Inadequacy of the Family
From Internet: Knowledge and Community
Families are a microcosm of the larger community in that the integral constituents of community are networked families interacting within a shared and agreed upon framework enabling socioeconomic interaction in the "absence of significant shared understanding". This is not to say shared understanding is absent in all examples, but significant economic disparities for example can skew the perception of the individual good thereby enabling significantly different desires. The common good of the community is often a reflection of the common good of the family. Similarly communities in which families exist afford access to the individual good, defining to some extent the individual good realized by family members as well as the virtues of acknowledged dependence. But what of the gap between community and family in cases of "extreme isolation?" In these rare cases families begin to exhibit and take on the roles of community "workplace, school, parish and play."(p134) Under this backdrop it becomes clear that the "goods of family life are achieved in and with the goods of various types of local community". Macintyre asserts "It is because of the family's lack of self-sufficiency that the type of common good recognition of which is required by the virtues of acknowledged dependence cannot be achieved within the family, at least insofar as the family is conceived of as a distinct and separate social unit". (p134) Macintyre does go on to state that families do exercise virtues of acknowledged dependence, the care of young children and that of the elderly who may be "largely or wholly dependent." Not a condemnation of family or a statement to the inadequacy of, moreover an observed understanding that families require community in order to flourish and communities require acknowledged dependence in return.
