Family and Genre Relations in the Cuban Society (página 2)

Some researches developed by the author state that parents assume their ignorance and lack of abilities to inculcate values in their children. It evidences certain spontaneity in the process of education and makes possible the existence of antivalues inside the very same family nucleus.

Some other problem which is present in the Cuban family is the inequity of genre. The machismo that is expressed in the undervaluation of woman"s role in some social spaces and also in the overload of her role due to the double labor journal that reinforces in a new point of view "the woman-mother" myth. This situation that implies the subordination of woman to man, shows the permanence of patriarchal features of family cohabitation in our present society that doesn"t correspond to socialist forms of social organization.

These factors that show the asymmetry of man and woman, fathers and mothers functions correspond to the process of work social division and the direction it takes. To influence in a voluntarist upon this process is to propitiate superficial and external transformations that do not modify essentially the state of things and they do generate severe conflicts in the social relations. An example of this in the case of family relations is the emancipation of women without the adequate guarantee of daily life conditions in the sphere of reproduction. That is the reason why it is so important to give a solution to this need of the social work of women, the need to contribute to the family economic support, creating at the same time the infrastructure that substitutes the housewife.

The position of the father"s figure in the social representations that have been verified through scientific researches is an expression of the features that characterize the Cuban family at present. The modification of these social representations requires some changes in the social and economic context. The main objective of these changes is to promote the transformation of the present semi-patriarchal structure based on a certain mode of production with its respective social relations. As a result men and women face at present a transitional situation toward a new model in which both experiment some disorientation due to the ambivalences of the new roll they have started to play.

It is very important to specify that in this situation the influence of the economic factors is mediated by the conscience. It means that if the spiritual values and knowledge that resulted from the development of different policies carried on by the Cuban Revolution would not have had an impact upon the Cuban family, the elements already mentioned depending on the economic base of the society could have had a bigger magnitude at present.

In this sense, it is very important the operability and the adequate design and execution of policies. It is also crucial the necessity of a continue readjustment of institutions. As a result they will systematically turn the interests, aspirations and capabilities of those who receive services from them into political wills. (M. Limia, 1991)

The functional analysis of any social project or facilities for the achievement of its goals, should take into account that the facilities of the political activity should tribute not only to the achievement of the projects" general goals but also to the specific goals of the collectivity to which the facilities serve. In the case of the family environment only certain concrete correlation of the general and particular, makes the analysis functionally efficient in relation to the social project. It means that these facilities have an instrumental adequacy only in this correlation.

The Cuban society is very privileged to have a group of social policies which centralize in a teleological way the human emancipation and the social and personal dignity. These policies are coherently integrated to these goals, in some cases direct or indirectly. Regarding the topic genre, these policies have played a crucial roll even when they have been centered in a limited, excluding and partial approach since they do not give any answer to the needs and contradictions of both, men and women.

The Cuban Women Federation (CWF) has played a main role in the struggle for women rights. This effort has influenced on the part of some other ministries, organizations and institutions of the country in the design, implementation and evaluation of policies regarding genre. The intention is to emphasize on the roll that women play in the design of processes of equality of opportunities, genre empowerment and transverzalization of the genre approach. Possibly this might influence upon the homogeneity of the results that have been achieved in the different groups of decision-makers all over the country.

The treatment for families given by the social policies is indirect. Though families are benefited by these policies with the promotion of education, culture and health, there are no social policies aimed specifically to families in Cuba. The creation and application of these policies for families might be a factor of expansion of diverse social and heterogeneous representations which at the same time can not reproduce homogeneity.

On the other hand, programs, as ways of concretion of policies, reproduce the spirit of policies and do not propitiate efficiently the elimination of sexist patterns, stereotypes and taboos which express the exclusion of men and women which is culturally instituted. For example: the "Maternal" Infantile Program (non Paternal Infantile Program), Orientation Institutes for "Women and Family" (non for Men and Family), AIDS and Women Promotion Programs, and so forth. Most of these programs are nationally defined, implemented and evaluated with a vertical and centralist slant that does not favor enough the treatment of the multiplicity and complexity qualities.

On the other hand, the contradictions related to family life and genre relations could be conditioned by the existent in Cuba of a system of broadcasting of information with diverse educative directions which have propitiated a high level of instruction and integral general culture in the people. However, these directions regarding the treatment of family and genre problems have some failures in relation to mothers and fathers" functions, genre expropriation and the distribution of roles within the family context. Besides that, there is an uncreative way to face the day-to-dayness and an insufficient training by media specialist to deal with social diversity.

The educative institutions also contribute a lot to the socialization of the personality. They are catalysts or inhibitors of the conceptions related to family and genre problems. This depends on the level of verticalism and centralism that reigns in the environment where these institutions develop their respective activities. When these conditionings prevail, the institutions can not efficiently develop the capability to recreate functionally the specificities of their environment. As a result of this the homogeneity is legitimated. For example, the insufficient qualification by teachers about the topics of genre and family and the lack of tools to decipher the particular and contextual relations does not allow institutions to develop parents" orientation with a central approach on their needs and to promote a critical analysis based on the variety of conflicts and contradictions of the students" reality. Besides that, the sexist speech contained in the scholar texts and the daily languages with a homogenous character used by teachers in the institutional educative contexts do not propitiate the confrontation of genre cosmovisions which may facilitate the meeting of both sexes. This redounds on the reproduction of styles and standard ways to think and feel family and genre relations. This situation tends to get even more complicated due to the complexity of the application of the scientific researches results to the curricular programs at different educational levels.

Another key element related to the main topic of this article is referred to the fact that genre and family problems are essentially cultural events with a firm base on the processes of idealization of the reality such as myths, shared beliefs, representations and so forth. Starting form these processes, human beings assume as "normal" certain rules that condition ways to think and act family and genre relations that prevail in Cuba. Not always the assigned-assumed relation favors human development; at times, ideality rules leave a deep negative mark in the day-to-day relations with its consequent cost for the development of the personality. This even provokes incoherence between feeling, thinking and acting.

In this sense, taboos, stereotypes and rigid patterns have been transmitted from generation to generation. These patterns impede the appropriate genre and family relations. However, they belong to the system of collective representations which legitimize the order that is socially established and configure standard models for men, women and family relations.

The representations of decision-makers that have been diagnosed in the research driven by the author of this article regarding family and genre topics constitute a simple, spontaneous, immediate, superficial and stereotyped reflex of the matter. This expresses an ideological weakness that Cuban decision-makers might not have since they are expected to express a complex, aware, deep and creative in regard to these problems mediated by the prevailing institutional ideology. What has been expressed might be conditioned by the lack of centrality of these topics (genre and family) in the daily chore of these institutions. This evidences the existence of a gap between these institutions and the needs, motivations and aspirations of the people and its possible conversion into apolitical wills.

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Autor:

Dr. Ramón Rivero Pino