Paul T. Mero

The science of physics governs the integrity of all structures in the known Universe, and this includes family structures.

From a very young age, most of us were taught an important physics lesson through the fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs. You might recall that the Three Little Pigs lived initially with their mother (and, reasonably speculative, with their father for some time) in a comfortable brick home safe from the evils that faced them out in that Big Bad World. Of course, Mother Pig eventually told her sons that it was time for them to leave home to become the pigs they were meant to be. So all in agreement, the Three Little Pigs confidently left the safety of their childhood home and set their sights on building homes of their own.

We all know where the story takes us from there. Each Little Pig built himself a house. But while the first Two Little Pigs chose to indulge their passing fancies with merriment rather than focus on the fundamentals of home building, their brother, the one unselfish Little Pig, made the arduous sacrifice to build a home like the one he left behind. When their neighboring Big Bad Wolf came huffing and puffing only the house built like the old family structure withstood the torrent of abuse leveled against it. Clearly, the structures of the other two houses were ill-prepared for what awaited them in the Big Bad World.

People who naturally form families are challenged to turn houses into homes. Some parents choose to build houses made of straw structures easily victimized by challenges of the Big Bad World. Other parents, perhaps parents with a little more self-control and focus, or even the added help of that second parent, build themselves houses made of stick structures a bit more sturdy, a tad more protective, but ultimately, unstable ones postponing the inevitable destruction to come. Still other parents build houses made of brick safe havens wherein individuals can be nurtured successfully and where the abuses of the world, though universal, common, tragic and often times devastating, have little or no effect.

Anyone can throw together stick and straw. Building with stick is easy and quick. It doesn’t require much self sacrifice. And as the First Little Pig demonstrated, a straw house allows even more time to pursue worldly interests. Fluff it, snip it here and there, and voila! It looks like a real house. It has a roof and a doorway and window openings. The façade is familiar. But without a solid foundation and lacking substantive building materials, the first good strong wind will turn it inside out. In other words, the houses the First Two Little Pigs had created were cheap imitations of where they had been reared and what they could have recreated if they had just made home building their highest priority.

The brick house of the Third Little Pig was irrefutable evidence of his commitment to the safety and security of family. It took so much more work. Bricks are rough, hard, and heavy to handle. Bricklaying is back-breaking work that combines endurance with precision and planning. It takes time and real personal commitment. Because of his sacrifice and preparation, the Third Little Pig built himself and the rest of his siblings a safe haven to last a lifetime.

As it so happens, there are natural reasons why structures fall down or stay standing. Every physical structure is governed by laws of nature and its existence can be explained through the science of physics. Family structures are no exception to any of these laws or science. There are scientific reasons quantifiable and empirical why certain families fall down and why many others stay standing.

When we think of families rarely do we think in terms of their physical makeup or how they are structured. All of us do what we can to survive day to day. Human relationships are so heart-felt and emotional that to consider them in terms of structure seems to de-humanize them. So when families fail, and society is left to pick up the pieces and clear the rubble, we don’t often prescribe rational answers to the questions of structures. Such was the response from medieval masons, carpenters, and shipwrights who, when asked why their physical structures remained intact, might typically have responded that the hand of God was responsible for keeping them standing or afloat. Such sentiments led to ceremonies, sometimes celebratory, sometimes superstitious, such as the christening of a ship with a bottle of champagne or the laying of a cornerstone by the chief citizen of a community.

Ceremony and sentiment do not explain science. Buildings stand, ships float, and airplanes fly for specific scientific reasons. So, too, do family structures survive or fail. As difficult as it might be for non-scientists to study physics, the corner of the world of physics dealing with structures has been required to build the vast cities in which we live and through which most of the world’s relationships are transacted. Again, because of emotions, we prefer not to think of families in honest and objective terms. This exercise is often tiring and painful. It requires introspection when families fail and humility when they survive. It requires learning from our mistakes and honesty in our reflections about the natural human experience. And just as ceremony and sentiment do not explain the survival of physical structures, neither do ideologies explain (or excuse) the physics of natural family structures.

We might wish away gravity; indeed, we might create a whole political movement toward that end. But such an effort would be futile against the laws of nature and science. Ideology is defenseless against truth, and ideologies denying the strength and durability of the natural family structure are as delusional and arrogant as the Babylonian effort to build a tower to heaven.

To understand the physics of the natural family we begin by understanding the scientific intersection of both structure and material. We cannot talk about the one without talking about the other, and there is no clear-cut dividing line between the two except that we know that both must be considered. Referring back to the Three Little Pigs, straw, stick, and brick are materials and each created structures whose integrity was determined largely by the materials used.

The same is true in families. Even the best family structures can fail to sustain the load of life when its materials (its family members) are too weak. We also know of family structures that defy the odds primarily because the material utilized is exceptional. But, alas, "odds" do not really exist in science. If an unconventional family structure survives it will do so within certain bounds and limitations and, probably, only up to a certain point of force against it. So material is as important as structure the two go hand in hand.

The next thing we must understand is that structures, such as the natural family, are never indestructible that is, there is no structure that can withstand all forces set against it. There exists a force in nature that can topple, spill, or break any structure. When we speak about structures their strength, integrity, or endurance we must be very clear to understand that we are not speaking of anything impervious to failure. We are, in fact, speaking about the ability to carry a load, handle stress and strain, maintain resiliency under pressure, and bend but not break. The power of the natural family is just this: it handles the forces set against it, natural and man-made, not perfectly, but better than any other family structure we know.

The analogies between physical structures and family structures are numerous and often exact, and every analogy begins by asking a question that goes something like this: why don’t people fall through floors? Before I enumerate a few answers to this question by analogy to family structure, let me give you a brief example of what I mean. There is a law of physics that governs why I can stand before you and not fall through this floor. Basically, there exists an exactly equal and opposite force pushing back against my weight on the floor. It is no small point of fact that the floor would give way to my weight if the pressure I applied to the floor, all things being equal, were simply one pound of force more than what the floor pushes in return. If I weigh 200 pounds and the floor can push back enough force on me equivalent to only 199 pounds, the floor would give way from under me.

In other words, for me to stand here comfortably and reliably to address you there must exist a complementarity between the force of my weight and the force of the floor. Natural family structures share this same complementarity between a man and a woman within the bonds of marriage. Again, I would qualify my claim – this complementarity, or balance, assumes many things including the right mix of material to create the structure. For instance, what if my family structure were comprised of two men or two women? The complementary nature of the materials combined to create the structure would alter the relationship between the structure itself and the external forces applying pressure to it.

Under these altered circumstances, not only would I fall through the floor but an alternative family structure would be weakened, not able to bear a full load of pressure against it. The complementary nature of the natural family structure, assuming the best materials, is a stronger, more durable structure.

All structures and materials change shape, or deflect forces, when they are called upon to bear a load. When an apple tree is laden with fruit, or with heavy wet snow, its limbs bend. In physics, this effect is called elasticity and regards the relationship between forces and how structures deflect those forces. The apple tree deflects the force of the weight of its fruit or snow by bending and by bending it goes on to live and produce fruit for another season.

The natural family structure is highly elastic. Single parent homes are not very elastic. That is, the natural family structure can bear tremendous loads of force while bending but not breaking. A single parent family structure is not equipped for the heavy loads of force life will impose upon it. And we can scale this result not only to family structures but to communities of families. Materials comprising structures are stretched or contracted constantly. Larger, more tightly knit, families reaching across generations are able to bear heavier loads. A community of such families will be stronger than a community of families comprised of alternative structural materials and non-complementary structures. On a much larger scale, this same science of elasticity works as well for nations or civilizations. Highly elastic family structures will endure the ages; less elastic family structures will die off through the ages.

Elasticity is important in the physics of structures. The higher something’s elasticity, the more likely that something will recover its original shape after bearing a heavy load. This is a highly desired, if not essential, quality in family matters. We want to be able to bear the burden of the loss of a loved one, or sickness, or financial hardships, or the forces required of successful enterprises, and still be able to reclaim the balance and stability of our original family structure. Of course, some natural materials such as plastic or putty have innate properties that do not allow them to reclaim their original form. Likewise, the character of some people is like putty under pressure that never recovers from hardship, thereby threatening the integrity of the whole family structure.

We also can analyze structures at any given point within the material. So, rather than looking at the whole of the structure, we can look at specific points of stress and strain in the materials comprising the structure.

Stress is a very human experience. The pressures of the day can create so much stress within us that we can actually become sick as a result. In terms of structures and materials, stress is how hard a material is pushed together or pulled apart by external forces. It is interesting to note that stress actually can bring things closer together of course, our coming together motivated by stress is not always in that loving sort of way, but it can be in an ultimately constructive way.

Strain concerns how far things are pulled apart or how close they are pushed together. We can see both stress and strain in a piece of chewing gum. If we pull the gum from both ends the material will stretch; if we pull hard enough the material will break. The amount of force we apply in stretching the gum is called stress; the distance we pull the gum without breaking is called strain. For us humans, stress comprises the daily forces that stretch us, while strain comprises the inner strength we have to stretch without snapping. Stress and strain are two different forces. The former is external to us, the latter is internal to us. What is most relevant for our analogy to family structures is that the good ones are comprised of materials that can handle the most stress and bear the most strain of daily living. Families deal with many stresses. They might face financial stress when a member of the family loses their job. Families often cope with stress from modern cultures that counter the values being inculcated from within our homes. And then we strain as families to counter these stresses by trying to reinforce our family structures.

When we speak of the strength of any structure we are simply describing the load it can bear. On the other hand, the strength of any material is equivalent to the stress required to break it. What we learn from the science of structures is that the best ones will be flexible and strong. They will bend but not break, and they will return to their true form after being tested or stretched. The human experience is completely analogous to this science. There is a purpose in discussing family structures. All of this talk of stress and strain, elasticity and strength, is only means to an end about structures. Just like with our efforts in constructing buildings, ships, and airplanes, our study of family structures matters because we seek the most safe and effective families we can design. Champions of the natural family conclude that nature is a much better engineer than man or the state because nature provides more give, or latitude, for us to live our lives in the best manner possible. It is nature, not man or state, that builds elasticity into structures and flexibility into materials. Nature is the best architect. It routinely works to maximize the ability of structures to carry the biggest loads.

Man, on the other hand, seems to have a mad penchant for perfectibility. It is no small coincidence that in the social sciences we refer to these people as "social engineers." It is interesting to note that the ability to carry a load is largely dependent on two factors: the uses made of it and the forces it has resisted over its lifetime. A tendency among some engineers seeking to cut costs and maximize efficiencies is to tamper often with the very factors of structures that keep them safe and strong over the long run. Essentially, these engineers strip structures and materials of the very qualities that make them strong because they believe that perfect structures are unbending and immoveable. Structural disasters can be frequently attributed to engineers seeking perfectibility when, all along, they should have had more trust in the science of structures derived from nature.

With nature’s laws as the standard by which the integrity of all structures and materials can be measured, it is not surprising that man-made structures and materials would have flaws. Humans love to put holes in stuff to tie materials together and, if they are men, the more holes the better! The only problem is that holes and creases and cracks come with a price they can create irregularities. All building materials have what are called "stress trajectories," that is, lines of strength that pass stress from one molecule on to the next to properly bear a given load. So guess what happens to a stress trajectory when you punch a hole in any building material?

Families have their stress trajectories as well. Punch a hole in a family, that is take one family member out of the natural family structure, or preclude intergenerational bonds or the complementary constructs of supportive public institutions, and that structure will be weakened. We can attempt to patch up our familial holes but, as physics would have it, adding materials to weak points can also cause stress concentrations. In other words, an artificial patch can be very dangerous because a patch gives the appearance of safety while maintaining the structural weakness. The operating rule is that "partial strength produces general weakness." This is because a patch does not relieve the breach in a stress trajectory nor does it solve the problem of a stress concentration in other words, a patch is never as strong as the original material.

Before I close my remarks, I would like to touch on one last aspect of the science of structures, an aspect called "strain energy." It is not enough to know how and to what effect that structures and materials are exposed to stress and external forces. We need to know how to manage and withstand them. As I mentioned earlier, strain is an internal variable measuring the amount of pressure we can take before we pop. We manage strain energy to avoid cracking or even exploding. Ideally, we want to dissipate our strain energy before it, too, acts against us.

We know that a certain amount of stress can break us, but it can only do so if we let it by allowing our strain energy to build uncontrolled. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Did you realize that you can break a bow without shooting arrows? You can break a bow by not putting it to good use. A bow stores kinetic energy and that energy is typically released every time the bow shoots an arrow. When a bow sits idle it stores kinetic energy and some of that energy is released over time through small cracks within the material of the bow itself. Left idle long enough and the bow will be rendered useless.

Strain energy is a self-destructive mechanism. All elastic substances face this dilemma. Humans are elastic and when we do not fill the measure of our creation or act according to our nature, we, too, can crack or break even without any external force being applied to us. I would argue, for instance, that the exercise of building a natural family enables individuals to avoid the self-destructive influences of unused energy. The culture of individualism is narcissism and it is one self-destructive influence among humans that in non-human structures we call strain energy. If a person is not striving to create a natural family structure, there is a high probability that that person will become self destructive. In Utah, we have a saying that an unmarried man over the age of 30 is a menace to society. This local saying embodies my point.

Nature has offered us a solution to strain energy. We are able to transfer energy throughout a material thereby mitigating its stress concentration. In the architecture of our physical structures we can do this by creating joints to transmit load from one part of a structure to another. Interestingly for us humans, joints seem to do their job best when their bonds at the point of contact are substantial. The "overlap" of the joints is not as significant as the point of contact between the joints. This is analogous to our relationships with the institutions of civil society such as churches, local neighborhoods, voluntary charitable organizations, and the free market. That families overlap with these other civil institutions is not quite so important as is the significance of the bond that families have with each of them. If the bonds (or joints) are significant enough, these civil institutions can help families share the load of daily stresses thrust upon them.

By the way, it is interesting to note that governments are about as helpful to families as they are in building good structural joints. Author James Gordon shares a story of government involvement in ship making, The great skill of the old shipwrights and millwrights lay in somehow combining sufficient strength for safety with the modicum of flexibility needed to allow for the ’working’ of timber. The older shipwrights erred on the side of flexibility, and, though their ships were often excessively leaky, they seldom actually broke at sea. It required the administrative abilities of modern war-time governments to produce wooden ships which really did fall to pieces.

Troubles with joints in ships and aircraft were a fairly prominent feature of both the World Wars. During the first war the Americans built a large number of wooden ships, both steam and sail, frequently by unorthodox methods; and many of these ships broke up. In the second war they produced even greater numbers of welded steel steamers, of which an even higher proportion broke, either at sea or in harbor. (J.E. Gordon, Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down, New York, New York: De Capo Press, pg. 135, 1978.)

Yes, our natural family structures can be as "leaky" as the product of old shipwrights, but they have proven to hold together on the open seas. Government ship projects, built "frequently by unorthodox methods," rarely held together when needed most.

A second way to transfer energy throughout a material thereby mitigating its stress concentration is called "resiliency." A fascinating principle of structural science is that the same force that can break a short piece of string can break a long piece of string, despite our intuition that the longer piece of string is stronger. But the longer piece of string does have one advantage: a longer piece of string has greater elasticity and can stretch further under a load thereby reducing the stress of a sudden pull. In other words, the longer piece of string is better able to store strain energy under a load.

The resiliency in natural family structures works the same way. We might call this resiliency our "intergenerational bonds." Maintaining intergenerational bonds is the long piece of string. It enables a family to share the load of daily stress. Every young mother appreciates the extra set of hands from her mother to grandmother to great-grandmother, and every young father can appreciate the wisdom, counsel, and even financial assistance of dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Throw aunts, uncles, and cousins into the mix and that long piece of string becomes truly resilient. I have not said a lot about the nature and quality of particular building materials such as steel, wood, iron, nylon, or plastic. Each material has its strengths and its weaknesses. So, too, do individual members of a family structure. There is an interesting relationship between human muscles and human tendons. Muscle mass is a soft tissue. Its value lies in its ability to shorten itself creating tensile force by pulling actively. But it is not a very strong material. To make muscle strong in its operation it must be tied to solid bones by tough and inflexible tendons. There exists an ecology of strength within the human body that human structures must also emulate. Lasting family structures require exceptional material strength, and this material strength among family members is comprised of moral character, virtues, and reliable behaviors. Each part of the family structure must be able to rely confidently upon the other parts to comfortably bear the stresses of life.

In closing, I would challenge all of us to assume the material make-up of a child. The bones of a child are not terribly brittle; they are strong and tough but not stiff. Young children, on the whole, bounce but don’t break. They represent the archetype of a durable family. Jesus Christ once counseled his disciples to humble themselves and become as little children, "submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." (Mosiah 3:18,19, Book of Mormon) The natural family structure represents the best familial structure science and the laws of nature can offer us. It is flexible and resilient. Its component members are complementary and form an efficient ecology of service and support. Its "long piece of string" its intergenerational bonds helps to share the load of daily life. We know scientifically and empirically that the natural family is the best structure in support of personal development, educational attainment, physical safety for women and children, emotional well-being, and temporal prosperity. As Allan Carlson and I have written in The Natural Family: A Manifesto, "Science, after all, is the study of the natural order."

Thank you very much for your time and for being with us at this World Congress of Families.

The Physics of the Natural Family - 7 - © 2007 Sutherland Institute