Bob Cornwall/Faith in the Public Square/Commentary

Mother's Day is a bonanza for greeting card companies and florists who incite us to buy cards and flowers for the mothers in our lives. As a consumer holiday, it's more important than Father's Day, where a cheap card and an ugly tie will suffice. Still, while these consumer-driven holidays incite us to buying frenzies, they also celebrate the importance of family.

It would be an understatement to say that American families are under stress. Modern society strains the bonds of human relationships and squeezes the family with unrealistic expectations. Marriage is increasingly romanticized - the promise of a perfect soul mate who will fulfill us intellectually, emotionally, and sexually - so it's no wonder that marriages are crumbling in disillusionment. Economics demands two incomes to live the middle-class American dream, while increased mobility and a skyrocketing divorce rate scatter families across the land, disconnecting us from extended families and the communities in which we live.

Though Mother's Day seems to celebrate a family structure - the nuclear family - that had its heyday in the 1950s, when June Cleaver showed us how to care for the kids and cook the meals, while holding the family together, all the time wearing a dress, the times have changed. Still, studies show that even today, with two-income family the norm, mothers continue to play an outsized role in family life. Then, of course, there are the increasing numbers of single parent homes, often headed by a working mother, where one parent tries to play the role of both father and mother, often heroically.

Family life is evolving, and the rapid change in family life raises a question: Is the family still a building block of civic society, or is it a haven of rest in a harried and wearying world? The increased isolation of family structures suggests that the latter is true. Families have become islands in the storm, but too often they are unable to pass on and develop the core values that make for a healthy civic life. Instead, they've become creatures of the prevailing consumer culture - demanding services, but too often not willing to contribute to the betterment of society.

At times the picture looks bleak, but the family - whatever form it takes - remains a significant and even essential component of community life. Though I don't wish to denigrate other forms of family life, the two-parent family remains an ideal worth upholding. There are legitimate reasons why families take on other forms, but all the studies suggest that in most cases this form of family life provides the best environment for the nurture and growth of children.

The health of the family seems to be linked to the health of the broader community. It shouldn't surprise us then, that the increased stress placed on families is accompanied by a general decline in community life. Communities, like this one, with large numbers of commuters, find the creation of healthy families and a healthy community particularly difficult. Rarely do we even know our neighbors - in the past a support network to families. This increased isolation places greater stress on marriages and on families, because more is expected of them, and it undermines the community as a whole.

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Not surprisingly, family values have become a hot and polarizing political topic, with partisans on one side arguing for the preservation of a 1950s version of the family - where Dad is the breadwinner and the boss and the mother is the glue - and on the other side partisans seeking to redefine family in ways that bewilder most Americans.

This being Mother's Day, I'm happy to claim the appellation of being pro-family and pro-marriage. I believe in the ideal of a two-parent family, however, I also recognize that people find themselves living out very different family arrangements faithfully and often sacrificially, doing everything they can to make sure that the family's children are loved, nurtured and empowered. One thing we should do on this Mother's Day is to commit ourselves to creating the kind of community that supports and empowers families, no matter what they look like, so that families might fulfill their role in civic life. Sustaining the quality of family life won't be easy, but doing so is critical to the future of our community.

Dr. Bob Cornwall is pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Lompoc, CA (www.lompocdisciples.org). He may be contacted at lompocdisciples@impulse.net or at First Christian Church, P.O. Box 1056, Lompoc, CA 93438.

May 14, 2006