Redefining Family

Family is place where two or more cohabit together to survive and thrive.

Family is a place where children are nurtured and raised.

Family is a neighborhood and a community.

Family is one's state and nation.

Family is the peoples of the world.

Family is all relations of the world, human and non-human.

Family is of the past, present, and future.

Family is ALL.

When we redefine family as All, then there are no special relationships except for the propagating of children. Once children are born, they can be raised and nurtured by the couple in self-contained family units as we do now or by All the relations.

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Choosing community child rearing: When a child is born into a community, the community then is responsible for its sustenance, its shelter, its education, its spiritual development, its physical health … it is not solely the responsibility of a mother and father.

One difficulty is the defining of what is the community. Today, we in communities are unknown to one another – we are isolated islands adrift – each one attempting to survive and thrive on its own. Those thriving are heralded as successful; those who are not are looked upon as outliers or failures, because of their own fault or even because of the fault of a system. But, we often do not see the ones struggling as part of our tribe and that their needs are as important as our own to fulfill. When we share what we have earned and give to another of our tribe, we are not giving to another, but to ourselves as we are the tribe.

Expand this concept out to our world. Nation states that are thriving share to ones struggling, not only because it is the right thing to do to help another, but because if we do not, we hurt ourselves as much or more than we hurt the other, because they are us.

Expand this concept further to all animals, plants, minerals, etc. We can be selfish in giving, because when we give, we give to the All, which we are. But first we look to our children, the future, and give to them, especially to those in our communities, however we define it.