Who's in your family?

Who is in your family?

An interesting question to ponder. Most of us think it is a pretty easy question to answer but this experience has caused me to do some thinking. When we are younger, we typically think of our family as being those biologically related to us...our family of origin. For me, that is now just my mother, sister with some assorted aunts, uncles and cousins out there. As we get older we form our own relationships and people get added to our family through marriages and births. To my family, I then added a niece. When I was in graduate school the first time (in the late 1980s) my minor was family social science. For one of my courses I needed to write a definition of the term 'family.' No problem, I thought and began to write. It was a difficult task. By that time in my life I had identified myself as a lesbian but as yet, had no permanent partner. My family began to include different members~close friends of mine that I chose to include in my definition of family. My family of choice. I don't recall the exact way I wrote the definition of family at this time but it was something about being a group of people who share love, a common history and goals.

Now, years later I must rethink this definition of family...my definition. Certainly my family includes my biological members: Mom, Pat and Alvin. But now it includes my life partner Mary and her biological family members. Her family also came with sister- and brother-in-laws since they were 'in' her family before I was. There are also some friends that I include in my family of choice. They are just as important to me as my family of origin and my family of partnership. Yet, according to Wikipedia (2007), a family is a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth, marriage or comparable relationships such as domestic partnership, cohabitation or adoption. This definition would suggest that friends are not a part of one's family. Then there is the issue of those family members who choose to form intimate relationships. Some even remarry. What about these new people? Are they members of my family or not? And what about the new people's children, sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews? Are they may family members too? According to Wikipedia, yes. They are. Certainly these people are members of families of those family members who chose them but are they necessarily members of mine. Getting confused?

I teach a nursing course called "The Family as Client" each year. The focus is on providing nursing care to a family unit rather than an individual. In the first class we discuss this notion of family and discuss the idea that it is the family, not the nurse that decides who is a part of the family (Friedman, 2003). Some members of my family of origin feel as though there are situations that should be limited to "family only." Ok. I can agree with that. But the patient (me) gets to decide who the family encompasses. Since Mary and I are the family involved in this health care issue together, we are the ones who decide who our family is. I am not sure that there are any particular parameters...length of time we have been friends, significance of friendship, origin of friendship, whether or not you have seen my incisions...but we are still the ones who get to decide.

We need our family and our friends around us right now. We don't need our family members fighting over who is in or out of the circle. That is as ridiculous as it sounds. We need you all.

References

Friedman, M., Bowden, V.R. & Jones, E.G. (2003). Family nursing: Research, theory and practice. (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Wikipedia, The free encylopedia (2007). Family. Retrieved February 21, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family