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Disintegration the Family in Desire Under the Elms

 

One of the reasons behind the reduction of ties and the weakness of relationships among the family members is the growing of different institutions and organizations to support the family. These highly developed institutions provide specialized facilities and services at higher cultural levels than is possible for the family alone. Thus, people could obviously secure larger and more reliable satisfactions than by their individual or family efforts. We may conclude that the family lost some of its former functions or now shares them with other institutions.6 Keniston defines the family today as the "needy" family that needs and uses support in raising children, and thus, this family estranges its children and participates in the breaking down of family relationships in the future.7 .
             It may be said that democracy separates and isolates the members of the family from each other, too. It loosens social ties, but tightens natural ones. Tocqueville prophesies a family of freedom as an escape from artificial feudal relations into a natural harmony of free individuals. But, later on, the modern family cuts itself off from the world. "All the energy of the group is expended on helping the children to rise in the world, individually and without any collective ambition: children rather than the family."8 The father think that he has fulfilled his mission while he scatters his boys everywhere. The children grow up, leaving home, starting families of their own, and, finally, living apart from the family support. "This mythic cycle reinforces the capitalistic and American ideals of personal autonomy, individualism and competition. Capitalism‟s ideology implores parents to raise children who are "winners". the separation and recreation over direct family perpetuation provides the instructions for such a "winning‟ model."9 In fact, the chief effects of the family change are reflected in family relationships.


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