E.A mother, a father, a child: on Christmas Eve our epitome of family is constituted. When we arrange the nativity figurines under the fir tree, the focus is on Mary, Joseph and their baby. Every Christmas sermon, every nativity play revolves around the banal and great fact that a woman and a man have a child. “Do not be afraid!” Says the angel to the congratulating shepherds, but somehow also to the new parents and all of us: “See, I proclaim great joy to you.” 2000 years of cultural history and good news.
At this point in time, the parents still have no idea whether breastfeeding will work and how lack of sleep is gnawing at the psyche. But maybe they feel this hitherto unknown feeling, an inspiration from heaven, that they are holding in their arms the most precious and unbelievable that has ever happened to them, which is why they immediately find themselves in front of every car – every wagon? – would throw to protect this creature from the dangers of the world.
Something new begins with the birth of the first child: family
The birth of a child is like Christmas, only better: a real miracle. While you are still amazed at the gifts your distant relatives are sending and that even your sluggish neighbor congratulates you while you carry a clunky bundle through your apartment and your nerves get thinner, you suspect that as a father or mother you stay the same person, but can never and never lead the same life. Something new begins: family. Because of the baby miracle, she deserves to be sacred to us.
Every year the story from the Gospel of Luke congeals to a picture of mother, father, child, which at first glance seems so natural, as if it sprang from the laws of biology: from a sperm cell (man) and an egg cell (woman) arises – miracle! – new life. But what does this model family under the Christmas tree have to say to us, to us who are fathers and mothers today?
The topic of family has seen a considerable revaluation in Germany over the past two decades. Since the introduction of the parental allowance, men and women have to a certain extent paid for having children. There are children’s fashion stores where mothers would like to shop for themselves, and cafes with extra space for expensive strollers. Questions of upbringing are no longer just negotiated on the playground, the horror of looking for a daycare place and the burdens of homeschooling are material for the evening news and dinner with friends.
The compatibility of family and work has become a key dimension for measuring the level of equality. Who thinks of straw when you hear the word crib? In many middle-class families, the grandparents and a phalanx of babysitters are grouped around the “babybay” – an extra bed instead of ox and shepherd. It takes a village to raise a child.
In the meantime, the reactionary camp has chosen the family as a theater of war. Right-wing populists fight for the triumvirate of father, mother, child, for a primacy of biology and the preservation of traditional gender roles, as if the future of the West were at stake in view of the possibilities of reproductive medicine and the life models of the 21st century. Unimpressed by this, the traffic light coalition has committed itself to modernizing family law. For the first time in history, the concerns of lesbian parents and patchwork constellations, of donor children and desperate couples who want to have children are taken as seriously as the prototype from dad, mom, child.
But what does all this mean for the Holy Family? Have Maria, Joseph and their nappy child served as role models – or can single parents and gay fathers with their surrogate mother baby also be reflected in the story of the stable in Bethlehem?
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