Since I’ve been back home for a while now and only unpacked the last of my stuff from the last trip just this past week, all the memories of being on the road came flooding back and I found myself longing to reconnect with the excitement of going away in whatever way I could manage. So I decided to join a local walking London food tour which I was rather pleased to learn isn’t only limited to foreign tourists, so I got to meet a lot of travellers from many corners of the world.
One such traveller I met was a dude from Dubai, whose mother is Indian and father is Tanzanian. Yes, I know, that’s perhaps the ultimate conversation starter, but being a traveller myself and hearing about how his parents met in rather intriguing circumstances got me thinking a little more deeply about the modern day family and all the dynamics surrounding the typical modern day family, particularly here in the UK.
It’s long since been more about diversity with modern day families, with the typical nucleic family structure of a mommy, a daddy and 2.4 kids seemingly a thing of the past, if it was ever a thing considering just how many single parents there have been over the years and even considering just how many “alternative family structures” exist, like that of a family which is headed by the oldest sibling for example or just two partners who are living together.
It turns out I was onto something with my thoughts, because I came across the somewhat trending #FamilyMadeSimple, shining a spotlight on quite a few of these identified dynamics of the modern family.
I mean I’m personally pretty settled in my relationship, although not quite to the stage where we’re planning a family as yet, but being a traveller I’ve kind of always had a bit of sympathy for those who happen to find love in foreign lands and end up joining or creating families which are faced with a lot more challenges than what the typical, traditional family already faces. In my book a family is indeed a co-habiting unit, whether blood-related, related by marriage or even if they’ve gone through legal separation processes like a divorce. I mean just because you might have had to take the step to bring in the best family lawyers London has to offer to perhaps beat out a path forward for the family structure to move on in a civil manner, it really doesn’t mean you’re no longer a family.
With divorce rates playing very closely to the 50% mark in the UK, I think I’d be correct in saying that quite a few people are totally rethinking what it means to be part of a family. It’s perhaps pertinent as well to think of it a little differently in defining what a family is in this day and age, and although pretty much any authoritative figure can come up with a definition they believe we should all be adopting, ultimately it comes down to the individual’s personal feelings and actions.
It’s who you consider to be part of your family that makes up part of your family, with the treatment that comes with that consideration, whether “good” or “bad” – kind of like how a big brother feels it’s his “job” to scare his little sister half to death every chance he can get.
