insurgent49
  updated weekly
 home - contribute - donate -  message board - events - links - contact us - archive
September 29, 2006
Rank and File
by Nova Stubbs, insurgent49

It’s Not Milk and Cookies Anymore

     Today’s families sure as hell don’t look like the stereotypical family of the 1950s.

     Instead, they have become a great mutation of yesterday’s America. People continue to go on and on, however, about the importance of the nuclear unit. Some are so bold as to say that “American values are declining based on the breakup of the family.”

     Well, I say that is a bunch of garbage.

     When my parents split up in the 1980s, I thanked the heavens. Living in a household where nearly every night the house would shake from my father’s yelling and mother’s tears was not an example of the perfect childhood. I was glad my parents divorced. And I had many reasons for it.

     First, I didn’t have to live the remainder of my formative years in an unstable environment. And second, I was able to form strong relationships with others that wouldn’t have come into my life otherwise.  Therein lies the beauty of a stepfamily.

     I am not trying to advocate for divorce, but relationships beyond blood are often a beautiful thing.  Out of my parents’ divorce, I am happy to say that I acquired a whole new family.  Once, I noticed that my stepfather had a handmade card hanging up in his office from my little sister; she wrote a poem for him, and one line in particular struck me, it read “You are my stepdad, you help me step beyond myself.”  Is this the “decline” of American values?

      I am also not implying that all stepparents are good, but we must keep in mind that not all parents who remain married are good either. A stepfamily can help a young child understand that bonds can go far beyond a biological connection.
 
     The term nuclear family (meaning a mother, a father and their children) can sometimes hinder and isolate people from forming strong plutonic relationships. According to some scholars on the subject, nuclear families encourage “intimacy, love and trust where individuals may escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in modern society.” Well, isn’t that sweet … in a 1950s milk and cookies kind of way?

     The truth is that when my father and mother were married I didn’t always feel all that warm and fuzzy stuff; in actuality, I felt it more once my parents had divorced, and the addition of my kind and loving stepfather only encouraged the feeling.

    The reality is that, if the parents within the family unit are in constant disharmony, the entire unit will suffer. Those who believe that marriage is forever must realize that their children will have greater scars from living in a unstable environment their entire childhood than if the parents were to divorce.

     The real decline of American values lies in the fact that we will put aside happiness of the family simply to project the image of the perfect Pattersons who live next door.

      I am a stepmother now, and our family is just as real and just as healthy as any nuclear family could ever be. And our family is not strictly exclusive. That’s right … us heathens have spent holidays together, meaning me, my husband, my stepson, my stepson’s mother, and her other son. While we laugh and open presents, and we can be sure that mamma Patterson won’t be throwing the Christmas ham at dad.

     Once again, I am not advocating for divorce, but rather for happiness for the benefit of the entire family, because it is happiness that should be at the center of American family values.
     

 


      Nova Stubbs is a freelance writer and activist, and is co-founder of Insurgent49. Nova resides in an undisclosed location in downtown Anchorage and may be contacted at nova@insurgent49.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Rank and File
by Nova Stubbs

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford






Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.