It's time to stop 'starting a family'
Changing definitions require changing words
In approximately six weeks, I’ll stand at a lectern and welcome 100 bleary-eyed undergrads to a course called “Marriage and Family.” To prepare for this nerve-wracking moment, I’ve been mining textbooks and syllabi from similar courses for inspiration.
As it turns out, there are many ways to teach students about the family. But nearly all sources agree on the first order of business: defining terms. What exactly is this thing we call “the family?”1
From what I’ve gathered, the savvy professor poses the question rather than offer her own definition. As students chime in with examples, the professor guides them, Socrates-style, toward the set of definitional criteria their answers imply.
If my students are like most Americans, they’ll quickly identify the combination of a husband, wife, and children as a family (in one 2010 survey, 100% of respondents classified this grouping as such). Most will also identify a single mother or father and his or her children as family (roughly 95% did so in that same survey).
From there, though, my students and I will test the boundaries together. Do two married people without children count as a family? What about two married men with a child? A cohabiting man and woman with no dependents? A couple living with an elderly parent? A man and his beloved poodle?
Before we get too carried away with examples, I’ll introduce students to the distinction between families “in law” and families “in practice.”2 Legally and historically speaking, definitions of family in the US have centered on a) marriage and b) biological relationship. Marriage is legally binding, for example, in a way that mere cohabitation is not, no matter how close the relationship.3 Similarly, genetic parentage is a key marker of (legal) family; to assume parental rights over a child without that biological tie (e.g., via adoption) requires considerable paperwork and, often, expense.
The legal family has changed considerably in recent years, most notably with the legalization of same-sex marriage and changing laws regarding gay and lesbian co-parents. But families “in practice”—i.e., families in a colloquial, lived-experience sense—have arguably changed a whole lot more.
At this point in the lecture, I’ll project an image from H&M’s most recent Pride-themed advertising campaign. Four adults of various races and gender presentations are depicted lying in a circle on some Astroturf with the label “My Chosen Family.”
Helpfully, the clothier defines their relationship: “a chosen family is made up of people who have intentionally chosen to support and love one another.” Long used in the queer community by individuals whose legal families were beacons of neither support nor love, the term ‘chosen family’ has gone increasingly mainstream.
Because the young are often at the vanguard, I suspect the 19-year-olds in my classroom will hold more expansive definitions of family than American law currently recognizes. Indeed, Pew data from 2020 indicates that 85% of U.S. adults view “growing variety in family living arrangements” as a neutral or positive trend, up from 66% in 2010. While the Right continues to use “family values” as a euphemism for the old husband + wife + biological child formula, that understanding is increasingly out of step with mainstream views (sound familiar?).
Despite such rapid change in popular understanding of what can or should count as family, colloquial language has failed to keep pace. Please hold while I step onto my soapbox: it’s time to retire the phrase “starting a family.”
In common parlance, to “start a family” is to have a child. People who are “trying to start a family” are working on getting pregnant, adopting, finding a surrogate, or otherwise acquiring a tiny human dependent.
To start is to go from nothing to something. In this context, starting means transitioning from no family to family. If this is what you mean to say, great! As you were.
But I suspect many people using this phrase or one of its derivatives decidedly do not believe that a child is what makes a family. Instead, it’s a helpful dodge for some of the less family-friendly (there’s another candidate for revision!) aspects of this topic. Admittedly, “trying to conceive” or “having sex without protection” or “obsessively poring over sperm donor profiles” is more explicit than many of us prefer to get in light conversation.
May I humbly suggest, then, that we simply speak of “having children” or “thinking about having children,” when that’s what we mean? If we must, perhaps we sub one euphemism for another and talk about “growing” or “expanding” families?
I’m hesitant to add one more forbidden phrase to the mix. I, too, have been exhausted from time to time by the onslaught of words well-meaning people should no longer use. However justified their cause, those who take a more authoritative approach to language change risk alienating the very people whose minds and hearts they (presumably) hope to change. They also risk inspiring mere compliance rather than an actual evolution of perspective.
It’s a bit of a catch-22: as a writer, I believe strongly in the symbolic power of language. I’ve been hurt by others’ casual use of euphemisms and metaphors that belittled my own or family members’ painful experiences. Language change is a key component of social change and shouldn’t be written off as superfluous.
Yet I also recognize that many suspect expressions are wired into our neural pathways. There is an element of habit that makes language change an uphill battle even for those who are on-board with the broader cause. If we want language change to represent something more than paranoid compliance, we need to help supporters—and would-be supporters—change the mental models underlying their choice of phrase.4
In the case of “starting a family,” the good news is that mental models of family are changing, have been changing, will continue to change regardless of the Supreme Court’s future actions. That doesn’t mean the next step—bringing our speech in line with our revised understanding of what family can mean—will be automatic. Old (linguistic) habits die hard. But as we do our best to change, and to push others to change, let’s retain a spirit of compassion.
This opening gambit has the added advantage of demonstrating what sociology (and related disciplines) does best: defamiliarize the familiar, making the taken-for-granted just strange enough to be recognized as contingent rather than natural. And, thus, worth spending a whole semester on!
Domestic partnerships, civil unions, and the like have changed the calculus somewhat, but these relationships usually carry some asterisks, legally speaking, that marriage does not.
Certain linguistic habits (e.g., misgendering, the use of racial slurs) are more actively harmful than others, and thus require more urgent reform. That’s not the category I’m referring to here.
The arguments for expanding the definition of "family" are all persuasive. I'm writing this week (publishing Tuesday) on genealogy, which is less popular. However, I think maintaining knowledge of bloodlines is important because American history so often leans toward erasure. Earlier generations of my family preferred the "chosen family" of America to passing their native language, culture, and family origins on to their children. There was some pressure to assimilate, but this was a choice they made. Bloodline matters greatly to many immigrant communities -- particularly the Hmong community. One cannot easily fill the genealogical void left by slavery with a chosen family. And blood relation is fundamental to the resilience of indigenous nations in North America. I think generally this is a "both and" conversation, but I stress bloodlines because there can also be a tendency in America to perpetually reinvent oneself, easily replacing history with mythology. For my own part, chosen family must coexist with the people who made me, regardless of how I feel about them.