Choosing Family

About 15-20 years ago, a big trend came up in the pop psych culture about families and there was much discussion about the "chosen family" vs. "the family of origin." The "family of origin" being the parents and siblings and perhaps grandparents, the tone of the articles seemed to sniff at the possibly dysfunctional family from which all neuroses had sprung.

"Chosen families" were much healthier, it was written, being people who had chosen to become a family-like unit, sharing the family holidays and having more honest and easy relationships because no part of it was based on some disagreeable thing that had happened when the kids were little. The articles treated "chosen families" as if they were a new phenomenon.

Well, choosing family was no news to me. My parents chose their (west coast) family way back during the Nixon administration. My parents married in 1964 and promptly left New England for California, with a stopover in Chicago for my mother to meet her in-laws. They didn't know anyone in San Francisco, though my father had a job waiting for him in a stuffy city planning firm.

Eventually they connected with two families who are still intertwined with ours. The Gans are in our lives because my father was in business with the dad, and the Singhs are in our lives because my parents employed the mom. Sometimes for expediency I'll say someone is an aunt or a cousin, and then later I have to back up and explain how they are from India. English doesn't seem to have a short word for "best family friends."

My definition of family is quite broad, including the usual suspects of stepparents, half-siblings, and domestic partners as well as the former spouse of the noncustodial parent and the child's best friend who came to live with the family a few months ago. Because I've been in an industry that relies on the fantasy of the nuclear family, I find myself, from time to time, explaining that this or that form pretends that the family still looks the way it supposedly did in years past so this or that piece of data is irrelevant. Many families, in fact, didn't look like that anyway - or did, but only for a short time.

There was an ad on TV a few years ago for a cell phone company's family plan in which all the humor was based on the customer trying to get the sales clerk to believe that all these people to whom he "obviously" wasn't related were members of his family. Every time I saw this ad, I thought, "Why does the cell phone company think they can decide who this guy's family is?"

I guess I missed the point of the ad. But I would, wouldn't I?