Alberti's concept of family values and modern relevance

Albertis Family

The Family and Individual Familial Roles through the Ages: From the Renaissance to Today

Throughout most if not all of recorded human existence (and quite probably pre-history, as well), the family has served as the basic social unit, wherein roles and personalities develop, and values and beliefs are at least initially if not permanently formed. The role and expectations of the family have changed dramatically over the course of human history, of course, with different civilizations and societies taking different views of the individuals within families, and the degree to which the family is responsible for the overall well-being and productivity of individual citizens. Even within a fairly limited cultural range, the sheer progress of time can lead to many changes, such that what was desired and expected of families in previous eras of Western and even English culture, while remaining highly recognizable today, do not fully mesh with modern expectations.

Leon Battista Alberti, writing about the family in fifteenth-century Florence -- nearing the height of the Italian Renaissance -- draws clear lines between the roles of the father and the wife of the typical nuclear family. For men, virtue is shown by action and the good management of the household -- which means producing amply and spending wisely, so as to ensure security -- while a woman shows virtue largely through her appearance and docility: "who cannot see that a badly mannered woman is only very rarely a virtuous one," Alberti asks (pp. 170). Women are also judged by the wroth of their lineage, in Alberti's view, rendering them still less capable of determining their own inner worth.

The external sentiments expressed about the family and the various roles within it have certainly changed from Alberti's time to our own. Gender equality is seen as a paramount good in modern Western society whereas it was a virtually unthinkable and laughable concept in Alberti's world; to suggest that it is solely the man's responsibility to manage the economics of a household, especially when that responsibility is built on a supposed lack of competency on the part of the woman, is as horrific to many modern sentiments as suggesting the equality of women would have been to Alberti. This difference in perspective also points to major differences in the overall social values that inform these perspectives. Equality and self-determination are increasingly important concepts in modern society, which has led to much greater innovation and an increase in democratic ideals and principles, which in turn leads to greater individual freedom and, supposedly, greater contentment.

Though this schema works for many, however, there are also downsides to these societal changes that are not often discussed as they are rather unpopular. With greater individual freedom comes greater individual and collective risk. This is not to suggest that women should be controlled by men, or indeed that any segment of society should be controlled by another, but as families become less structured and more permissive entities, responsibility for the production of socially connected citizens becomes more difficult to place, and the concept of social responsibility itself even comes into question. The answer to this predicament is that the family as a whole becomes responsible, though the individual roles are more freely and equally divided.