[/caption]Editor --The senior center in Beaverton, Oregon is sponsoring a Thanksgiving dinner on the traditional day with all the trimmings. Several seniors in one of the many classes at the center mentioned they would be attending the dinner, a comment on both the economy and the culture of the new American family of 2011.
Pete, who asked his real name not be disclosed, observed what happens to many seniors who move to be near children. He had left a home in the Southwest to move to the Portland area after one of his sons reminded Pete that the old man was getting older. Pete, of course, needed no reminders, as he walks carefully with a cane and uses public buses to transport people with disabilities to the center. Why doesn’t Pete spend Thanksgiving with his son, wife and the grandchildren? “They are going to the in-laws,” Pete said. “His wife is close to her family. I suspect it will be that way at Christmas.”
As we talked about the modern family, Emily, who lives with her daughter and cares for the grandchildren, responded how lucky she feels. “Many of my friends my age have children who live far away. So it’s great to have a place where folks can feel at home and where there are at least friends to visit with and good food to eat as well.”
“I wouldn’t go to the center on Thanksgiving,” Joe piped up in response. “I think it’s embarrassing to have to say you have nowhere else to go. After all, don’t people get invited someplace else, say to friends?”
The conversation continued, as folks remarked on the Thanksgiving tradition with family and that fewer seniors get invitations since they aren’t in the work world anymore to have those regular contacts and to be inside the frantic pace associated with the holidays, where people juggle work and holiday preparations. The discussion, in fact, reflected the changing American family.
Pete was lucky to have sold his house during troubled times for the real estate industry across the country. The housing downturn has kept many seniors in place while their children now have their young adults living at home, adding additional stresses for families. Grandparents can’t afford to move because they cannot sell their homes or because they lack the funds to relocate somewhere else.
The Annual Report on Family Trends: 2011 offers details that might explain why Thanksgiving is simply a symbol of a changing institution and less and less the family dinner reflecting generations. The annual report is described as “designed to inform the reader about the American family in its current state, including its behaviors in the five major institutions (five major tasks) of society: family, church, school, marketplace, and government.
One of the most telling features of the 2011 report has to do with what is labeled as the status of “belonging.” A graph shows that across the states, the percentage of those whose parents have rejected each other has significantly grown to more than half of American families. Defining one’s status in the family combines with the shatters of emotions left from those rejections remain a part of how family members treat each other. Those issues become part of holiday planning and rituals that have changed, with some family members refusing or unable to participate in holiday events and others making choices of where to go that raise problems of their own.
The out-of-wedlock birthrate has also climbed in the past several decades to now be at a rate of more than 50% in the group of 18- 19 year-olds. The stable parent figures shift and change or that stable element may never show itself significantly during those formative years, as experts maintain, taking away that “family” nature that Thanksgiving traditions espouse. Reflected in those statistics on the American family are the percentages of youth feeling sad or hopeless, represented by statistics from 1999 to 2007, with 35% of teenage girls expressing some symptoms of depression and more than 20% of boys.
What has been the American Dream that has turned for many into an American nightmare is part of Thanksgiving behaviors, according to a source that has detailed the many areas of the culture where those dreams have gone away. The focus is on the financial picture of gloom brought about by the housing crisis and the economy, with high unemployment figures. That translates into a high growth in bankruptcies, with more than 60% of those involving medical bills. Health issues that impact travel and relationships have brought an increasing number of Americans into debts they cannot pay. This often means interrupted travel plans as well as family household budgets sliced and diced for those already stressed.
Still Thanksgiving remains a time when people think of family dinners and the better things of life. This means for many the food baskets that have increased in great numbers this season all over the country for needy families. Minnesota, a place where mobility is lessened by the weather of the state during November, has seen a 17 % rise in food baskets for the needy since last year.
A Methodist Church in Hastings that provides an increasing number of holiday meals for its congregants and others describes the modern American family traditions and Thanksgiving as this, something many at a local senior center would likely observe as well:
“The world has changed and families are different today,” is how Larry Hollenbeck explains the new demographic of today’s holiday celebrants. “People don’t come here because they’re hungry or they need food. They come for any number of different reasons you wouldn’t expect.” Among them, Larry points out, are changing family dynamics, including family members who may be so widespread geographically that a Thanksgiving Day celebration may be so small in number that a traditional feast just doesn’t make sense.“Our kids don’t come home at Thanksgiving, and they’re so busy in their own lives that preparing a big Thanksgiving Day meal is impractical. It makes you wonder, ‘How do you have a traditional holiday celebration anymore?’”
It seems Pete won't be alone for Thanksgiving and will be with people he knows and loves after all, at a senior center in Beaverton as others like him celebrate the holidays every year.
