Participation in family life needs to be made earlier

On the occasion of the Year of the Family, we will think more about the development and future of our family structure. In fact, what has led us both to declare a Year of the Family and to think more about the family is our seeing that the functional aspects of our family structure, which support and sustain our social structure as a whole, are gradually beginning to disappear. The problem is serious, and this should prompt us to take far more effective measures.

The change in our traditional family model is perhaps an unavoidable result of the sociological development we are going through. The tragic decline in the fertility rate shows a course in which our population cannot renew itself and is moving rapidly toward aging. This is also a sign of the loss of function in our family structure. So far we have not taken any serious measure to prevent this loss of function or to make it fulfill the same function. Discourses encouraging people to have three or more children mean little unless they are supported by integrated family policies backed by sociological data.

First of all, Türkiye has been urbanizing rapidly since 1950. In the village, a child is an economic asset, not a burden, and within the extended family model the whole way of life is organized to make it easier for the child to be raised. With urbanization, the child has gradually gone from being an economic asset to being an economic burden. On top of that, when the bustle of city life, the shift to the nuclear family and women's greater participation in working life are added, the child comes to be perceived within this life as a burden.

The change in our family model is not just a matter of declining fertility. Within the nuclear family, people grow up without knowing or experiencing many kinship relations. In the second generation, being the only child of the family, most have no paternal uncles, maternal uncles, aunts or cousins. When these are missing, social capital, one of the most important sources of social capital in a society, also becomes thoroughly impoverished. The lack of these relations also causes very serious psychological problems. Or rather, nothing serious can fill the lack of these kinship relations, which would normally be a remedy for a series of problems caused by modern life.

Besides urbanization, we had touched on the problems caused by the 12-year compulsory education. Those who would normally, after primary or middle school and a brief apprenticeship-journeyman training, be able to enter at an early age professions that today bring in quite good incomes are instead cast, as a compulsory direction, into a long and uncertain adventure. They are forced to dally, seeking their fortune in professions they do not like at all, on the path of a higher education whose requirements, given their abilities, they will perhaps never be able to meet. Their dallying also means joining family life late. The late participation in family life of millions of young people who should not be on the path of higher education occurs precisely for this reason today.

We had said it before: this is a heavy, entirely uncalculated side effect of a policy applied with very good intentions. It is a result of 12-year compulsory education followed by a high rate of universitization. Perhaps these policies are necessary for Türkiye in order to recover its lost years and make up for its losses, but from the moment the problem they can cause is recognized, measures must be taken against it.

One of these measures is a review of the 12-year compulsory education and the taking of measures that will enable entry at an earlier age into professional life, and therefore into family life. In recent days YÖK President Prof. Dr. Erol Özvar made statements that changes would be made in the structure of the traditional education system in schools. We do not know how far these statements, made in the presentation of a program in this direction, were aimed at family-oriented measures, but they touch exactly where it needs to be touched. Because when well planned, vocational colleges (MYO) can train, within a short time, exactly the personnel that industry or sectors need, enabling early participation in working life and therefore in family life. Özvar warned university rectors that they should give more importance to MYOs, and said in his statement that YÖK support would be withdrawn from schools that do not meet the standards.

In the YÖK President's statements, he said that MYO programs focused on digital skills and green transformation would come to the fore and that new programs would be opened in health, agriculture and cyber security, but beyond all this, what is far more important is that he stated that MYO programs would be "continuously reviewed according to the needs of the sector" and that close cooperation with sector representatives is being undertaken in this process. Because in this way, in place of MYOs that are rather dysfunctional and promise no future to those who study in them, schools in direct communication with the sector, which prepare their students directly for the profession, will be developed. Among the strengths of this program are also the measures to increase internship and workplace training opportunities in order to ensure the easier integration of MYO students into the labor market.

This program change should not be seen as limited merely to the abolition of education and to ensuring communication and integration with the labor market. In fact, it also has a dimension that ensures that a factor delaying participation in family life is seen and what is needed is done about it.

Instead of an education that will be of no use at all, that gives its graduate only a 4-year faculty diploma and casts him into a long adventure of searching for a suitable job, preparing the personnel the market demands and placing them in the profession will undoubtedly also speed up the entry into family life. Even if not, this dimension or function of the policy needs to be seen and strengthened.

Even though the YÖK President sees the issue only from the standpoint of education, it can be worked on as a very suitable program for the family, as a way of making up for lost ground.