Defining family. Family is so many things.
Why is family so important and when we say family, what do we really mean? What is family?
I think to define it and see its importance we should look at what is at the heart of family.
Defining family today and always
For me 1. SUPPORT. In a family, there has to be support one for the other. This means in good times and bad times can we find that little extra for someone? The trouble is, in a lot of families, it just isn’t there. It’s more do as best you can, rather than as the Good Book says, do unto others as you wish they would do unto you (my simplified version). Family and especially large families have suffered as a result of the move from farm and agricultural family life to the more urban scene where someone leaves home to ‘make’ it. This move from the family home is something most of us have experienced whether it is us or we know someone who has done this. We hear stories about struggling, suffering disrespect and wondering if what they were doing was right. We also hear stories about eventually getting there but feeling the need to go back home for a visit. So there must be something valuable that is drawing us back home. This is why I think the second feature of family is camaraderie because support comes in many different ways. Support is not necessarily money or perhaps having somewhere to rest your head. In other words it’s not always physical. Nor is it always clear and well defined. I remember movies where families have come about as a result of two people from different cultures marry and bring with them all of their family to make a really large family or what others might call an extended family. In this kind of setting, it is easy to see how much more often the support between members is emotional and cognitive, stretching across generations and bringing together different members and age groups.
2. CAMARADERIE. To me this second feature of defining family is that peculiar knack of knowing what the other is thinking and therefore being on the ‘same page’ as they say. You can make fun of one another without any offence. You can joke about mishaps or judgments using a single word or phrase. You can use your own language and it is understood. You can feel good about someone else’s achievements and show it in unique ways that only you and your family understand. Sometimes we are not so good on the respect for each other, but we acknowledge the need for and the lack of when it occurs. I know we take this for granted but I bet when separated from each other, we kinda miss that belonging?
See in the picture where we are free yet we are holding on. We like to think there is someone there we can relate to in a different way from all those other people we know. Well then family is not always by birth is it? What about families with step moms and step fathers, adopted parents, foster parents, spiritual sisters, brethren…. These they call blended families. They are all family and they provide the support and the camaraderie for all the members.
I just wanted to think about this out loud as families seem to be under a great deal of pressure as we try to keep together while fighting the economic and social challenges. In all the research I have done with families, across different cultures, and all different family types, I hear the same sentiment. The family is the building block of the society. That’s where we look forward to the future and remember what has passed. Even in the single parent family, and this is usually a woman and her child or children, I would hear how important it was to have a ‘good’ relationship between herself and her children. When they were just babies, then it was her responsibility to provide the physical support but also the emotional and cognitive support so that the child experiences a smiling, pleasant, loving feeling from the mother.
This to her was the essence of family. That was what it meant as her children needed to know that this tight little unit was the place that they could turn to for support and camaraderie in a special way. A way that they would not expect from outside. This is probably the most important feature that makes the blended family so different. That realization that this unit is the place that each one can turn to for something special.