Family Stability
Prof. Dr. Fathia Muhammed d Bahshawan
Family stability is a family relationship based on the permanent interaction among all family members, which is the result of, mostly, intentional behavior, and a feeling that results from the actions undertaken by each member of the family as well as on the awareness of the motives and intentions behind the behavior of other parties. In fact, the family is the essence of the society.
The safe family is the one founded on a legal and equal safe marriage that brings a man and a woman together, on a long-term social cooperation agreement, and who are psychologically and socially compatible. With this marriage, the family possesses common personal, biological, cultural, economic, material and emotional components for continuity and stability. Family stability is the guarantor of the happiness of the father, mother and children, and is an important factor in the stability of society. The family is subject to interaction among its members. Either this interaction is positive, so the family progresses and makes good children, or it is negative, and it becomes a sick family that threatens the stability of a safe society.
An individual who does not enjoy family stability cannot exercise stability in his relationships. In fact, he ignores the value of peace, especially if he is tormented and anxious. The individual carries within him the values on which he was raised. Hence, Islam’s concern from the first moment of meeting the spouses was to put sufficient guarantees to achieve family stability, thus ignoring the right and the duty or neglecting them is a matter that has a serious impact on the marital relationship, knowing that rights and duties are not measured here by quantity; as the psychological aspect is also of paramount importance.
There are many factors that lead to the stability of family life and success in marriage. In fact, the similarity or difference in the cultural background that each of the husband or wife carries and transmits to marital life may lead to compatibility and homogeneity. There are factors that result in failure and disruption of marital life, which ends in conflict and disagreements. The emergence of difficulties that imped the consent or assuming responsibilities, whether from within or outside the family group, and this may cause the emergence of a temporary conflict among the expectations of the different family members, and if this conflict continues, it may affect the unity of the family and its stability.
Women play a vital and key role in building the family climate and the educational process. They have a prominent role in containing the husband and carrying out his rights in order to achieve family stability, which is reflected in the lives of the children, as they are the first to receive them and communicate with them in the framework of an emotional relationship, they totally depend on them, until they become independent.
The mutual respect between spouses is one of the most important elements of a successful life and family stability. Mutual appreciation and respect have a profound impact on the continuation of family life, and respecting others means fulfilling their rights and self-esteem, and respect between spouses is a good moral lesson for children. They learn respect towards their parents, and they will learn respect towards all the individuals with whom they interact.
Consultation and not taking an individual decision when making it, but rather a joint decision, is the best option, and when the discussion occurs between spouses, children learn from them, and they will apply this in their future lives in all aspects. Communication and dialogue are among the most important tools for family stability. Direct, clear and honest communication and constructive dialogue are among the characteristics of stable families. This latter is the best environment for the healthy growth of the child. Hence, Islam has taken care from the first moment to establish sufficient guarantees to achieve family stability, starting from choosing a partner to building the marital relationship on love, affection and mercy.
Despite the relative cohesion of the family situation in Arab and Islamic societies, recent years have known many variables that have confused the family system, whether at the level of relationships or at the level of jobs and roles, which imposed a new type of challenges and rapid transformations that have positive and negative repercussions on the reality of the family. The family has, in one way or another, contributed to changing its structure and directions and complicating its responsibilities. There is a number of challenges that the family faces and that have a profound impact on the various levels within it, including poor communication among its members.
We find that the relationships within the contemporary family are declining, as they have shifted from relationships dominated by affection and cooperation to relationships based on subjectivity and personality. This change is probably due to the domination of the individualized aspect on the social life and the individualistic growth as well as the change of the family’s governing values in contemporary life, in which the values of selfishness, cruelty and indifference have swelled, and as a result these relationships became threatened, within the family, with tension and crisis, and even collapse in many cases
It may be due to the information revolution and communication technology, which have posed the greatest challenge to the family in its relations as a result of the consolidation of the spirit of individualism within the family. Each family member has his own virtual world which has nothing to do with the real world in which he lives with his family.
One of the challenges that the family faces is also achieving a balance between work and daily family life in order to achieve family stability, which many find difficult and hard to achieve. This balance can be achieved if there is love for home, family, and children in the hearts of the parents; as they are committed to their responsibilities towards each other and their children so that life goes on in an orderly manner, then the division of responsibilities between the two parties will not be a burden on either of them. The prevalence of a culture of consumption and the rise in the daily needs of the family is destructive, as the economic factor is of paramount importance in the stability of the family. Hence, estimating the family's income, organizing its budget, providing all individuals' needs and health requirements, and providing clothing and comfortable housing is another challenge for the family.
Many family problems and crises may be caused by the immaturity of the husband or the wife to face life matters, and this can be attributed to early marriage in some cases.
Finally, there is no doubt that a happy marriage thrives in an atmosphere of trust, freedom, and mutual respect. There is nothing more dangerous to marital happiness than for the spouses to live in a gloomy atmosphere of constant doubts and permanent suspicion, or in a suffocating environment of successive pressure and continuous coercion.
And because marital happiness is not a divine gift nor donation, but rather an acquisition and in order to ensure this acquisition, it is imperative that both the husband and wife cooperate in a strenuous effort to work towards achieving the causes of adaptation, avoiding causes of disagreement, conflict and quarrels, and increasing the overall factors of compatibility and harmony. The choice based on the faith and good manners on the part of the husband and wife is a safety valve for family life. With faith, the house is straightened and its lists are established, and it becomes fully prepared to face internal and external influences. And the family obligations facing the husband and wife must be carried out to enjoy the family stability because ignoring the family responsibilities will result in difficulty in controlling the family life.
Name, Title
Analysis That Matters.