Beyond the Future as Cliche: Making a Place for Families in the Future

The idea of family is being rediscovered in the 1980s. By no means coincidentally, industrial economies throughout the western world have been experiencing serious contraction. Quebec's 1984 working paper on family policy, "For Quebec Families," is illustrative of one government's rediscovery of family by means of the appropriation of the idea of family as a principle of integration within the context of characteristically atomistic and fragmented industrial states. However, it is by no means clear that one can any longer reasonably speak of the family and its potentials, capacities, and strengths. Current family realities force one to speak of diverse types of family and of the complexly interwoven dimensions of family living. If researchers are to make a place for families in the future, they will devote themselves to a fundamental, and likely critical, assessment of patterns of economic development, income distribution, work, employment, and education. Reappraisal of Quebec's working paper on family policy suggests that it provides a family perspective on a wide range of public policies, identifying the interdependence among families within their neighborhoods and communities as crucial to the creation of a central place for families in the future of Quebec society. (RH)