Family

This week is the start of the Jewish festival of Passover. Being mostly ambivalent about religion, it mostly passes me by. As I’ve got older though and see the important of shared culture and identity, I’ve become less dismissive of my own.

I think of this Spring festival as the closest Jewish equivalent to Christmas. There aren’t presents and it usually isn’t terribly fun but – for me anyway – more than any other time of the year (and there are lots of festivals), it seems to be a time for family to come together and to eat together.

Family is an odd word that can be both emotive and comforting. It can also be alienating and exclusionary. By interpreting ‘family’ as comforting and warming, does that dismiss other people’s experiences of unpleasant, harmful or abusive environments.

As a social worker I’ve weaved my way in and out of the lives of many people and many families. It is one of the most incredible privileges and it is not a side that is generally reflected broadly. Talk about ‘Mother’s Day’ and ‘Father’s Day’ can be fluffy and warm but can also draw out pain and exclusion. That doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate – just as celebrating Christmas doesn’t exclude those of other faiths – but it is useful to have an awareness of the armoury of emotions that they can unravel. This subtlety is rarely reflected in media images and government narratives.

When Cameron (and all politicians of all ilks) refer to ‘hard-working families’ there are layers of assumptions to unravel. I’ll leave the ‘hard-working’ part aside for another day but consider what is meant by ‘families’. Are single people living with friends, ‘family’ – a family by choice, if you will – or an unmarried couple? I think we’ve moved on in a lot of ways – for example, with marriage (or sexual orientation) not defining ‘family’ but are we willing to accept ‘family by choice’ as an equivalent.

I think of Passover as a ‘family’ holiday but it doesn’t have some of the oppressive expectations of Christmas because – at least in this country – there’s not the endless media overload of what a happy or normal family should be like. While it’s nice to say family is whoever we choose to hang around with, when we make those choices there are some who question why the ‘real’ family isn’t present. They don’t always want to hang around for the answers though.

I have seen the other side of picture book ‘family’. Sometimes, the pressure to conform creates additional pain in an already painful situation. People staying together ‘for the kids’, keeping up appearances and all that.

So while we think of what family is, who it is and how much agency we have in creating or dismantling it, it’s worth – at times in the year when it becomes more important – to remember those that the word excludes as well.

When I hear more politicians talking about people having value and needs outside family units as much as within them, I think we may have got there.

Family is as important to those without – whether by choice or circumstance as it is to those with.