| Abstract: | The family, be it nuclear or extended, is integral to all historical societies. Usually, the primary bond is between older and younger males, most often between father and son. As an economic, political and social unit the family is supposed to provide solidity, stability and protection for all its members.As part of the kinship unit children from primary and secondary bonds with nuclear and extended relatives. Adverse demographic and economic forces, however, can break these alliances, disrupting and exacerbating the intimacies of daily life. Families in crisis turn upon weaker members, often expelling young and old from the hearth. As a limited numerical unit the family provides only a small arena for vented hostility. After wreaking inner devastation, the survivors loose a concentrated storm of repressed hatred upon a much larger, but equally vulnerable institution: the local Church. Overwhelming and seemingly irrational economic and social forces pit young against old; eventually, new, external bonds of allegiance are erected over the shards of the broken family.1 |
