After visiting them during a drought, Turnbull described a family structure in chaos, with mothers abandoning their young at the age of three, bands of children snatching food from the weak and aged, and every man's hand turned against his neighbours. When he returned a year after the drought ended, the Ik had a food surplus from abundant crops and yet, he wrote, their vicious ways persisted. Based on Turnbull's description, many of us predicted that the Ik would never be able to travel back to anything like normal behaviour. Surprisingly, though, when other anthropologists visited the Ik recently, they found a normal, co-operative communal life. It's likely that Turnbull exaggerated considerably, but if the Ik did go through a couple of decades of vilely anti-social behaviour, they must have shaped up since.
Family life keeps changing.
Similarly, in many parts of Africa today, indigenous ways are yielding to the more puritanical influence of Islam. An anthropologist tells me that Somali girls today are being married off at a much younger age than their mothers or grandmothers, as Somali men want to imitate marriages they saw while working in Arab states. I think what we can learn from the past is that we should ignore the hysteria many critics bring to a discussion of family life today. Yes, things could be better but, as I've shown, they have often been far worse. We also need to acknowledge our emotions, while using our minds.