Perfect American Family
What Do You Do When Your Relatives Don’t Look Like the Perfect American Family?
In the 20th Century, corporations such as GE and Disney spent significant resources to market a view of the “perfect American family.” Not surprisingly, that family usually looked like the white anglo-saxon protestant family with two parents and two healthy, above-average children to whom these corporations marketed their products.
Amy Laura Hall, assistant professor of theological ethics, received a Henry Luce III Fellowship for 2004 – 05 to research popular and mainline denominational family magazines, advice, and organizations from the last century. She has looked for ways that Protestants in the last century shaped the family life in the U.S.
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Amy Laura Hall leads a discussion for the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy lecture series. |
Her presentations in non-Christian settings, such those for Jewish and Muslim scholars, have revealed that these groups see and often feel marginalized by the media images. Hall said, “these patterns, which are largely invisible to mainline Protestant Americans, are quite visible to those who are considered ‘others’.”
Hall has a special challenge when she takes her presentation to secular audiences. Unlike the non-Christian religious groups, audiences of scientists and engineers do not necessarily share the theological basis of her ethical methodology. Most do share a concern for children, however. Hall said, “In a secular setting, I try to draw on a sense among most audiences that middle-class children are becoming medical projects in the U.S.”
She also finds common language in the general desire to make a society that acknowledges all of its members. “We will not be true to our finest aspirations if we become unwilling to provide care and access for children and families who do not ‘fit,’” Hall said.
Learn more about Professor Hall.
You can also discover more about her research on these sites:
http://special.lib.umn.edu/swha/exhibits/hygiene/essay.htm
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/Ivory/index.asp
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/