Make sure you don't choke: it's thicker than water, you know...

A Sickeningly Happy Family, yesterday

This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin (c. 1971)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands out misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Ah, family! The basis of society. The founding of each and every one of our tastes, habits, morals and ideals. It also, as Larkin so very famously pointed out, has the potential to stifle, traumatise and psychologically ruin the individual. It's a masochistic thing we humans like to accept as a tradition.

This post is a response to the trials and tribulations of Metroboi, whose relationship with his mother has been severely threatened; you can read all about it here. I then noticed, when following Dusty Boot (who in turn follows me: stalking is now an accepted internet activity, it seems), that he and his sister had been the victims of child abuse by their mother for a long while; read some of the stories here.

Freud famously theorised that we men are all subconsciously in love with our mothers - or our mother figures. I doubt Metroboi or Dusty Boot would agree. In fact, as most of Freud's theories have been disproven, I still find it amazing how often he is quoted as truth; but that is another debate. The problem is that we all love to glorify the image of the family, and the family unit, and argue that society would fall apart without it. Of course, family is important, but it is still made up of individuals. What if one, some, or all of these individuals are a bunch of crazed animals? Is that a good basis for society?

I'm not going to go into any details about my own experiences with my family, since it isn't necessary; but I have hardly had a pleasant experience, myself. Thankfully, I was never abused or mistreated, but the amount of disagreements we have had has pushed both myself and my father to live separetly from them, effectively being estranged. We've never felt happier.

I have to make clear I'm not suggesting a doing-away with the family structure (I don't even have any alternative suggestions), I just disagree with the argument "she/he is your mothe/father/brother/whatever", as an excuse for bad behaviour. In some families, people take more liberties because they think they can get away with it, and behave atrociously, even though this is more of an abuse of trust than any affair or theft.

The phrase "friends are the new family" rings true not because you can choose them, as that other oft-repeated cliché goes; rather, because best friends take time to know you, grow to care, and value you and your person over whatever schemes they can get past you. When a family-member becomes a friend, then we can think about on what a society can or should be based.