As I thought about the unusual families in the two books I reviewed for this issue of the newsletter, one fictional, one real, I began to explore all the different arrangements that might constitute families. In the current situation with COVID-19 and social distancing, many people have been separated from family for health’s sake, while others have become family, in the sense of support and caring. It has made definitions of family, “like family,” and “immediate family,” somewhat more fluid than our society might have previously thought.

Some years ago, when I was serving on the New Mexico Conference of Churches board, I was part of a study committee on what constitutes a family. The impetus for this study was that a State Senator, of a particular religious group, had pushed for the state legislature to define and restrict family to one man and one woman and their children and further, wished to pass laws outlawing divorce and have judges conduct some higher level of marriage wherein the couple would never be able to obtain a divorce, no matter what. This was at the time same-sex marriage was a fairly new legal concept, and was not yet being seriously considered in New Mexico. This man’s particular religious group also conducted arranged marriages, which took place in mass ceremonies. He also was adamantly against same-sex relationships, or even acknowledgment that a person was gay or lesbian, let alone transgender. One of the persons on the Conference of Churches board, who was religiously conservative but socially liberal, was alarmed at the possibility of such restrictive laws, and said she felt that, as a board which represented many different denominations, we ought to study the possibilities and see if we could define the possible types of families. I volunteered to be on the study committee, as did another therapist, a minister, and a nun. We started by listing the various ways in which families are formed, by marriage, birth, adoption, foster care, etc., and the list kept expanding. We realized that not all families have children, that some families have one parent, some may have more than two, some families are related genetically and some are not. Grandparents may be raising grandchildren, and they are families. Some siblings may be together after parents are deceased or have left, and they are families. A couple is a family. Cousins are family. People who choose to share their lives, and possibly housing and financial resources, really are families, even though they may not be legally or genetically related. The definition of “family” became broader and broader, as we realized that every time we attempted to limit the definition of family, we left someone out. Our nun member was particularly adamant about this.

“My family of origin is my family, and the Sisters I have lived in community with are also my family.”

The conclusion we reached is that “family” is however the participants define themselves, including a single person with, for instance, a guide dog. In the past, two single women often lived together and said they were sisters, and it was assumed they were sharing resources because neither made enough money to live alone. Often, these women were actually not sisters, but were living in a committed relationship, and laws and customs did not allow them to be married to each other. In other cases, they really were sisters, or friends. In all these cases, they were family. So, we realized that laws cannot restrict who constitutes a family, but can support the formation and continuation of families of many sorts. We also discussed adoption, foster care, and what we called “intentional” families, not caring for the term “blended” families, as if the people were all thrown in a blender and whirred together!

Current financial reality means that more adult offspring are still living with their parents, or have moved back in, and some retired parents have moved in with grown offspring. There are folks who do co-housing, where they share a house or group of houses, with some shared resources. My son and his wife have raised her niece along with their other children; she is our grandchild just as surely as our biological grandchildren, and since some of those are my genetic grandchildren, and some are my husband’s, we just declared them all our grandchildren. When a relinquished offspring is not in communication with a birth parent, either during a closed adoption, or after being reunited but losing touch again, they are still family. An offspring who is estranged from parents, or even has been disowned, they are still family in the deepest sense. Not everyone agrees with these definitions of family, of course. Sometimes siblings become estranged, or someone disappears. Nevertheless, they are still someone’s family. When a young person goes to another country as an exchange student, the people with whom they live are referred to as the host family, and quite often, all keep in touch long after the exchange semester or year is over.

On the other hand, I had a dear friend, a former college roommate, who visited from time to time and we thought of her as family, even when it wasn’t easy. Her daughter, her only child, married and had two children. The mother lived in an apartment in their basement. She had no siblings, no cousins, no other biological family except the daughter and grandchildren. When Christmas came, the daughter told her that Christmas morning was “only for the immediate family, my husband, myself, and our children, not you, and you cannot come upstairs while we are opening our gifts.” I was shocked and can only imagine the hurt my friend experienced. The daughter was happy enough to inherit everything her mother had when she died several years later. Who was her family!

I am reminded of Robert Frost’s well-known poem, “The Death of the Hired Man,” the best-known line of which is, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.” But the next line is “I should have called it / Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” Then the couple discuss the fact that Silas, the hired man, has a rich brother who hasn’t helped him, but might if asked. They don’t know why the brothers are estranged. The poem ends when they discover that Silas has died while they were discussing him. Re-reading it now for the hundredth time or more in my life, I am moved to tears. They were his family, reluctantly or not. What constitutes a family?

The questions I would ask are, when they come to your house, do they have to knock, or have an invitation, or can they come in and be welcome? Can they come for Christmas dinner? Can they see you without your makeup, or if you haven’t shaved yet? If they need you, can they count on you, and can you count on them?

Relinquishment, adoption, foster care, and even marriage redefine family in every case. What constitutes a family at one time, or in one generation, may be quite different from how it is at another time. Consider enlarging your concept of family rather than trying to restrict it. It may be more complicated, but your life will be fuller.