First Marriage and Family Post! Yay!

Since this post is for my Marriage and Family class, I wanted to begin with a couple of favorite pictures of mine -- above is me with my two moms: the mom who gave birth to me (on the right), and the mom who adopted and raised me (on the left). This is the day I met Jennifer, a very special person with a beautiful heart. This is what "family" means to me. Jennifer gave me up out of utmost love for me, and still loves me just as much as she did 19 years ago. My mom raised me with all the love and care she had, and I'll always be grateful to her.

And this is a beautiful picture of my maternal grandparents. This is a visual representation of what "marriage" means to me. My Oma and Pa met not knowing each other's languages, but fell in love anyway, and had two children and a 59-year marriage. Their relationship was so close and so special, they died within 4 months of each other -- Oma this past March, and Pa in July. My Pa did not want to live without her. In this picture, she was 85 and he was 75, and they are still so in love. I hope to have a marriage like theirs was at the end.

In class yesterday, we discussed possible answers to the question, "Is the family in decline?" Stephanie Coontz, the author of the article we read for class tomorrow, attempts to answer this question. Her opinion is that the family is not in decline. She argues that society's view of the model family -- what people think the 1950s family is, represented by Ward, June, and Beaver Cleaver -- is not actually the model family at all. She argues that family life in the '50s was actually represented by high poverty rates for children and the elderly, extreme racism, high rates of juvenile delinquency, high numbers of unwed mothers, and a much lower moral standard. She ends her article by arguing that it's America's outdated institutions that need to change, not the family. She calls for changes in work policies and school schedules to catch up to a time where mothers are in the workforce and children do not need to go home to help with farm life.

While Ms. Coontz makes some very valid points, I have to wonder where she gets her statistics, as she cites no sources in her article. This makes me question her credibility as an author and an expert resource in this field.

I think to answer the question posed in class yesterday, I would have to begin by defining what a family is. This is something I'm having struggles with. In one sense, I grew up in the traditional, nuclear family household, with a mom, a dad, and a brother. However, in another sense, I grew up in a non-traditional household, since I am related to none of these people genetically. Does that make them any less my family? I don't think so. But, does that make Jennifer and my sister Caiti any less my family, even though we are not legally related? I don't think so here, either. I believe that a set of grandparents raising their grandchildren is a family. I believe that a foster parent raising several foster children is a family. I believe that a single mom or dad raising three kids is a family. I believe that two gay men raising a child they adopted is a family. So, maybe the "traditional" norm, isn't really the norm anymore.

So what is a family? Well to that, I really don't have an answer that I can tie up in a nice little bow for you. I know I grew up in a wonderful one, and recently met my other wonderful one. I know there probably is no good, definitive answer to what a family is. I know that I will probably be struggling to find an answer to this question for a while.

And I'm okay with that.