But the family has proved particularly difficult to decode. It is, has always been, a walking, talking irony. We speak about the family being the bosom of love and comfort, romantic language that adheres to the word family without the least embarrassment. Family also is another word for tyranny. James Joyce called the family a snare, the ultimate and damaging intimacy of enemies, which must be confronted once the simple demands of infancy are satisfied.
Families imply care, expectation, control or, on the other side of the wallpaper, neglect and abuse.
Almost no one is tutored in family courtesy, no one is given a list of rules. And very few are afforded a second chance to repair the lives with which they collide. Jane Austen wrote six splendid novels, each of which concludes with the ceremony of marriage and the implied continuation of family, and yet the happiness of all her families is deformed by sibling rivalry, parental ignorance, insensitivity, embarrassment and economic expediency. Interestingly, she didn't marry or have a child, remaining with her blood family to the end. The family of the future will carry on its shoulders many of the changes we have seen in our own lifetime.