Not all change is progress. The recent conflict in Ukraine is a palpable and painful example of this. Progress is not only change and evolution, but change and evolution that brings us closer to a fuller and happier life. The metamorphoses experienced by family relationships in recent decades, mainly in the West, might seem to be signs of progress towards more flexible and free forms of relationship, which should lead to greater satisfaction in people. These changes, however, are proving to be signs of regression, impoverishment and, ultimately, unhappiness. I am not saying it myself, but the world's leading experts in psychiatry are affirming it. It is shown by the results of a very powerful study that, since 1938, investigates the relationship between happiness and people's health. Published in 2018 by Professor Robert Waldingerthat close and lasting relationships make people happier than education, money or fame. That loneliness kills as much as tobacco or alcohol. That conflicts and breakups sap our energy and break our health. And that, in interpersonal relationships, despite crises, the important thing is to be committed to the relationship, knowing that we can always count on each other.
Sociology proves what common sense presents to us as intuition: that the family founded on an unconditional commitment - called, by the way, marriage - is the one that "has more numbers" to make its members happy. Is this not the genuine progress to which we all aspire? In addition to being progressive -the promoter of genuine progress-, the family today is also a countercultural element. Counterculture, according to Roszak, is made up of those social forms and tendencies that oppose those established in a society. In this context, the family is an element of resistance to the great forces of postmodernity: lack of commitment, which leads to individualization, relational poverty and ends in loneliness; and self-referentiality, which leads us to think that well-being and happiness are to be found in ourselves. Family relationships, being an environment of unconditional love, allow us to develop the security we need to successfully face the rest of social relationships. Far from being a rigid, carcastic and reactionary institution, the family reveals itself today as a bulwark of resistance to the prevailing existential poverty, where we can build authentic relationships in which - in the midst of our limitations and imperfections, we can - if we want to - find happiness.
Professor at the Faculty of Law of the International University of Catalonia and director of the Institute for Advanced Family Studies. She directs the Chair on Intergenerational Solidarity in the Family (IsFamily Santander Chair) and the Childcare and Family Policies Chair of the Joaquim Molins Figueras Foundation. She is also Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law at UIC Barcelona.
