The Obsolescence of Family Ties and Interpersonal Social Ties

I remember many good classroom discussions during my college adjunct faculty years when I was teaching Sociology of Marriage and the Family. I recall thinking at the time of how the focus on family life seemed of less a priority to the typical college student in my classes on the subject than it was to previous generations.

Now onward to this entry -

The Obsolescence of Family Ties and Interpersonal Social Ties.

As more time has gone by, I am even more convinced that people no longer value family ties to any great extent; perhaps, I should clarify by specifying that statement is more applicable to the ties of family other than one's minor children or spouse.

The study of Marriage & Family Processes can be very interesting from an academe perspective. The observation of family interactions is even more interesting from a personal perspective; it is also very perplexing and troubling, or least it is to me as I see what I perceive as the deteriorating importance of extended family life.

The theme song of Family Ties enters my mind as I compose this commentary. That, in turn, leads me to express an analogy to that show. As the television series Family Ties went off the broadcast airwaves into the sunset, re-runs excepted, so has real life family ties totally dissolved as each person goes his or her own separate way as did the actress who portrayed the mother, Elyse Keaton in the television series Family Ties.

Real life interpersonal social ties are also obsolete, or so it seems to me, as I wrote in a couple years ago in Roland's Ramblings Law of Diminishing Returns, in which blog entry I closed with a link to Roland Hansen Commentary Social Network Services Diminish Family Life And Friendships.