This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If you've read the 1969 book by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, "On Death and Dying" — or, a bit more likely, have seen Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical movie "All That Jazz" — you know about the five stages of death.
• 1. Denial. Nothing's wrong. I'm fine. Really. Nothing to see here. Move along.
• 2. Anger. Hey! What the hell?!?
• 3. Bargaining. Wait, wait. I promise. No more bacon double cheeseburgers. I'll take up running. Whatever it takes. Talk to me here.
• 4. Depression. Oh, man. Why does everything happen to me. Sigh.
• 5. Acceptance. It's OK. Really. I've had a good run.
If you've been following the trends in American family life over the last few years, even the last few months, you may recognize how many of us have been going through similar stages as we watch so many things change.
The most obvious, because it has been the most rapid, has been the legal, political and social bullet train moving toward the acceptance of same-sex marriage and child-rearing.
But the fear, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance are also seen in other social trends.
Educated and career-oriented people are getting married later, if at all, and having fewer, if any, children.
Women with less education and lesser prospects are increasingly choosing to have a child, or two, without bothering to get married, making the arguably rational decision that the men available to them have even poorer prospects than they do and would be less a full partner than another whiny child. One who drinks, smokes and gambles.
Economic realities that include high unemployment, stagnant wages and the perceived need for ever more material creature comforts conspire to push both parents, where there are two parents, into the workforce.
Technology and economics, meanwhile, have conspired to end the days when work was more brawn than brain. The information economy has empowered women to make their own way in the world without being dependent on a man.
Women's increasing share of the workforce comes in spite of continued wage discrimination against females. Or, maybe, because of it, as those who command a smaller paycheck get more jobs.
In the face of these changes, some cosmopolitan liberals have skipped right to the acceptance part. They may think that people are making wise marriage and family decisions by thinking globally and acting locally. That they are worried about climate change, food supplies and global resource depletion.
Some traditionalist conservatives have been expressing great alarm — the denial, anger and, sometimes, bargaining parts — that the free choices made by free people, particularly emancipated women, are doing more than wiping away the stereotypical family unit.
These decisions, we are told, are depleting the human capital needed to support individual parents and generations of pensioners as the number of old retired folks swells in proportion to the number of productive workers.
These fears, which seem to fill some publications, seek a scientific veneer. But they are really just resistance to the idea that anybody might choose to live differently than people chose, or were forced, to live in previous generations.
That fear flows from the mistaken belief that everybody has to live the same way, and because your way doesn't suit me, we must all live my way.
The reality deniers also ignore obvious adjustments that could be made in areas that, unlike personal choices about marriage and children, are the proper realm of policy-making. Creating a truly free market flow of workers across national boundaries would help a lot. So would making Social Security taxes more progressive.
Besides, do you know anybody who got married, got pregnant, got pregnant again, got divorced, got a prescription for contraceptives, had an abortion, got a job, or not, because of how it would affect Social Security actuarial tables or global resource distribution?
I didn't think so.
Just accept it.
George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, has been around enough to see whole newspaper staffs go through all five stages.
Twitter: @debatestate