{"id":118,"date":"2007-08-21T09:49:30","date_gmt":"2007-08-21T09:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html"},"modified":"2007-08-21T09:49:30","modified_gmt":"2007-08-21T09:49:30","slug":"family-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html","title":{"rendered":"Family Ties"},"content":{"rendered":"

With one episode left for the season, Big Love <\/em>is heating up, and very well.\u00a0 There were many excellent, some weird moments in this week’s episode, but what interests me the most is the rather ingenious way that the impact of the parents’ polygamous lifestyle is being played out in the older children’s lives – the children of the first, original, marriage between Bill and Barb. Both are looking at\u00a0The Principle\u00a0as it is lived out in their family\u00a0and concluding that it is a cover, intentionally or not, for the male to do his thing. Most heartbreaking is the daughter, whose older boyfriend has told her that since she wants to be abstinent in their relationship, he needs to get some sexual satisfaction elsewhere. After first rejecting this, she comes back and edges into agreeing, saying, “It can work…” clearly thinking of her own family situation in which a man is shared.
\nOh, and if we had a show called Iron Creepy Bad Guy, <\/em>it would have to feature a face-off between Alby and Ben from Lost<\/em>. Great actors, superb casting.
\nI was thinking last night about how both Big Love <\/em>and The Sopranos <\/em>play heavily, at their core, on the impact of a parents’ actions on their children, and the determination that the children would both follow in their parents’ footsteps – but not. Tony Soprano didn’t want his children involved in mob life, saw part of what he was doing as making it possible for them to live outside of it, but in the end, undermined every attempt they made to do so, as we see AJ getting involved in the er, “entertainment” business and Meadow about to marry another mob-scion-attorney.\u00a0We see that despite all our words and desires, our actions are powerful and (in the Sopranos thematic world) fate is impossible to overcome. \u00a0In Big Love, <\/em>Bill and Barb are conflicted, but it is clear that Barb, the reluctant polygamist, is increasingly horrified by the impact of all of this on her children. Our decisions work themselves into our children’s lives, challenging us to ask ourselves hard questions. If it’s okay for me and not okay for my children…is it really okay for me? For anyone? <\/em>
\nTo me, what I hear loud and clear in both shows, as an undercurrent, is a lot of anxiety about the impact of contemporary cultural and social moray on children. And questions – which also form both shows – about what previous generations did to get us here in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With one episode left for the season, Big Love is heating up, and very well.\u00a0 There were many excellent, some weird moments in this week’s episode, but what interests me the most is the rather ingenious way that the impact of the parents’ polygamous lifestyle is being played out in the older children’s lives –…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television"],"yoast_head":"\nFamily Ties - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Family Ties - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With one episode left for the season, Big Love is heating up, and very well.\u00a0 There were many excellent, some weird moments in this week’s episode, but what interests me the most is the rather ingenious way that the impact of the parents’ polygamous lifestyle is being played out in the older children’s lives –…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-08-21T09:49:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Family Ties - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Family Ties - Via Media","og_description":"With one episode left for the season, Big Love is heating up, and very well.\u00a0 There were many excellent, some weird moments in this week’s episode, but what interests me the most is the rather ingenious way that the impact of the parents’ polygamous lifestyle is being played out in the older children’s lives –…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-08-21T09:49:30+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html","name":"Family Ties - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-08-21T09:49:30+00:00","dateModified":"2007-08-21T09:49:30+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/08\/family-ties.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Family Ties"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}