Family - Let's adapt to reflect our realities

"You come from a broken family." That's a line I am so accustomed to hearing over 2 decades that I really started believing it in my subconscious mind. It ate away at me every time - no matter where, when or who said it. The stigma around a single-parent household has been so traumatizing that as an adult I struggle to deal with social and relationship anxiety. Very recently I was prompted to think over why this affected me so much, and why I felt compelled to believe that I hail from a 'broken family'.

Were you one of those people who grew up believing that you knew the mathematical formula for what the society calls a 'family'? Did your formula look like:

Family = Husband + Wife + kid(s)

If the answer is yes, I wouldn't be surprised because honestly that's the image society put in our heads ever since we were little kids. But it is time that we took a pause, looked around and asked - Is this really what a family means?

If we were to look around us today, we will see that the diversity in family living arrangements has increased a lot since the early 1960s. The reasons are multifold:

1. With non-marital cohabitation on the rise we are more likely to find family structures that in many cases continue to evolve throughout a child's life.
2. Single-parent households resulting from death or divorce are more common than before. The likelihood of a child born to a married couple growing up in a home with those two parents is less common today than it used to be.
3. As society's acceptance for same-sex couples continues to increase, these families challenge the traditional idea of what a 'family' should look like.
4. With an increase in adoptions by choice, or due to challenges associated with infertility we get to see diversity within a family.
5. Some couples choose to not have kids by choice, but instead are content living life by themselves. Some find happiness in being a pet-parent or a plant-parent.
6. Individuals choose to not be in a relationship or to not marry, but instead enjoy single life with some choosing to be a pet-parent or a plant-parent.
7. Due to unfortunate and/or unforeseen circumstances kids grow up with grandparents, relatives, etc.

These changes in our society today are a result of both changing societal values and the current economic woes. But what hasn't changed are the stigma around and laws for the societal units that don't adhere to the traditional idea of an ideal family. While we as humans evolve, we need to be more accepting and inclusive. We need to understand that our definition of a family needs to morph and grow to better reflect our realities. This definition will be ever-evolving and will look different to each person, and we need to learn to be okay with that. This is of utmost importance in today's age and time because unless we as a society reflect inwards to recognize the crucial changes we need to make at the smallest level, we will never be able to create a safe space for our future generations to grow and thrive. 

To me, the term 'broken family' is highly offensive and controversial because it strongly implies that there is something wrong, something very broken just because it doesn't fit into the traditional family mould. So the next time I see someone from a family that looks different from mine, all I will be thinking is-

"My family is complete, and yours is too!"