Families in trouble / Earl Lomon Koos.

  • Koos, Earl Lomon, 1905-1960.
Date:
1946
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Families in trouble / Earl Lomon Koos. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    120 Families in Trouble but that's just when we can't go to them. Oh, of course I don't mean when somebody dies. That's different. Everybody expects you then. But when something's gone wrong in your family, you just feel you have to sort of hide away 'til it wears off. The culture expects you to show concern when there is death in the family, but the culture also imposes barriers when troubles other than death ( troubles which can be more significant for family rela¬ tionships, more destructive of human values) affect the family. In the experience of these families, at least, one hides away when one needs help the most. Nor did the withdrawal affect only the relations with other fam¬ ilies. There was a marked correlation between withdrawal from friends and withdrawal from organization activities. This occurred especially in the families where the friendships with other families were mainly within the organization limits. Mrs. Kreuger stated the reason clearly; Naturally we can't go to our club. Why, we'd see the people there we are friends with outside the block. No, we couldn't go there any more than we can go to see our friends or ask them to come here. We're just as shut off from our meetings as we are from our friends. In the Czabot family, when the word got around concerning the boy's infection with gonorrhea, the family withdrew, even from church participation. This retirement was explained by the father in the following words: Our church stands against this kind of thing, and we can't face our church people with this hanging over us. This is a Cross we have to carry by ourselves. We couldn't face the congregation, even if it is hard to stay away. We can give up the settlement meet¬ ings, that's not hard, but we can hardly bear to stay away from services.^ g. It should be mentioned, in fairness to the church, that both the minister and some of his lay workers tried to keep this family from staying away during this trouble period.