It’s all about Family and Family-Time. We all use the word family so many times in our lives. What we call family is always different though. For an orphan who lost her parents in the storm and is now adopted, her family is not just the number of persons but who these new people are. For her it’s all about that love and attention that she is now getting without asking. She can bring her problems home and someone listens.
The love she gets, she will be free to return.
Family is:
the place where you find security, care and nurturing. It should have an adult presence. Unfortunately for some kids, the older sibling takes on the role and responsibilities of that older presence.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission in Canada has an interesting discussion on the changing family in Canada. It reports, “The last two decades have seen rapid change in Canadian families, with a trend towards increasing diversity of family structures. The “traditional” family consisting of a father in the paid labor force, married to a woman who is a full-time caregiver for their children, is only one of a wide variety of family types.
It is sometimes forgotten that there is a significant cultural component to the definition of the family. With the increasing diversity of Canada’s population, there are a variety of definitions of what constitutes a family beyond the nuclear family. There are, for example, a growing number of Canadian families where three generations live under one roof”.
I think there is a difference between union status and family. You can have every type of union but you will have different groups of person in that union that are family.
Family time, however, is always seen as the time when those special persons get together. It’s not always great and for some it ‘s a lot of laughs. There are so many movies about this. But it tells you how important we all feel that there has to be a family.
Whatever the family, Mom is so important. She is the person who carries the cultural traditions on an everyday basis. In my most recent publication Rockstar Mom: 7 Ways To Be The Greatest Mom Ever. I select 7 special areas of family life that she has special responsibility for. I will be doing Book #2 to continue the discussion.