Under the expectations of literacy, a prototypical family life was to be expected from all. As the expectation of homogeneity is overridden by all the forces at work in the civilization of illiteracy, we should not be surprised by, and even less inclined to fasten blame on people who constitute themselves in ways closer to their authenticity. Multiplication of choice is-let me state again-part of the civilization of illiteracy. Modern, enlightened laws introduced in some African countries prohibit polygamous families. With this prohibition in place, a new phenomenon has occurred: Husbands end up having extra-marital affairs and support neither their lovers nor their children, which they did under polygamy. Paradoxically, activists in the Women's Liberation movement are seriously considering the return to polygamy, as an alternative to the increasing number of deadbeat dads and the misery of abandoned wives and children. There is no necessary relation between the two examples, rather the realization that within the civilization of illiteracy, tradition comes very powerfully to expression.
Children in the illiterate family
Nobody can characterize families of the past (monogamous or polygamous) as unfailingly unified and showing exemplary concern for offspring. Children, as much as wives and husbands, were abused and neglected. Concern over education was at times questionable. The projected ideal of authority and infallibility resulted in the perpetuation of patterns of experiences from which we are still fighting to free ourselves. Notwithstanding these and other failures, we still have to acknowledge that a shift, from individual and family responsibility to a diffuse sense of social responsibility, characterizes the process affecting the status of children. The family in the civilization of illiteracy embodies expectations pertinent to progressively mediated practical experiences: from childbirth-an almost industrial experience-to education; from entering the family agreement, mediated by so many experts-lawyers, priests, tax consultants, psychologists-to maintaining a sense of commonalty among family members; from embodying direct interaction and a sense of immediacy to becoming instances of segmentation, change, and interaction, and instances of competition and outright conflict. The institution of the family must also counteract sequentiality and linearity with a sense of relativity that allows for more choices, which the new human scale makes possible. This new pragmatic framework also allows for higher expectations.
Like any other institution, the institution of marriage (and the bureaucracy it has generated) has its own inertia and drive to survive, even when the conditions of its necessity, at least in the forms ascertained in the past, are no longer in place. In short, the breakdown of the family, even if equated with the failure of the individuals constituting it-children included-is related to the new structural foundation of a pragmatic framework for which it is not suited as a universal model, or to which it is only partially acceptable. This does not exclude the continuation of family. Rather, it means that alternative forms of cooperation and interaction substituting the family will continue to emerge. Just as literacy maintains a presence among many other literacies, the family is present among many forms of reciprocal interdependence, some expanding beyond the man-woman nucleus. To understand the dynamics of this change, a closer look at how the new pragmatic framework of the civilization of illiteracy affects experiences pertinent to family is necessary here.
The history of the family, independent of its various embodiments (matriarchal, patriarchal, polygamous, monogamous, restricted or extended, heterosexual or homosexual), is in many respects the history of the appropriation of the individual by society. The offspring of primitive humans belonged to nobody. If they survived to puberty, they continued life on their own, or as members of the group in which they were born, as nameless as their parents. Children and parents were amoral and competed for the same resources. The offspring of the humans constituting their own identity, and their own universe parallel to that of nature, belonged more and more to what emerged as the family, and by extension to the community (tribe, village, parish). The child was marked, named, nurtured, and educated, as limited as this education might have been. It was given language and, through the experience of work, a sense of belonging. In all known practical experiences-work, language, religion, market, politics-the succession of generations was specifically acknowledged. Rules, some pertaining to the preservation of biological integrity, others to property and social life, were established in order to accommodate relations between generations.
Over centuries, family ownership of children decreased while that of society increased. This is reflected in the various ways church, school, social institutions, and especially the market claim each new generation. In this process, mediation becomes part of family life: the priest, the teacher, the counselor, the language of advertisement, direct marketing, and much, much more is insinuated between children and their parents. The process intensifies as expectancies of better life for less effort become predominant. Responsibilities, procreation included, are distributed from the parents to the practical experiences of genetics. Test tube production of babies is an alternative to natural procreation. More to come. As a matter of fact, both procreation and adoption are dominated by strong selective methods and design procedures. Genetic traits are identified and matched in the genetic banks of adoptable children. Surrogate mothers are selected and contracted based on expectations of behavior and heredity. Sperm banks offer selections from high IQ or high physical performance bulls. Other mediators specify ideal cows, surrogate mothers whose offspring are treated like any other commodity-"satisfaction guaranteed." If the product is somehow unsatisfactory, the dissatisfied parents get rid of it.
Obviously, the language and literacy expected for the success of the biochemical reaction in the test tube is different from that involved in the constitution of the family. It is also different from the literacy involved in the change from instinctual sexual encounters to love, procreation, and child rearing. In each of the procedures mentioned, new languages-of genetics, for example-introduce levels of mediation that finally affect the efficiency of procreation. As nightmarish as some of these avenues might seem, they are in line with the entire development towards the new pragmatics: segmentation-the task is divided into sub-tasks-networking-to identify the desired components and strategies for synthesis-and task distribution. Children are not yet made on the Internet, but if the distinction between matter and information suggested by some geneticists is carried through, it would not be impossible to conceive of procreation on networks.
A new individuality
The process of mediation expands well further. Family life becomes the subject of practical experiences involving family planning, health, psychology, socialized expectations of education, the right to die. The private family owned their offspring and educated it to the level of its own education, or to the level it deemed advantageous, consistent with the progress of literacy. To the extent that this family was involved in other experiences, such as religion, sport, art, or the military, children grew up partaking in them. Once one aspect of the relation between environment, home, family, and work changes-for example, living in the city reshapes the nature of the dependence on the environment, the house is one of several possible, family members work at different jobs-the family is made more and more part of a bigger family: society. In turn, this belonging dissolves into solitary individualism. Nothing any longer buffers the child from the competitive pressure that keeps the economic engine running. Industrial society required centers of population while it still relied on relatively nuclear families that embodied its own hierarchy. The human scale reflected in industrial society required the socialization of family in order to generate an adequate workforce, as well as the corresponding consumption. With networking, children as much as adults are on their own, in a world of interactions that breaks loose from any conceivable constraints. There is no need to fantasize here, rather to acknowledge a new structural situation of consequences beyond our wildest imagination.
Literacy unified through its prescriptions and expectations. It facilitated the balance between the preserved naturalness and the socialized aspect of family. It projected a sense of permanency and shielded the family from the universe of machines threatening to take over limited functions of the body: the mechanical arm, the treadmill. As a human medium for practical experiences involving writing and reading, literacy seemed to represent a means of resistance against the inanimate. It helped preserve human integrity and coherence in a world progressively losing its humanity due to all the factors that the need for increased efficiency put in place (machines, foremost). It eventually became obvious that procreation had to be kept within limits, that there is a social cost to each child and to each mother giving birth. Moreover, family structural relations needed to be reconsidered for the expected levels of efficiency to be maintained and increased, as expectations took over desires. The new pragmatic framework is established as this borderline between the possible and the necessary. The civilization of illiteracy is its expression.