English
EspañolA just society owes families the goods and resources for a dignified life. In doing so, it only corresponds, to a lesser extent, to the strategic functions that the family fulfills in favor of society. It is enough to think of the generation and education of children, the new citizens, who are the ones who ensure that society has a future.
Text
“Labour also makes possible the development of society and provides for the sustenance, stability and fruitfulness of one’s family.” (The Joy of Love, n.24)
Commentary
Work is a very profound human reality with many dimensions. It is not only an individual economic factor. The family has the right to a decent and fairly remunerated job for its adult and active members. A job, moreover, whose organization and execution have considered the needs of time and space for those primarily responsible for a family: the spouses, as a couple, and as fathers and mothers. Because without families, which fulfill their strategic social functions and ensure generational turnover – from which the whole of society benefits, including citizens without their own families – companies, profits, markets, institutions, and society itself would disappear in a few decades.
Without generational replacement, any society decays and disappears. Someone is in charge of bearing children, raising them, taking care of their growth, educating them, and sending them into society. That someone, we can all agree, is not the Government, nor any commercial enterprise, nor sheer luck. That someone is the family. In addition, while fulfilling the various social functions, families are the main subject of consumption and creating companies and jobs.
Work consumes many hours a day, and therefore feeling fulfilled with our professional activity is desirable. On occasions, this implies a long absence from home. How important, then, for spouses to dialogue when their family is faced with new challenges. How important then for the spouse who remains at home to be a faithful companion of their beloved and mitigate, for their children, this physical absence.
The economic and business model cannot be indifferent, turn its back, or even impede work and family life reconciliation. It cannot force parents to be heroes and martyrs.
Companies, the economic model, and the Government have a social responsibility and one regarding the family.
