God wasn't kidding around when he slapped Eve with familial duty for
biting the bad apple
by Scott McNutt
Enter "functional families" in the Yahoo! search engine, and you'll get 1090 returns. Enter "dysfunctional families," and you'll get a whopping 14,900 matches, more than 13 times the results for "functional families." What's worse, while "dysfunctional families" yields sites clearly about human families, such as "Breaking Free of Dysfunctional Families" (www.counseling.swt.edu/dysfunctional_family.htm) and "Dysfunctional Family=cultural harvest" (www.joy2meu.com/DysfunctionalFamilies.htm), "functional families" is more apt to lead you to sites like "Evolutionary and functional families of dihydroorotate dehydrogenases" and "SQL Tools Functional Families."
There's no escaping the significance of these findings. That's right: Our families are about 13 times less likely to get along than families of dihydroorotate dehydrogenases.
I don't want to get down on families. I grew up in a family, and I talk to family members all the time. Admittedly, these aren't members of my family, but I assume they belong to some family somewhere. But, my personal likes aside, the facts cannot be ignored. Consider this chilling statistic: One hundred percent—100%!—of people raised in families will die. True, everybody dies, but that doesn't change the statistical significance of this fact.
...And Your Momma, Too
And the opinions of the experts only reinforce how lousy families are. In the book, If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World, Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., offers several questions to help readers figure out whether they had controlling parents. These questions include:
Growing up, did you often feel...
 confused by parental mixed messages and unclear rules?
sad, anxious, hurt, deprived or angry?
In retrospect, did either or both of your parents often...
overscrutinize your eating, dress, sleep, or personal grooming habits?
As an adult, have you often felt...
like few people know the real you?
confused about what your feelings are or should be?
In your adult life, have you often...
worried or ruminated over confrontations with others?
found it hard to make decisions?
As an adult, do you often feel...
horrified when you notice yourself acting like one of your parents?
Naturally, your first question about these questions is, "Does Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., actually get paid to make up lists like these?" To which I can only assume the answer is "yes, lots." Your next question might then be, "OK then, what are his credentials?" The biographical material on the book's dust jacket is about what you'd expect from someone who goes around calling himself Dan Neuharth, Ph.D. But, above his brief background sketch is a picture of a smiling Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., with dark, curly hair and heavy eyebrows, looking sort of like an intelligent Joe Piscopo. With creds like that, he has to be for real.
Back to the questions: As laypersons, we might assume that answering "yes" to most of these questions means we had fairly normal parents. But, as the professionals put it, "laypersons are idiots." All of those questions indicate we had controlling parents. And controlling parents are bad, because if they weren't, the professionals couldn't make money off of us.
So, we all had controlling parents. And, logically, if we had controlling parents, then our parents had controlling parents, and so on, back to when the first cave father said to his first cave son, "No, you can't take the woolly mammoth tonight!"
This knowledge leads us to the realization that our entire society is screwed up. This sad fact is enthusiastically endorsed by Robert Burney, MA, who writes on his web site (the aforementioned www.joy2menu.com):
If a culture is based on emotional dishonesty, with role models that are dishonest emotionally, then that culture is also emotionally dysfunctional...
What we traditionally have called normal parenting in this society is abusive because it is emotionally dishonest....Emotionally dishonest parents cannot be emotionally healthy role models, and cannot provide healthy parenting.
Our model for what a family should be sets up abusive, emotionally dishonest dynamics.
In short, we're not just screwed up; we're totally screwed.
(In case you care to know Burney's credentials, I found this "My Autobiography" on the site: Spiritual Teacher and Codependence Therapist Robert Burney, whose work has been compared to John Bradshaw's "except much more spiritual" and described as "taking inner child healing to a new level"...[believes] that we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience and that the key to enjoying life is awakening to consciousness of our True Spiritual Nature and then integrating that Loving Truth into our relationships with self and with life. He believes that Codependency (i.e. outer or external dependence) is The Human Condition and that we have now entered a new Age of Healing and Joy in which it is possible to heal the planet through healing our relationships with our selves. When someone uses capitalization techniques that are so innovative and unique [not to say WRONG], how can you not take his message seriously?)
A New Hope
Clearly, a new family paradigm is needed. Oh yes, some naysayers will always point to reduced mortality rates, increased longevity, incredible advances in modes of travel, comforts of living, and our understanding of the universe altogether—not to mention the velcro tennis shoe—as "proof" that a society made of the family types we already have isn't so terribly bad; not so bad, at any rate, that banning cell phones couldn't fix it.
To these deluded souls I say, "Consider the children." Can you truthfully say that a society that afflicts its children with Teletubbies is not misguided? Do you seriously claim that a society that fed generations of kids Count Chocula breakfast cereal is not defective? Can you in good conscience turn a blind eye to the evil that is "Barney"? No, no my friends: For the good of the children, families must go.
I am no radical who insists on tearing down the old order first and then deciding what the next one will be. Like believers in the New World Order before me, I have a "vision thing" for the future: I just want to say one word to you—one word. Are you listening? "Cults." There's a great future in cults.
Now, before you protest that cults are bad too, worse than families even, just remember who cults' competitors are in our current society: right, families. And since families enjoy enormous popular social support, is it any wonder that cults are always bad-mouthed and given such negative publicity? With that in mind, let's look at some characteristics of cults (as listed on the web site Cult 101 at www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm):
The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.
Members are encouraged or required to live...with other group members.
After reading this list, you may be saying, "Get permission to date? Guilt feelings? Why, that sounds just like my family! What 's the difference between families and cults then?"
Making money, dear reader, you missed the part about "making money." Ours is a capitalist society, is it not? So we should devote every phase of our lives to the accumulation of capital, yes? But families, for the most part, do not make money, do they? No! They spend money! They may spend money on necessities like food, SUVs and velcro tennis shoes or on luxuries like cell phones, indoor plumbing and college education, but spend it they do.
This is why the cult we must model our families after is one whose "meetings are full of energy, enthusiasm, and excitement...because this is a proven way to motivate people©"; that has "more than 3 million entrepreneurs worldwide"; that had an estimated $5 billion in retail sales in 1999; that disputes assertions that it is the world's biggest pyramid scheme by saying "pyramid schemes typically operate for a few months before they ultimately collapse and disappear. [We have] been in business for more than 40 years."
This is why the new hope for a successful society can only be Amway©. Yes, Amway is our families' future. You protest that Amway© isn't a cult? P'shaw, you may not know it, and current members may deny it, but Amway© is considered by some authorities and many former participants to be a cult. Just check with FACTNet International (www.factnet.org). They're experts on cults. That's enough to convince me.
So, I'm sold. Does it work for you?
June 6, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 23
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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Families Suck