The extended family, growing, generation after generation gave birth to our world population today. That’s Human Society.

Extended family. Growing, growing, growing as world population approaches 8 billion people.

Extended family starting with male and female, marriage, babies, childrearing, youth, dating, marriage … and the cycle continues from generation to generation. That’s how human society is closing in on eight billion people worldwide.
(Audit of Humankind chapter 3.9)

We’re discussing the structure of human society, the relationship between human beings, locally and internationally. We’ve discussed the equality of human beings and that humanity is composed of two compatible genders. The basis is that the only way to procreate is for two individuals, one of each gender, to come together. We’ve discussed the formation of such couples. Dating, engagement, courtship, bride, and groom. This leads to marriage and husband and wife with its beneficial effects. The family is the cornerstone and parenting with its complementary roles being the ideal incubator for the next generation.

Here’s an overview of the steps to extended family growth. There is a brief explanation of the phases because I want to get across the generational growth process. What is known as the fertility rate, is for women to have 2.1 children for the population to remain stable and above for it to grow. In the 70’s it was 4.5, today the world fertility rate is around 2.5. It has dropped but the world population is still growing rapidly.

Humankind’s Population Development Process

• Birth and the journey of a human life begins.
  • Watch this video for a view of life from an inside the body perspective. Truly eye-opening. As you watch it think about how all the stages (baby, parent, adult, senior) mesh nicely (not to say perfectly) together. Put another way how the pieces of the puzzle of the human body, human relations, human society assemble to make the whole world. Why is humankind organized this way and is central to life on Earth?
• Stages of child development
  • Baby
    • Breastfeeding: The mother develops antibodies and feeds them to the baby via her milk!
    • A baby has no capacity to do anything to maintain itself. It is totally helpless, physically and mentally for days, weeks and months.
  • Toddler
    • Needs instruction and direction at their level. Critical periods for the brain have their full effect and youngsters need to learn both what love and obedience are, always at their level.
  • 5-10 years
    • Needs instruction and direction at their level. Learns that they are the center of the world for their parents, and at the same time, they are not the leaders of the pack. Their place is that of a greenhorn, a newcomer, a learner about life.
  • Adolescence – Puberty
    • Needs instruction and direction at their level. Is now making more and more life decision. They are still guided but being prepared to fly with their own wings.
    • This is a crucial period when they move from the ‘parent says to do this’ stage to the ‘I must do this’ stage. This is the real severance. This is parenting payday! As they take control of their emancipation are they prepared for life?
• Young adulthood
  • Up until now, they’ve been given rules. Don’t do this, do that. Now they’re possibly on their own, in college or have left home. There’s still some third party surveillance but now they have to begin making their own decisions. There’s much less guidance. They have their human nature, their free choice decisions and the outcome is their behavior their self-guidance. That behavior is, to a great degree, in relation to their upbringing.
  • Think about this, if the children work out well, then maybe the parents should be congratulated!
• Adulthood
  • Makes own decisions for themselves based on a childhood of instruction, guidance and the emotions they received.
• Bride and Groom
  • Finding the right partner for which adults should be prepared. Today there’s practically NO instruction ANYWHERE (maybe a little in Churches) about this MAJOR phase, as with marriage and childrearing, and we wonder why we have so many problems in these areas!
• Marriage
  • Now each partner is making own decisions for two people. They are establishing their OWN family apart from parents. The first part of life prepares man and woman for this. They are now an independent twosome ruling their own world together.
• Husband and Wife
  • Making decisions together, refining the art of intimate communication, sharing, loving, arguing, forgiving, planning, facing success and setbacks, always together. It’s a whole new ballgame. It’s a twosome that acts as an onesome.
• Birthing 
  • Each has their essential role. It can’t be done individually. Historically birthing has also been done as a threesome with a surrogate mother and now with a test tube and flash frozen embryos. In all these scenarios, the most common and the one with the least ethical and least supplementary problems remains a couple composed of a male and a female.
  • The best structure for bringing up balanced kids remains a man and a woman in a loving relationship.
• Parenthood. We’ve gone full circle. A parent is on the other side of being a child. Boy and girl are now father and mother. First, they play a subordinate role, then they play the preponderant role. Have you ever thought about this scenario and wondered why it is so? And this cycle repeats and repeats itself
  • Baby
  • Toddler
  • 5-10 years
  • Adolescence – Puberty
  • Adulthood
  • Marriage
  • Birthing
  • Parenthood…
• Extended family
  • Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, in-laws, grandparents, grandchildren. The multiplication and growth are endless, and that’s how we get to be 8 billion people on Earth.
• Middle Age
  • For our original couple, there’s an after-childrearing. Menopause sets in for women. Both the professional stability and twosome equilibrium have grown to fruition. Both peace and enjoyment characterize a fulfilled couple.
• Seniors
  • Our couple becomes grandparents. They have all the benefits of kids without the responsibilities. They’re a vital part in the chain of life. They parented their children, now the children, as grown-ups, get to help out with their parents. The grandparents can share their wisdom of years of family and life and leave a legacy of leadership for their tribe.

It doesn’t stop here as we’ll see next week.

Extended family, the state of affairs

These are all links in a chain, and the chain is as strong as its weakest link. If any of these steps are skipped, broken or, worst of all, destroyed, human society gets upset. This knowledge allows us to do an audit of social relations in a nuclear family, an extended family, and beyond to all families.

Today the structure of human society is ever changing. So fast, that every generation is a whole new world with new situations, fewer ground rules, less and less preparation, with the result we’re getting less and less prepared adults.

Consider there are 51 varieties of families, generations, and ages. Parents that grew up in a particular type of family, in a particular generation in a specific age are raising children in situations they are unaware of: A different type of family, a different generation and a different age.

• Family of origin
• Family of choice
• Blended family
• Extended family
• Single-parent family
• Domestic partnerships

• Gen Z, iGen, or Centennials: Born 1996 and later
• Millennials or Gen Y: Born 1977 to 1995
• Generation X: Born 1965 to 1976
• Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964
• Traditionalists or Silent Generation: Born 1945 and before

• Agricultural Age
• Industrial Age
• Technology Age
• Information Age Data Storage (hard drives > cloud), transmission (wire > optics), usage (TV, Social Media, Youtube)
• Imagination Age (Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality)

Some people may think that the family schema I painted at the beginning of this post is rather old-school. I’d call it historical and traditional. In Origin of the Universe I’ll not only explain why it is so but the purpose of why it’s so. But I’d like to leave you with something important to think about in the context of Audit of the Universe.

We’ve already looked at How Humankind Functions. We ascertained the necessity for the wellbeing of a society (at all levels) to have common ethics. Again, some might consider the traditional family as out-of-fashion, inappropriate in the 21st Century, incomplete given our individual needs, or for whatever other reason. Each is entitled to their opinion.

I’d just like to submit this. IF the traditional family with love and proper education were the ethical model would it help ease some heart-wrenching problems and debates we’re facing today? Here’s a short list of some issues: child-pregnancy, teenage birth-control, pre-marital sex, abortion, sexual harassment, sexually transmitted disease, gender issues, feminism and machoism, extra-conjugal affairs, pornography, prostitution, divorce, single-parent homes, fatherless children.

The effects of a human society based on a traditional family structure would ripple through how humanity socializes in so many other areas. Imagine if families followed traditional family ethics:

• The improvement of literacy rates and better adaptation of learning in school. Teachers could devote more time to teaching rather than to discipline.
• The reduction of mental anxiety in children and adolescents leading to more respect and less aggression, including shootings.
• In poorer societies, we see fewer people on the streets pushing caddies. Low and depressive periods along with setbacks happen in life. The family is there to support their weaker members and help them get back on their feet.
• Help to take more care of their handicapped and/or elderly members.
• Imagine the burden this would take off of social welfare and the government.

I realize this is idealistic, pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking, taking into consideration where we are in society today. In most Western countries, and maybe around the world, society has evolved so fast in the past three decades that such ethics are part of history. But, it is recognized that family and extended family are the basis of a solid functional society.

Rev. Dr. Wilson Goode When you really don’t have a strong family unit, when you have single parents household where the mother may be on welfare, the father is not providing support; the children living in environment which is drug infested you end up with a society that is in fact in disarray and become dysfunctional and the children grow up dysfunctional.

We have blasted through the post-WWII generations at an accelerating pace. Each generation’s characteristics are so altered from the preceding generation. Societal ethics, child-rearing and education practices, as well as technological influence, have all had their often pernicious effect of what we contemplate around us.

Some would say we’re better off, some would say worse. That’s up to you to decide. This post would simply like you to understand that extended family is the way human society and social relationships have developed from time immemorial. Historically and in the future, we cannot get away from that.

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.9 of the book Audit of Humankind.

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