois, 150--well, probably now about 155 years ago. So first of all, you have to decide who the family is. And everybody--there are so many details
that have to be thought through that giving oneself or giving, you know, the
reunion enough time to sort of grow and gel and get ready to happen is all
part of doing the successful reunion that Larry was talking about. NEARY: Well, is there one thing in
particular you advise people on in order to have a successful reunion? Ms. WAGNER: Well, there are a few things, if
you don't mind, not just one. If I had to be pinned
down to one, it would be to suggest that they give themselves enough time,
that they start early enough, that they don't try to do it next weekend if
they really want to have the cousins come from California. NEARY: Mm-hmm. Ms. WAGNER: Because part of, you know,
deciding who the family is then gets into: Where are these people coming
from, and how are they going to be able to afford to get here if, you know,
they are traveling some distance? Not that many
families anymore all live in the same neighborhood. NEARY: Yeah. Ms. WAGNER: That's, you know, part of the
reason why people gravitate to reunions, is because they don't
all live together and they don't see one another as often as they once did. NEARY: We're
talking about family reunions and extended families. And Darcy in Portland, Oregon, welcome to
TALK OF THE NATION. Hi. How
are you? DARCY (Caller): Hi,
Lynn. NEARY: Go ahead. DARCY: I'd love it
if you were the permanent host for this program. NEARY: Well, thank you. I
won't tell Neal you said that. DARCY: No, you better not.
I grew up with 27 first cousins, and we always had family reunions
every summer. And now that we are adults, there
isn't any formal gathering. And I would love to
figure out a way to get at least my cousins together for a reunion. We are all on e-mail, so that can start it out. But once we get together, how do you form ice-breakers
to get everyone together and feel comfortable around each other, now that
we're all adults and haven't seen each other in one gathering for quite some
time? NEARY: Are you all spread all over the
country? DARCY: We are most in Oregon. There are a couple of people in California who come to
visit Oregon quite often. So I think getting
everyone here would be fairly simple. It's what do I
do with them once I have them all together? NEARY: All right. And
now turn to the experts. Edith Wagner? Ms. WAGNER: I'm glad you asked. First of all, Reunions magazine has a Web site, and
there is a section on the Web site called Ice Breakers. DARCY: Oh. Ms. WAGNER: Taken care of that
question--that's a very, very common question, and one that we get
particularly now, in the summertime. We tend to get
it--today's Thursday. We tend to get it on Thursday
for a weekend reunion: `Oh, my God, I forgot to do ice-breakers. What should I do?' And there
are a lot of ice-breakers where people don't even have to prepare very much. Trivia or all kinds of family history things, some of
the games that--if you have done professional training, usually they have
ice-breakers--all kinds of things that can be adapted to a family that's
getting together, and probably things that, if you know your family well
enough, these are the kinds of things that people will really get involved in. The best kind, of course, are
to try to get all of the generations involved so that the grandparents and
the grandchildren are involved in the ice-breaker. DARCY: Excellent. NEARY: Thanks for your call, Darcy. DARCY: Thanks a lot. NEARY: You're
listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Let's take another call from Janice in
Anchorage, Alaska. Hi, Janice. JANICE (Caller): Hi. NEARY: Go ahead. JANICE: Well, I just wanted to share my very
recent experience. I just returned on Monday from a
first family reunion for our family. There were 31
of us from six states and from Grand Cayman that all gathered together in
Grand Cayman for a week. NEARY: Grand Cayman sounds like a good place
to have a reunion. JANICE: Yeah, it was wonderful. It was so glorious. And it
wasn't just the location; I mean, it was terrific. We
were right on the beach and the ocean was there, and my cousins had boats to
take the kids fishing and out to see the waters and everything. But mostly it was just all being together. My cousin that lives there made dinner for us every
night, and it was like the very best Christmas dinner from my childhood, with
everybody all together every single night. And even
my little three-year-old cousin, she said that was what she remembered best
about the trip and what she, you know, is going to take back with her. And we ranged in age--there was a newborn infant that
was only--What?--I think three weeks old, and my mother's 82. And my kids are--oh, let's see, they're five, eight and
11, and they're all boys. And it was so wonderful
for me to see them interacting and watching, you know, the young people that
I grew up as a child that I hadn't really--we hadn't all been together for
more than 30 years. And to see--it was kind of like
they were role models for them of what brothers can be as adults. NEARY: Mm-hmm. Well,
that's a wonderful story. Thanks so much for sharing
it with us. JANICE: I highly recommend it. I think that even though it takes a lot of effort and it's hard to get everybody together, it is well, well
worth the effort. NEARY: Thanks so much for calling, Janice. JANICE: All-righty. Bye. NEARY: Edith Wagner, I have to say that it
does raise for me the question of how important is location in terms of
planning for your family reunion? That sounds like
it was a pretty good place to do it. Ms. WAGNER: Yes. And
I think location in reunions is exactly the same as location in everything
else. That's it. Location
can be anyplace, because going to the Caymans, for example, is, obviously, a
great luxury for most people. Many people go to the
place where their ancestors lived. There may not be
anyone from the family still there. Many families,
because of particular interests, will go places, will use the reunion as part
of their summer vacation. Families that camp will go
camping, and many camp places are very open to having large groups of
families there. Anyplace that a family can do a
vacation, they can also do a reunion; obviously, size makes a difference. For example, a family going to a ranch, for the most
part, probably has to be a smaller group than a family going to a large
hotel, for example. The place where the reunion is has
to--everybody has to be taken into consideration. Can
they get there? NEARY: Right. Ms. WAGNER: Can they afford to get there? NEARY: Edith, I want you to hold that
thought because we're going to continue this
discussion briefly after our break. And, Laurence Basirico, stay with us as well. I'm Lynn Neary. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. (Announcements) NEARY: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington. Tomorrow, join guest host Joe Palca on "Science Friday" in this hour for a
look at the life and science of Benjamin Franklin, plus the effects of shift
work on mice. Here are some of the stories that we're
following today at NPR News. Unemployment in the
United States is at its highest rate in nine years. The
Labor Department reports that the jobless rate rose to 6.4 percent in June. And a ruling by the US Supreme Court last week means
many accused child molesters in California are being set free. The high court struck down a law allowing prosecution of
certain child-abuse cases after the statute of limitations ran out. More on those stories later on "All Things
Considered" from NPR News. Right now, we're talking with Edith
Wagner--she's the editor of Reunions magazine--and Laurence Basirico. He's the author of
"The Family Reunion Survival Guide: How to Avoid Problems With Your
Family Without Avoiding Your Family." Let me turn to you for a moment, Laurence Basirico, because we've been on a pretty high note here
regarding family reunions. And yet, as the name of
your book indicates, there can be some problems. What's
your best piece of advice for avoiding problems, apart from the planning? Once you get there, do you keep certain people apart
or--any guidelines there? Prof. BASIRICO: I think tolerance of others'
differences is a key factor, and if we keep--I keep going back to the
understanding that we have different families now as adults than we had as
children growing up. A few practical things; one
thing that we don't want to do is we don't want to spring new things on people
at the reunion. We probably can all think of those
things in our minds that we would or wouldn't want to talk about, but even
great new things in our lives--that probably isn't the time.
But I guess the number-one thing would be to understand that people
are no longer who they were when they were growing up, and they need to be
respected for that. NEARY: And, Edith Wagner, do you hear about
problems sometimes at reunions? Ms. WAGNER: To be perfectly honest--and
Larry knows this--I hear of very few problems. I
think probably--and Reunions magazine is reader-driven, so I hear from people
all the time. In fact, you know, I need that kind of
thing in order to make the magazine go. And we hear
very, very few situations with problems. I think
people, first of all, are not that eager to share it if it happens. And the people that are having great reunions are the
ones, apparently, who are contacting us. I
understand that certainly, you know, at reunions there can be problems, just
like any other family gathering, but I don't hear about them. Lucky me. NEARY: OK. Let's
take another call from Jean in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Hi, Jean. JEAN (Caller): Hi. Yes. I just--my family's having a family reunion this summer
for my parents' 60th wedding anniversary, so we're looking forward to that. But I wanted to mention something your author seemed to
see as a negative, in that we are no longer the same people we were as
children. But instead, I see that that forms a kind
of bond that--even if you're not emotionally close--and our family's
scattered out across the country--you get back with people who know you. They don't know anything about you as a manager or
someone who's professional or anything like that; they really know you as you
were before you built up all those adult kind of walls between people. So I see that as a thing that I look forward to with my
family, rather than as a negative. NEARY: Do you feel, Jean,
that you're going to be able to sort of pick up where you left off
with some of these people who you haven't seen in a good, long time? JEAN: Yeah, because I've seen this happen
every time we've gotten together. We'll go years
without getting together, and then when we get back together, nobody care--in
my family, there's a lot of professionals and doctors and people highly
educated, and nobody really cares. It doesn't mean
anything. And there's something special about that
relationship that I think is a positive as opposed to a negative. NEARY: Well, thanks so much for calling,
Jean. JEAN: OK. NEARY: One other thing I wanted to just
close on with the guests, and that is there's an e-mail here. It's come up a couple of times. Somebody's
saying, `Extended-family relationships are very important in my cousin, and
the best thing we've found is e-mail. I keep in
touch with aunts, uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews weekly. I even found a fourth cousin recently.'
So I just wanted both of you maybe to comment, in closing, on the
importance of keeping in touch and, of course, using all the things we now have
at our touch, like e-mail, for maintaining family contacts. Laurence Basirico first. Prof. BASIRICO: Absolutely.
I think that is key. I think e-mail has
become--while some people complain about e-mail as being impersonal, I think
it's been a great facilitator of keeping the family together. As much communication as possible prior to the reunion
is great to work out if there are differences, to work out meals, to work out
all those details, just to stay in touch and refamiliarize
each other with one another. And if there are any
earth-shattering events, take care of those things before the reunion. Talk about those. But again,
sure, as much communication as possible, I think, is the key. NEARY: And, Edith
Wagner? Ms. WAGNER: Well, the e-mail has just made
planning reunions ever so much easier. Many families
also have Web sites, and where they've done newsletters before--and thank God
they're continuing to do those--as Larry says, they have so much more contact
with people; even have committees now that are located all over the country,
and they do their committee meetings with chat rooms and e-mail and that kind
of stuff. It helps reunions a lot. NEARY: Well, thanks to both of you for
joining us today. Ms. WAGNER: Thank you. Prof. BASIRICO: Thank you very much. NEARY: Edith Wagner is the editor of
Reunions magazine. She joined us from her office in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Laurence Basirico
is the author of "The Family Reunion Survival Guide: How to Avoid
Problems With Your Family Without Avoiding Your Family."
He joined us from member station WUNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. |