How Big is Family?

When I lived in Zambia, Central Africa I noticed that family was always way big. You would hear someone speak about his or her father or mother. I assumed, at first, that the person referred to was father or mother exactly as we understand it in the West: The man or woman who created you biologically.

This idea fell apart quickly when I discovered that in terms of many African kinship systems, father or mother can be uncle or aunt or even distant cousin, as Westerners comprehend such relationships.

We lived in a kind of compound surrounding a lake. My daughter, Nelia, was only two and had recently given up her pacifier, baby bottle and diapers. I feared that somehow, if we weren't constantly vigilant, that she would wander into the lake and that tragedy would ensue. But I discovered very soon after arrival that she could go out playing with the neighbor children and the older ones would take care of the younger ones. At lunchtime, some family would invite her into their home for the stiff corn meal staple called nshima.

The flip side of this is that we were expected to maintain the same standards. Back in the USA we had been used to saying to Nelia's friends when dinner came: "It is dinner time and now you need to go home." But in Africa, where there may be ten or twelve people eating, what is one more little mouth? And, anyway, the expectation is that we all take care of each other.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties: I'm nolonger living in Africa, even though I still travel there frequently. But now I am learning the language and symbols of the gay community in the USA. Often I would hear someone ask: "Is he family?" This doesn't mean "Is he a blood relationship?" but "Is he gay?"

What interested me when I was introduced to the out gay community was that there was an assumption that other gay folk constituted a support network, a veritable family, providing emotional support and stability. I realized how important this was (and is) when I disovered how many persons had been kicked out of their own families when they came out to them or how many persons were given a kind of emotional freeze-out when their gayness was revealed.

It is fascinating to me that out of two very marginalized groups--North American gays and poor Central Africans--definitions of family are broad in scope and hospitable in nature and move beyond the narrow definitions of blood and ancestry. Even as I express my fascination, I am aware that in these two groupings boundaries are often set: Africans may not extend "family" beyond tribe to other Africans. Some gays may not extend "family" to persons not sharing their own struggles as men who love men.

Still, the point is clear to me: Family is whoever provides fundamental emotional support and is the basic point of reference for shared life and commitment at its deepest levels.

This is not to imply that our blood relations do not have special and enduring claims upon us. Parents have obligations inherant in producing children that cannot be handed over to others. Older children have obligations towards the elderly that cannot be shortcut without much hurt and pain.

But, generally, in the USA, in spite of all the hype about family values, our understanding of family is way too small and way too outdated. Groups such as "Focus on the Family" model things more on narrow 1950's understandings, passed off as supposedly Biblical and American, that exclude and restrict more than reach out and build broad community.

I am for "family values" that:

--Focus on community and communal responsibility for all, especially children and the elderly.

--Welcome new models and styles of family, such as those proposed by same-sex family units, or those lived out by single parents.

--Provides support for busy parents who have to work. Good systems of publically financed and sponsored child care and early childhood education could do so much here. I think of Hillary Clinton's reminder that it takes a village to raise a child.

--Models global citizenship in the local family unit, however that is defined.

Whether or not you, the reader, agree with these ideas (they are sketchy, I know) I hope you will agree that some better, non-nostalgic, non-far Right Christian thinking and discussion about the shape of the family is absolutely critical.

The divorce stats should be all we need to be convinced of this. More than half of all American marriages end in divorce.

Is the family going to be bigger or smaller? Family values depend upon definitions of family. What does the family look like to you?