Fur-tunately, Family Never Ends.
Moving into my new space in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) with an ex-college mate of mine has been nothing short of delightful. The area is vibrant; we never run out of things to do, people see or places to visit, and all the essentials are at arm’s length. But what really makes Brooklyn Brooklyn is its community. It’s the sense of family and belonging that draws one into its cosy suburban arms.
Perhaps it’s because Brooklyn is filled with families. No matter how far I look or where I turn my eye, I see young couples, old couples, young children, grandparents, parents, babysitters, and — my favorite — pups. My new favorite Brooklyn sighting has been the increasing amount of young families — two individuals, millennials, probably? — one hand laced through their partner’s, the other wound around a soft leash on the other end. A furry friend!
This caught my attention, particularly because where I come from nuclear families remain solidified in a conventional sense. A man, a woman, and mostly two children. But as I find my home away from home in Brooklyn, I’m pleasantly surprised to see a new phenomenon, or what I like to call: the ‘deconstruction’ of the nuclear family.
What was up until now a meandering thought in the back of my head, came jolting forward last week when I saw this heart rendering Airbnb campaign titled ‘I Will Always Love You’ under an umbrella series: ‘Made Possible By Hosts’. The ad reinforced shifting notions of what traveling looks like: as the pandemic has wreaked havoc on the possibility of air travel, more people are choosing to pack their bags and road trip across the nation.
More importantly, the ad has challenged the idea of what traveling with your family looks like. Watching the ad reminded me of the couples on the streets of Williamsburg, hand-in-hand, hand-in-leash. The idea that young individuals today — men, women, gender non-binary — are choosing to redefine culturally formulated ideas of what family looks like only proves that family structures are changing, and for the better, and millennials and Gen-Zers seem to be at the forefront of this. As younger generations begin to gain more agency over their lives, many of them are rejecting ideal notions of what families must be defined as and as this agency intensifies, the definition of family seems to broaden.
Through conversations with many of my own friends, I learnt that the majority of them were choosing to shed the lifelong liability of children and adopt a pet instead. They insisted it was more eco-friendly and ethically conscious; “why bring a child into this world?”, many of them asked. A YPulse survey revealed that 76% of millennials are pet parents and a piece of research in The Atlantic suggested that millennials have officially overtaken boomers as the largest pet owning cohort. It turns out that the couples walking down Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, seem to be a few of many. The truth is that pets have become familial in a way that young individuals do not perceive children to be; and more importantly, have played an important role in widening the umbrella definition of who gets to be a part of the family.
To me, the ad is simple. There is no pushy message, nor is there a preachy moral. There is a couple and their dog. Like most suckers, the dog is enough reason for me to watch the advertisement on repeat, but the reality is that the ad doesn’t cater to convention. Airbnb is about travel; it’s about adventure and discovery and has, several times, advertised their service as family friendly. Their content is and has always been predominantly story driven, successfully pulling you into their service without persistently pushing a message at you. What the ad tells me is this: today, families need no longer be defined by the children you have or the partners you are with; it could be as simple as you and your dog. So travel with them!
