This Week in Experimental Family Models
Ever wish you could shrug off the whole nuclear family thing and see what else might work? This week--perhaps because of the new TV drama Swingtown, perhaps because of the FLDS court victory--both Salon and Slate carried first-person accounts of growing up in nontraditional family structures. Lee Ann Kinkade was raised in an intentional community where her major caretaker ended up being an unrelated woman who also "had two long-term relationships during my childhood and had them simultaneously." Salon's Laird Harrison, on the other hand, had a normal upbringing until his parents let another nuclear family move in with them for two years so the spouses could switch partners. (This resulted in a total of 11 children under one roof, which actually seems kind of fun, no?)
I think the blended family is more common than we think, just not as blended as Harrison's. Being part of a family unit that involves parents and kids and step-parents and half-siblings is only part of a the equation at our house. We also have the kids down the street who just walk into our house to check out who's around and the network of team-parents who volunteer at a moment's notice to pick up or drop off if something goes awry. Harrison bemoans the lack of community he feels, but it seems to me that as an adult he has even more choice than he had as a child, and community is not a spectator's sport.
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