Happy Families
Image source; loveandpride.com
In a throw-away comment in Facebook I think I nailed (as often happens and is the way when you dont overthink things) the way that I'd like to reframe my thinking around what constitutes a happy family.
"... Families exist irrespective of sexual pairing or soulful growth and union with others - the families that survive and are resilient are those that embrace diversity, respect difference and change as well as continuously encouraging each other to explore, grow and adapt to what they learn."
In a discussion with a young man today I learned from him that his Father had labelled him as an ‘evil faggot’ for suggesting to his Family that he might be ‘coming out’ as a gay man. What struck me at that moment was the unfortunate Father who had in one comment severed forever the intimate connection he had with his Son, all through prideful ignorance and in this case wilful homophobia.
We seem as a western society to construct, scaffold and grow the idea of families in this fake nuclear and secular manner when in fact we should be growing our children to know that adults shift, change, grow, explore and develop too. No matter how we look at it, I think that religion and the oppression of the "moral good" is in fact the main perpetrators as to the the breakdown of the constitutions of family.
Churches don't build families - they simply contain and control them. This idea that a child is damaged by an adult showing love and affection to more than one other adult in their life is just … bullshit. We could do well to drop this constant societal rhetoric about the "reasonable" access rights from children who come from ‘broken families’.
They are only broken when the secular concept of the ’perfect nuclear family’ is changed. No government department should be interceding in anyones lives. No agency should be enforcing access nor should any community centre be supervising the connection between a father and a child or a Mother and their progeny.
A happy family is a respectful, flexible and creative union of souls, not a TV screen in front of a male adult, female adult, two children, a dog, cat and a death-do-us-part mortgage Cuban necktie.
