Question

Families vary in size and relationships and I believe family should be redefined to reflect the diversity of relationships found today. In my family, my biological father left my mother before my twin sister and I were born so for a little while it was just the three of us. Then my mother met my stepfather and we eventually had two more sisters. As we grew up my mother and stepfather grew apart and then it was just my mom and three sisters again until we grew up and married our spouses and had families of our own. Although I have never met my birth father, I hope to someday get to know him and at least have him meet his grandchildren. As my children have grown, they have created strong relationships with friends that we consider part of our family. Many of their friends consider them brothers and sisters and call my husband and me, mom and dad and vice versa. Families are important and built on strong bonds and relationships.

After reading the paragraph above, please write down

1.How does your experience compare to this?

2.What kind of families are excluded from this rather narrow definition? Other thoughts?

Answer 1

1. My family history is rather simplistic compared to the one described above. My younger sister and I were brought up by our biological parents, who are still married today. Neither my sister nor me are married, although we have been dating for a while.   

2. Although I do believe that certain friendships can be as strong as familials bond, the conceptual definition of family should remain intact. That is, the family refers to the basic unit of society representing a group of people who are related to each other. Today, we have all types of family systems, such as having single-sex parents, cohabiting parents as adults and the like. Recognising these social units as families is important.