Essay: On Family

  I recently brought my girlfriend of over three years to a Renaissance park my aunt and uncle had invited me to. She’s great with kids (they have four and I’m half convinced the reason they invite me anywhere is to babysit), is only visiting for the summer, and had said she wanted to go to the park. Plus, you know, I like introducing the people I love to one another. So I thought, what’s the harm in bringing her along?

Well, when I texted my uncle a heads up that we were running late but were on our way, he told me to have fun with my ‘friend’ and maybe we’d run into one another. I told him that although yes, my girlfriend was coming along because she wanted to check it out, I had planned on spending time with them all evening, and sent an additional text when we arrived. I received no response. We did end up running into them twice. Both encounters were painfully awkward and left my girlfriend and I with the impression that they didn’t really want to spend time with us. Now, keep in mind – we had gone on a school outing to an amusement park earlier that day, drove nearly an hour each way to meet my aunt and uncle, and paid $50 in admission. Not something I would have done if I hadn’t wanted to spend time with my cousins.

My mom brought it up a day or so later with my uncle over email (his preferred method of communication; don’t ask). Well, apparently they interpreted me bringing my long-term girlfriend as “bringing at least one friend,” a “breach of protocol,” and an indication that I didn’t intend to spend the time with them. When my mom explained that actually we view my girlfriend as a member of the family and assume she’s invited to family events just as my dad or my aunt would be, my uncle informed my mom that we have different definitions of family, that the assumption of inclusion does not begin until marriage (or, in a truly perplexing line – and I quote – “*maybe* engagement (in the context of betrothal)". Yeah, I got nothing.).

Of course, given that my aunt and uncle are strict Catholics who don’t believe a marriage between anyone other than one man and one woman is a real marriage, I doubt that even if my girlfriend and I got married tomorrow they’d actually see her as a member of the family. I also fundamentally disagree with the social act of rushing people into commitments like marriage simply for the sake of being taken seriously or offered respect. But I also came away from that email with a more fundamental question.

Who does it really benefit to maintain such an arbitrary, stingy definition of family? Marriage in particular as an institution is both remarkably arbitrary – a child might be legitimate if born one day but a bastard if born the day before, and the possibility of split-legitimacy twins fosters potential for both fascinating legal discourse and truly terrible airport novels – and sometimes painfully stingy, as I discovered in the above conversation with my uncle. So what’s the point?

Encyclopaedia Britannica points to a basic biological tenet to explain the origins of marriage. The more complex a species, the longer a newborn requires protection and care from its parents. Humans, being highly and sometimes annoyingly complex creatures, require an extensive period of nurturing (I mean, look at me – I’m nearly 21 and I still need my mom to argue with my uncle for me). Marriage establishes, across cultures, legal, economic, and social structures to promote this nurturing, protective environment. It prescribes roles for each parent, offers financial or other material incentives for maintaining the family unit, and establishes norms that exert pressure upon individuals who stray from the path. In theory, at least, it does its job.

Of course, in practice we know that marriage is often in name only, that people will try to reap the social benefits of the institution without fulfilling their responsibilities as parents, and that the pressure of social norms often leads to trauma and abuse as parents fail to reconcile their own or their child’s inability to conform to those norms with the expectations of those around them. And if marriage truly were necessary for effective social units and childrearing, well, maybe such social pressure could be justified (maybe). But actually, a variety of family models exist across nature and history. For instance, primates tend towards fairly complex social structures. They include a variety of systems, ranging from solitary dispersed (in which one male’s territory covers that of several females but individuals do not socialize) to polygynandrous groups consisting of several males and several females who mate with one another freely. Different systems allow different kinds of social and kin networks to develop. And yet the role played by both parents varies across species, rather than being determined by what sorts of relationships the parents have with one another. So it would be a mistake to assume that specific parental relationships are necessary to achieve a certain kind of childcare.

Similarly, although marital arrangements are fairly ubiquitous in their existence, that is only true in an incredibly broad sense. These arrangements have varied across time and location so much that it’s difficult to draw any common thread at all. This is especially true when it comes to how children are raised.

In some arrangements, like a traditional Christian marriage, it was the duty of the mother almost exclusively to raise children, while the father would spend his days working away from home (particularly post-industrial revolution). However, if the family was wealthy the mother might also abdicate this responsibility and instead hire someone else to do it for her in the form of a nursemaid. Regardless, children would be kept fairly isolated in terms of care, with one primary caregiver. In some polygamous arrangements, on the other hand, all wives would care for all children, with differentiations of motherhood depending on culture, class, and individual family. And in some East Asian cultures, it’s traditional for maternal grandparents to contribute substantially to the childrearing process. These are only a few examples of the varying ways humans have arranged to raise the next generation over thousands of years, and while each has its advantages and disadvantages, it seems impossible to firmly conclude one is objectively superior.

My point with all these examples is this: there’s nothing inherently, objectively special about any particular kind of marriage on a societal level. For some individuals, certainly, marriage might provide a helpful structure to encourage commitment to family. Good for them! For others, it might carry a religious or spiritual significance, elevating their relationship(s) as something holy. That’s wonderful! But I have to wonder why people like my aunt and uncle are so obsessively fixated on the concept of one true, righteous marriage, which is superior to all other relationships. What is it, in other words, about a Catholic marriage ceremony that turns my girlfriend from someone to be ignored, talked around, and excluded into a beloved member of the family?

This might all seem a lot like personal complaining, and, okay, it partly is. But I do also wonder what it says about a society, that our treatment of a person depends so wholly on a piece of paper, a last name, a ceremony, and not how that person treats your children, whether they make the people around them happy, whether they feel like family. It seems to me to be an abdication of personal responsibility and humanity to distance oneself so completely from the decision to bring someone into the family. 

One thing that supporters of marriage get right: family is a huge part of life in every way that matters. One example: studies demonstrate that there are certain genes linked to aggression and criminal behavior – but only when abuse or other external factors are present during upbringing. Both nature and nurture play a role in the well-being of our children and society. Given this fact, then, perhaps we should be less concerned about whether an individual who is becoming close to someone we care about has codified that relationship legally or religiously, and more concerned about, well, who they are as a person. My girlfriend and I could get married tomorrow or we could never get married, and it wouldn’t change our commitment to one another or the fact that she’s a wonderful, caring, compassionate person. I wish my own family didn’t need a marriage certificate to see that.