The Ties That Bind
What the Royal Drama Tells Us About Family
Twitter lit up today with the release of a statement from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (or Harry and Meghan, as we know them). They stated that they would be stepping back from their duties as royals while spending time in both the UK and North America. They would no longer be “senior members” of the royal family, but they would continue to support the Queen.
It was interesting to watch the reactions from various places. Can they do that? was the most common question I saw. Then, just a few hours later, Buckingham Palace released a short but very pointed statement saying the details would have to be worked out. If you read between the lines, it seems the palace did not know of Harry and Meghan’s plans, and the Royal House of Windsor is very much in a bit of disarray. One thing that the royal family has prided itself on while Elizabeth has been queen is the idea that they are one unit; they are a united front, even as they might squabble in the background. The real question is this: if they want to leave, what is going to stop them? This should make for juicy fodder for The Crown.
As a sociologist, the more interesting issue is the idea of grown children and their families. Millennials and younger Gen X-ers have a very different view of what “family” means. Social forces impact us in ways we cannot see, but they are profoundly important to our development into adulthood and beyond. The experiences we have as children shape us throughout our lives, and not all of those experiences are good. What happens when we become adults who don’t necessarily fit into the mold our families wanted?
Trends show that adults ages 25–40 are less religious and less reliant on traditions of the past. They often eschew the phrase, “this is the way we have always done it”. There are consequences to this; families are changing. People are waiting longer to buy homes and have children, or they may not be doing so at all. There is no longer one dominant picture of what “family” should look like. “Traditional” never was a real thing, but it is even less so in 2020. Young adults often rely on their friends and social networks rather than their families. More and more people are drifting from the family ties that once bound them together.
The consequences of this are unknown; we don’t know if these trends will continue, or if they will change. It will be interesting to see how family is defined going forward. But Harry and Meghan definitely fit into their cohort as young people that have decided to drift from their family ties; they simply do it for all the world to see.
