As an economic unit, the family provides the material resources needed for the survival, care, and wellbeing of its members. Over the estimated 100,000 years of existence of modern humans, the conditions under which families have found, developed, produced, and distributed resources have changed dramatically. Ian Morris
delineates three major modes of “energy capture”–foraging, farming, and fossil fuels. He notes that the family has been the primary economic unit throughout these eras, but the structure of the family has changed dramatically as economic conditions have evolved.
As an emotional unit, the family is governed by two key variables: the level of chronic anxiety and the level of adaptability. Thus the functioning of the family over time, across generations, varies from relatively cohesive and stable to more fragmented and vulnerable to problems.
I am working on the question of how the economic and emotional functioning of the family interface. How do varying levels of economic security impact the level of chronic anxiety in the family? Like other species, humans go through periods of scarcity and periods of abundance of resources. Scarcity would seem to be an obvious source of both acute and chronic anxiety, but, as Bowen pointed out, abundance can generate its own chronic anxiety. Scarcity and abundance often co-exist within the same family and the same society. The disparity between poverty and wealth is an outcome of economic and emotional functioning combined.
Another question, from an evolutionary perspective, is: how have changing ways of making a living impacted the human relationship with the earth? And with what consequences for levels of chronic anxiety in families and societies?