How do you define 'family'

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ChemGal said:
According to demographics collected for a business I use, I am pre-family. o_O
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Which, as usual, limits the definition of "family" to the nuclear family and ignores the extended and birth families that you and Chemguy both have. Ignoring or diminishing extended family is a post-war failing of our society that still hasn't left us. I'm not sure we even notice it anymore. I didn't until I met my wife's family in China where extended family still counts for more.
 
Those of us who come from immigrant families tend to have a rather more inclusive idea of family than those who have plenty of extended family within some sort of reasonable distance. My entire extended family lives in England, so I grew up with an extended family of "aunties" and "uncles" who were no relation.
 
I actually had a sort of second "extended" family in the form of my best friend's family. His mother and grandmother (a wonderful old Mennonite lady who lived with them much of the time I knew him) treated his friends like family when we were over and his Dad was almost part of the "gang" at times.
 
BetteTheRed said:
Which implies that once the hubby's gone and the kids have flown the nest, that one is "post-family"?
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I can't remember for sure, but I think if you lived alone it was just Single. If living with a partner, but the kids were gone it was 'Late'. A reference to borrowed time?

If I was thinking like @chansen I would have taken a screenshot!
 
I like this ...

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American crime writer and child advocate Andrew Vachss has long contended that the family we choose is more important than the one we are born into. In his Burke novels, the characters are a bunch of outcasts and outlaws who bond into a family. In fact, blood family is as often the enemy as an ally in these novels. Keep in mind, though, that Vachss' legal practice has seen him deal with horrific cases of child abuse (he once broke his hand punching a wall to show how hard a child was hit), almost all of them perpetrated by the victims' blood family so his attitude makes a lot of sense seen in that context.
 
BetteTheRed said:
Those of us who come from immigrant families tend to have a rather more inclusive idea of family than those who have plenty of extended family within some sort of reasonable distance. My entire extended family lives in England, so I grew up with an extended family of "aunties" and "uncles" who were no relation.
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Do you have stats for that Bette? Please provide the link.
 
A lot of people tend to view a childless couple as something less than a "family unit" regardless of how long those people have been together. I don't think I've EVER run across the term 'starting a family' in any context other than as an inquiry as to when a couple intends to have their first child.
 
I like Carolla's post.

We have had to re-think our understanding of family and home a great deal over the past 15 years. You see, we are almost NEVER without some form of paid caregiver or nurse in our home. One even lives with us full-time - and has for about five years. We have five members of our traditionally defined, biological family. Mom, dad, three kids. But we also have a live-in caregiver and a rotation of paid caregivers who, in some cases, have become family-like to us.

I would also likely include two very close friends who have stood with our family through deeply painful moments and with whom I trust my most vulnerable self.

So for me family is a combination of members related "by blood", but also people included by choice.
 
I was also thinking about my grandmother. She and her little dog were family. They talked and were like best friends.
 
My critters are very much part of my family. I'm never alone, although I often live by myself, and I'm always talking to one or another of them.
 
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