family Tink should have been acknowledged long ago, methinks. i guess we all take ours for granted. either that or we hate them. (the same way I_hate_you...?) 000419 ... Equin0x Family values. What does family value? 000524 ... stuff while running yesterday i was thinking about that scene at the nadir of the family situation. when my mom was sobbing and breaking down and we all went into the kitchen and group hugged her. the TV was playing "We are Family" on that show Just the Ten of Us. i'm not sure if she started crying because of the song, or the song started after the crying. but i was thinking about how much it hurts me to hear that song (i think i heard it while running) this morning i heard it again and it wasn't so bad. repetition is good. 000603 ... a.f. my lifea 000908 ... syn I think of "family" as in the word. And I see 2 beautiful kids! a mother! a father! grandparents! aunts! uncles! cousins! Even when I think about it I smile. Till I walk out my bedroom door... You know.. I'm the one that cleaned up her blood. Who checked her wrist while she slept to make sure it wouldnt bleed on the sheets... I made sure you were still breathing, you fuck! All you care about is if your boyfriend is still fucking his wife. What about your kids? Courtney? Katy? Me? You expect us to be okay if you die, knowing we weren't good enough for you to live for us? I love you Mom. 001216 ... hoodrat the people i want to be with. Just for today. 010122 ... Jenna Something I did miss. Until today. The shouting and the tension I do not miss. I do not miss the "parenting" of my sister that I, in my age, am no longer subject to. I do not miss talking to my mother, because even the most casual conversations with her give me headaches. I'm only home for the weekend. I'm so happy I don't have to live here. 011025 ... lost my biological parents were drug addicts and would beat me up. i went weeks without food. then i moved with foster parent that adopted me. my adoptive father died and my adoptive mother abuses me with her words every day. this is an extremely short version i dont have much time now maybe someday i will tell you the story. 011025 ... Zoe wow, these are some depressing families. my aunts and cousins are everything to me. my dad left when i was 5 and owes my mom about 30 thousand dollars. i have one older half sister who is awesome (we are close), and 2 step brothers i don't know. my mom means well but she is a religous freak and our values are not the same. she and i fight all the time, but i love her for all of the sacrifices she made for me. 020531 ... bethany wow do we really need to talk about this i don't beleive myself when i tell people about my family, it's more like people i live with who happen to be related to me and there's very few of us, bless your souls we dont breed 020804 ... Liz mum is getting drunk today so hurry up and run away looking for some place to be you're terrified with what you see you hate her for always doing that you lost respect, all that you had you hate it when she is that way so not your mum, so far away don't even dare to look outside your door stays always shut so tight curling up in a corner back in you wish for her to stop that thing cover up your ears so you don't hear the things she says, all that you fear but even though you try to hide the way you shut your eyes so tight there is no chance in getting away cuz mum is getting drunk today 030111 ... poeticmisfit A hope that these hateful, broken and emotionally unstable people could actually stop crying, screaming, hurting and wanting to kill themselves to actally love eachother. Does it really exist? 030111 ... carlita dad's pissed because i didn't want to go to the family reunion on saturday. well, since i'm left out of everything, i didn't find out till thursday night when i ran into him at the bar. needles to say he was wasted. anyway, he ended up freaking out on me at the bar because i already had plans, and frankly, i didn't want to go anyway. "i can't BELIEVE that you won't go. after everything your family has done for you... blah, blah, blah..." and on and on for a good 15 minutes. i ended up just walking away from him because there was nothing i could say that would make it better. well, he stormed out too, and left quite a nasty message on my cell phone, pretty much continuing the blah, blah, blah... i haven't had to deal with him like that in a long time... i thought moving out and having separate lives would make it all better, but i guess all it takes is a few beers and something to get mad about, and we're right back to fighting. i thought it would blow over since i talked to my sister and he wasn't mad that she was going. of course, she told him when he was sober, so there's the difference. but no, i get to work this morning, the first time i've checked email since, and here's an email... bitching at me some more. as if yelling at me face to face and leaving a message on my cell wasn't enough. he just had to make sure i got the point. normally after a fight like this, i keep quiet and let him get over it, which he always eventually does. not this time, after reading the email this morning (and crying about it for a bit) i wrote him back... actually said what was on my mind... we'll see what his response is now. 030707 ... Sam Vaknin The families of the not too distant past were oriented along four axes. These axes were not mutually exclusive. Some overlapped, all of them enhanced each other. People got married because of social pressure and social norms (the Social Dyad), to form a more efficient or synergetic economic unit (the Economic Dyad), in pursuit of psychosexual fulfilment (the Psychosexual Dyad), to secure a long term companionship (the Companionship Dyad). Thus, we can talk about the following four axes: Social-Economic, Emotional, Utilitarian (Rational), Private-Familial. To illustrate how these axes were intertwined, let us consider the Emotional one. People got married because they felt very strongly about living alone. But they felt so also because of social pressures. Some of them subscribed to ideologies which promoted the family as a pillar of society, the basic cell of the national organism, a hothouse in which to breed children to empower the nation and so on. These ideologies of personal contributions to collectives had a strong emotional dimension and provided impetus to a host of behaviour patterns. The emotional investment in today's individualistic-capitalist ideologies is no smaller. Technological developments rendered past thinking obsolete and dysfunctional but did not quench Man's thirst for guidance and a worldview. Still, as technology evolved, it became more and more disruptive in so far as families were concerned. Increased mobility, a decentralization of information sources, the transfers of the traditional functions of the family to societal and private sector establishments, the increased incidence of interactions, safer sex with lesser consequences to those who engage in it – all assisted the disintegration of the traditional family. Consider the trends that affected women, for instance: 1. The emergence of common marital property and of laws for its equal distribution in case of divorce constituted a shift in legal philosophy in most societies. The result was a major (and on going) distribution of wealth and its transfer from men to women. Add to this the disparities in life expectancy between the two genders and the magnitude of the redistribution of economic resources becomes evident. Women are becoming richer at the expense of men because they live long enough to inherit them and because they get a share of the marital property when they divorce them. These "endowments" are larger than their quantifiable contribution to the formation of the wealth thus redistributed. Women still earn less than men, for instance. 2. An increase in economic opportunities. Social and ethical mores changed, technology allowed for increased mobility, wars and economic upheavals led to the forced introduction of women into the labour markets. 3. The result of their enhanced economic clout was a more egalitarian social and legal system. Women's rights were legally as well as informally secured in an evolutionary process, punctuated by minor legal revolutions. This reflected reality – rather than created it. 4. While securing equality in opportunities and fighting for it in other domains of life (representation, taxation, education, property rights and so on) – women still enjoy a discrimination in their favour regarding their obligations. It is rare for a man to complain of sexual harassment or to receive alimony or custody of his children or, in many countries, to be the beneficiary of family related welfare benefits. This discrepancy works in women's favour. 5. The emergence of single parent and non-nuclear families and their social acceptance helped women to shape their lives as they saw fit. Most single parent families are headed by women. Women single parents are severely penalized economically, though (their median income is very low even when adjusted to reflect transfer payments). 6. Thus, gradually, the shaping of future generations will become the exclusive domain of women. Even today, one third of all children in developed countries grow in single parent families with no male figure around to serve as a role model. This exclusivity has tremendous social and economic implications. Gradually and subtly the balance of power will shift as society becomes matriarchal. 7. The invention of the pill and other contraceptives liberated women as far as sex was concerned. The resulting sexual revolution engulfed and affected both sexes but the main beneficiaries were women whose sexuality was in the process of being legitimized. Not under the cloud of unwanted pregnancy any longer – women felt free to engage in sex with multiple partners. 8. In the face of this newfound freedom and the realities of changing sexual conduct, the double standard, which was hitherto applied to the sexual behaviour of men and women – crumbled. The existence of the woman's sexual drive and its legitimacy were widely accepted. The family, therefore, became a joint venture also sexually. 9. Urbanization, communication, and transportation multiplied the number of encounters and potential interactions between women and men. Comparison became possible. Women were able to judge their male partners in context for the first time. They were able to develop extra-marital relationships with relative ease. They were able to opt out of a relationship, which they deemed to be wrong or inadequate for them. 10. Women became aware of their needs, their wishes and, in general, their proper emotions and cognitions, as opposed to emotions and cognitions instilled in them by society through the agency of the men in their lives, by other conformist women and as a result of peer pressure. They were able to establish priorities and preferences and act upon them, even when they conflicted with others'. 11. The roles and traditional functions of the family were gradually eroded and transferred to other social agents. Even functions such as emotional support, psychosexual interactions and child rearing were relegated to outside "subcontractors". Devoid of these functions and of inter-generation interactions, the nuclear family was reduced to a dysfunctional shell, a hub of rudimentary communication between its remaining members, a dilapidated version of its former self. The traditional roles of women and their alleged character propensities and inclinations were no longer of use in this new environment. Emotional emptiness was bound to set in – and it did. Women had to find a new definition, a new niche. They were literally driven out of their homes by its functional disappearance. 12. In parallel, women's life expectancy increased, their child bearing years were prolonged, their health improved dramatically, their beauty was preserved through a myriad of newfangled techniques. This gave women a new lease on life. They were no longer likely to die at childbirth, to look decrepit at 30 years of age. They were able to time their decision to bring a child to the world, or to refrain from doing so passively or actively (by having an abortion). This growing control over their body, which has been objectified, reviled and admired for millennia by men – is arguably one of the most striking features of the feminine revolution. It allowed women to rid themselves of deeply embedded masculine values, views and prejudices concerning their physique and their sexuality. 13. Finally, the legal system and other social and economic structures adapted themselves to reflect most of the above sea changes. Being inertial and cumbersome, these reacted slowly, partially and gradually. Still, they did react and any comparison between the situation just twenty years ago and today is likely to reveal substantial differences. But this revolution is only a segment of a much larger one. In the past, the axes with which we opened our discussion were closely and seemingly inextricably intertwined. The Economic, the Social and the Emotional (this was the axis invested in the preservation of societal mores and ideologies) constituted one amalgam – and the Private, the Familial and the Utilitarian-Rational constituted another. In other words: society encouraged people to get married because it was emotionally committed to a societal-economic ideology which infused the family with sanctity, an historical mission and grandeur. But the majority of men and women got married out of a cold economic calculation that regarded the family as a functioning economic unit, within which the individual could find his economic expression in the most effective manner. Forming families was an efficient technique of wealth generation, accumulation and