Shawl by Louise Erdrich Marriages

¶ … SHAWL by Louise Erdrich Marriages over the years have come to be defined as a union between a man and woman. Similarly based on this definition, we have a sense of family, endorsed by the society in general. According to this view, a family is where a married couple with their children lives under one roof. But it all changes when one person chooses to move in a non-traditional direction i.e.

A woman falls in love with a man other than her husband or man takes another woman or children are abandoned. In all these cases, a new type of family emerges which may be single parent family, family with stepchildren or stepparents etc. But while these have become rather common, they are still not the norm and hence we call them non-traditional families. In this paper, we aim to underscore the effects of such non-traditional families on societies and how they alter, worsen or make the society better.

It needs to be understood that when a tradition has been in place for centuries, there is a reason behind its strong establishment. Traditions and customs that endure and withstand the test of time have many proven reasons for being there and hence any alteration in them can actually cause major societal upset. This is what is happening in modern societies today where non-traditional families are becoming more common, even if not yet fully acceptable.

In the story, "The Shawl," we come across one such non-traditional family and see the highly damaging impact on such a family on the society and many immediate victims. A married woman decides to leave her husband and son for another man. As the result of her very selfish desire and decision, many people are hurt and the entire institution of marriage collapses for one family. Some selfish actions on her behalf completely alter the lives of those connected with her.

For one: She falls in love with another man She leaves her husband for that man She then tears the family apart by taking the daughters with her and leaving her son behind As the result of her actions, an entire family is destroyed and not only that, it also ruins the psychological and emotional health of her son who is unable to comprehend the whole situation but knows that something had died inside him the day his mother abandoned him.

"He watched the back of the wagon and the tiny figures of his mother and sister disappear, and something failed in him. Something broke. At that moment he truly did not care if he was alive or dead." (p.2) Though his father tries to make the situation a little better for the only person of his family that was still under his care, it doesn't do anything to improve his emotional health but instead tears him apart even further.

The effects of his mother's selfish actions cause him his entire childhood and even his adulthood when he becomes a bad father, a lost soul who simply wanted to drown himself in alcohol and had no idea what had happened to him when he was younger that caused him to be this way. We need to thus understand that when non-traditional families emerge, the do more harm than good to the people involved especially young children.

Young children cognitively fail to comprehend why their family is different from the other normal families and hence become aggressive, withdrawn or simply too confused to lead a normal life. They also face ridicule of their peers which further hurts their little souls and confuses their minds even further. The young boy in the Shawl is unable to understand the gravity of what had happened but does feel this intense sense of being abandoned. This intensifies further when as a grown-up; he loses his wife and becomes an alcoholic.

The loss of his wife reminds him of the loss of his mother and the terrible sense of abandonment causes him to want to waste himself completely- not realizing that he had his own family to take care of- two boys and a girl. "Not until she died did he start the heavy sort of drinking, the continuous drinking, where we were left alone in the house for days." (p.3) The negative effects of non-traditional families on generations to come are well documented.

Astone and McLanahan (1991) found that growing up in a "non-intact" family had serious negative effects on educational performance of children. Similarly Sandefur, McLanahan and Wojtkiewicz (1992) found that teenagers who had grown up in single parent families, in step-families or with neither parent had a poorer chance of graduating from high school compared to children who lived with both biological parents. These results have been found by many other studies across many races and groups living in the U.S.

thus indicating the universality of negative effects emerging from non-traditional family setup. To some extent, the emergence of non-intact families is unavoidable. For example in cases where women chose to leave a bad marriage, children often grow up either with a stepfather or with a single parent.

This gives rise to a new kind of family but despite its negative effects in the long run, this kind of scenario is unavailable because as women become more educated, they choose not to stay in a bad marriage because they are no longer dependent on a man for their financial life (Astone et al.

1991) They know they can raise their kids on their own and hence instead of allowing their children to suffer from the effects of their bad marriage, the woman takes a decision to improve her life and that of her children. In such unavailable cases, the negative effects are there but are often ignored because the society appears to accept such changes.

Many social changes have occurred over the decades and while the society has chosen to accept others, it doesn't endorse others and what it doesn't endorse tends to create most problems for the people involved. We can blame many factors for the negative effects of non-traditional families. Selfishness on part of some people directly involved, brutal non-acceptance by the society and simple inability of young children to see the big picture or understand the root cause of why their family is different.

Another major factor is the role of the new entrants in non-traditional families. By this we mean, a new mother or father, step-sister or brother or any extended step family that comes into the scene when traditional families break down. The new entrants may not connect with some members of the family and this can cause greater friction and overall disharmony. In all fairness, we must also not overlook the studies that have something positive to say about alternate family structures.

According to some studies, there is no difference in educational success of children raised by two parents and those raised by a single parent. However those studies do indicate that psychological well being of children in non-intact families is at risk when children are raised in step-families than when they are raised by a single parent. "…the negative effect of non-traditional families on adolescent's emotional well-being is highly significant only for step-families and only for the mental health component, whereas living in.