Who Is My Family?
March 29th, 2010
Who is my family? by Stan Weddle
With some exceptions, we humans go to great lengths to take care of, and love our families. Parents work to establish a safe and comfortable home for their children. They feed, cloth, and educate them. They try to provide advantages and opportunities above and beyond what they have personally experienced. Children in turn care for older family members when they become unable to care for themselves. It is a social arrangement that assures survival of our species. The better job we do of nurturing our children, the better they will be at being able to care for their elderly. By taking care of our elderly, we build a cultural norm for our own future care. Beyond the physical and psychological needs we share a love for each other. Families are a wonderful thing.
Complex societies often create a breakdown in the simple family arrangement. Children leave the home and community they grow up in to go to school or find better financial opportunities. They make friends and create new family units away from parents. Family units often become divided by things such as accidents, war, crime, poverty, divorce, natural disasters, illness, and substance abuse. Governments attempt to step in and fill the role of family by providing assistance. In this country, we have social security for the elderly. We provide aid to families out of work and unable to work. We provide health care. Most of us agree these are good things. We often disagree on who should receive benefits, who should pay for these things and on the amount that we should provide. These issues should be addressed thoughtfully, with compassion and considered for what they really are. They are substitutions for family.
This season, as we enjoy the holiday celebrations, many of us will see family and friends we haven’t seen for a while. We will miss those family members who are separated from us for whatever reason. We will share memories of events of days past. We will share plans and hopes for the future. We will strengthen our family bonds. We will most likely be reminded that families are wonderful.
Most cultures have created formal definitions for family. They are based on the parent-child relationship. They can include members based on blood kinship and by marriage. They can include unrelated persons that are adopted as family. There is no universal, fixed definition for family. We, as individuals, can decide who is family. I believe we create a better world by expanding our family. Including others into our family who can create mutual benefits of love and care is good. It is even better when we can find the ability to include those who need more than they can contribute to our needs.
With the ability to instantly communicate with people anywhere in the world, we can develop friendships that can grow into strong bonds, like family, with people very different from us. We can recognize our differences, and still find common experiences that we can share. I look forward to reconnecting with family this holiday season. I also hope to find some new friends and grow them into family members. Families are wonderful!
This article first appeared in the Harper County Herald and is reprinted here with permission.
Filed under: Philosophy