Family in a Humorous Way,

Family

In a humorous way, one cartoonist showed a very large auditorium with only one attendee. As the reader looks to the podium, we see that the title of this convention is "Adult Children of Functional Families." This brief, but powerful statement, implies that despite the Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriett syndrome, most families are, in some ways dysfunctional -- that is to say "human," with the flaws as well as the successes (See: Holmes and Jermyn, 2004). The core idea of the family is shrouded in myth -- that it is universal, completely harmonious (or if not something is wrong), children turn out as their parents raise them, and a stable past means future success. While the myths surrounding these family issues are a surprise to most of us, they can also be educational. Looking at the myths surrounding family does, actually, imply a degree of universality in that there are no perfect families; despite television. In this we come to understand a degree of humility and function -- functional families work out differences and dysfunctions when possible.

The Myth of Family Harmony -- This myth says that to be stable and productive families are always happy and if there are moments of unhappiness, those moments are solved within the allotted 20 minutes of the episode (Beaver, Partridge Family, Waltons). What is true is that like any human interaction, a family has its good moments and its bad moments. Some individuals are more prone to nurturing, others to authoritarianism, still others to abuse. We need only look at history (the Ancient Greeks or Romans or the Middle Ages) to find examples of dysfunctional families, often the royals or elite, to find that the norm is just that -- never the norm.

The Myth of a Stable Past -- A "Stable Past" implies that at a time in history there were stable, more functional families. However, historians tell us that this is actually not the case. Certainly if one reads Dickens one finds that England of the 19th century was far from familial; some of the materials out of the American Colonial periods show that the family was mostly an iron handed parent and rather aloof father. Just as there is no such thing as an ideal family, the fact of the matter is there never was. Instead, there were some great family experiences, and some tragic ones.

The Myth of "Natural" vs. "Unnatural" -- For millennia, certain behaviors were either natural or unnatural based on the particular norms of the society in question. In certain tribes, for instance, marriage is acceptable at young ages, polygamy is part of everyday life, and homosexuality is encouraged among shamans of the tribe. The bottom line is that nothing is natural or unnatural, it is simply part of the morality of that culture/society at the time.