The new nuclear family

The family is a primordial idea. Wild animals recognize the importance of family groups or packs. With a family, the animals survive; without they perish. In human culture, family has generally been limited to those with whom one shares blood. However, as mankind’s capacity to be horrible to one another knows no bounds, oft-times blood relations can be abusive. Times have changed, and with them so has the concept of family. To my generation, the oft-mocked and belittled millennials, family means a lot more than mere blood relations. To us, people earn the right to be family; it’s not a matter of blood, it’s a matter of shared trust. Maybe it was the pop culture we were raised on, maybe it’s the more accepting and open culture that we are promoting, or maybe it’s just a growing cultural awareness. Whatever the cause, the modern idea of a family is much different than it was in the past.  

To many millennials, family are the people who have your back. They’re the people who are there when one needs them, even if it’s 3 in the morning. Because of this many consider their closest friends to be family, and not just friends. With the advent of instant messaging, we’re able to be constantly in contact with anyone, which allows us to form tighter bonds with people outside of our genetic family. Which is good. Family is evolving along with society. This evolution of family is particularly important for queer people! Not all genetic families are supportive or understanding, and this evolution allows queer people to surround themselves with a family that loves and supports them. 

That’s what defines a real family: love and support. Blood and genetics do not define family. If I limited my family to the genetic relations that love and support me, my family could be counted on a single hand. Fortunately for me, I’ve not done that since I was a teenager. Today my family spans the globe and can be counted on two hands! I honestly don’t know where I would be today without my family, and I don’t know who I would be if I had limited my family to genetics.   

Like most 90s kids, I grew up with a pop culture that highlighted atypical familial units: single parents, adopted families, children being raised by their aunts and uncles. As we aged, the pop culture we consumed changed, but the idea of an atypical family stayed. We began to explore new mediums and new cultures, and our minds grew. We saw and read stories about groups of misfits coming together to form families, we bonded over message boards and fan theories, we encouraged each other behind our keyboards and we evolved the concept of family into something that fit into the burgeoning digital world we were creating.