'Stone Cold Definitions: What is a Family?\r'

'the Statesn golf-club is an interesting posture: we value individuality and celebrate exemption, and try for being the best in all that we do.  The road to achieving this is non an easy one, but as a nation, we study this.  We train our children gradually by forget me drugting depressed tasks for them.  These tasks be designed to help our children â€Å"practice” for their threatening involvement in the â€Å"real” world, and it is the hope of those who bring out these â€Å"practice” sessions that children will grow into adults who are swell-adjusted, rich Americans.\r\nThis training includes learning to do a manakin of thingsâ€from the mundane to the complexâ€primarily by trial and error.  We put training wheels on bicycles; we spread tuition out over a period of twenty-plus eld; we encourage part- time jobs before careers and raising a pet to learn the value of life and the distressfulness of responsibility; however, when it comes to creating a family, we act like it is an all-or- zippo aff airwave.  We pay off it in a single commission, and access it as â€Å"winnerful” exactly in the extremist of circumstances.  American society may value individualism, celebrate freedom, and strive for perfection, but it can be an extraordinarily judgmental place for those who fall outside the parameters of the handed-down interpretation of â€Å"family.”\r\nBarbara Kingsolver examines the definition of â€Å"family” in her constituent, â€Å"Stone Soup: What Does It dream up To Be a Family, Anyway?”  Her conclusion: that the delineate parameters are simply too narrow and that America’s continuing to exercise this false standard is detrimental to all hoi polloi.\r\nThere can be little doubt that the United States values individualism; however, it seems as though individualism is only unobjection sufficient if the involved party conforms to preconceive norms a nd moral standards set by the majority when exercising this right to be â€Å"individual.”  Barbara Kingsolver asks readers â€Å"in the catalog of family values, where do we rank an crossroads such as this?” (305).\r\nShe is referring to a child’s soccer game and the fact that the child in question is surrounded by primary and broaden family membersâ€an entire cheering section of his own, but that mixer construct calls his family â€Å"broken” (305).  Obviously, â€Å"Andy” is non suffering for drop of anything while playing soccerâ€there is nonhing at all â€Å"broken” about him or the population who make up his family.  Kingsolver’s signal is powerful, and she demands each of us step back and insure the reason for family and the parameters by which the success of this configuration of people is judged.\r\nThe point of people joining together to gain a unified structure (i.e. a â€Å"family”) is to u phold the one by adding others.  The even of the family structure is earlier arbitrary, and as Kingsolver points out, in other countries as well as in America’s past, the carriage of several generations under one roof was matter-of-fact (308).  Modern society has changed the basic dynamic of â€Å"family,” expecting the ramose out of children as they reach adulthood, and the defining of parenting â€Å"success” by an offspring’s financial and familial productivity out in the world.\r\nThis does not fathom at all like the makings of a salubrious â€Å"individual”; it sounds very much like a aforesaid(prenominal) environment churning out cookie-cutter people.  Kingsolver points out that â€Å"theres a current in the air with ferocious moral force [. . .] claiming there is only one right way to do it, the focussing It Has Always Been” and expresses how nonsensical this attitude is (305).\r\nIf we operated under the simulatio n of â€Å"the Way It Has Always Been,” we’d still beget slavery, children working in sweat shops, women who had no comprise over their own money, legalized domestic violence, etc.  post of this nation’s strength comes from its ability to lie with flaws in its operations, make the necessary changes, and move on.  wherefore are we so slow to apply this to family?  As Kingsolver puts it, â€Å"this narrow view [of family] is so pickled and lopsided Im astonished that it gets airplay” (305).  Simply put, a group of people who join together to perform everyday tasks, including condole with for a child/children, paying bills, maintaining a home, and warmth for one another is a family.\r\nPeople who were born(p) before the internet, cellular phones, and the microwave oven survived, and many of them spread over to do so without having adapted or co-ordinated any of those items into their daily lives.  Those of us who make use of modern technology are not harmed by the lack of understanding or participation of those who take away to remain â€Å"behind” the times.\r\nHowever, those who insist on the â€Å"traditional” definition of â€Å"family” and persist in applying derogatory name to the admixture of familial make-ups that have got become more prevalent are harming those who choose to realise familial advances.  â€Å"Divorce, remarriage, single parenthood, gay parents, and blended families simply are. Theyre facts of our time” (307).\r\nIt seems odd that in a nation that is so sold on individuality and freedom of prime(prenominal) that it has begun to package cheese in balls, slabs, individually mantled slices, and sticks that we shy away from a multi-faceted definition of family.  possibly the problem is the way in which people learn at things.  Can it be that only a single parent struggling to get by understands that the slab is cheapest, and that it has the added benefit of one’s being able to cut it and wrap it in a variety of sizes and shapes that can be determined based on need?  Isn’t this a simple, physical practice of the old adage that anyway you slice a thing, it is still the thing?  Does it really matter what the make-up of the family is as long as it fulfills it goals?  There are legitimate reasons for the changes seen in the modern family.\r\nâ€Å"Some of the reasons listed by sociologists for these family reconstructions are: the idea of marriage as a romantic partnership rather than a hard-nosed one; a shift in womens expectations, from subservience to self-respect and independence; and longevity”\r\n(Kingsolver 307).\r\nPrepare a list of the things a person might passage of arms hardest for in terms of â€Å"freedom,” and the freedom to choose a life partner has got to be near the top, and this freedom is not about one’s preference: it is about o ne’s freedomâ€period.  Whether rightful(a) or gay, single or married, the freedom to image into or leave a relationship seems fundamental.\r\nBarbara Kingsolver discusses her preconceived flightiness of marriage and divorce: a notion that was constructed by the society in which she grew upâ€the society that continues to exist in America (306).  She admits to her naïve legal opinion that in choosing a mate one could not err, and admitted that â€Å"once upon a time [she believed . . ] that everyone who [divorced] could have elect not to do it.  That its a lazy way out of marital problems.  That it selfishly puts personal gaiety ahead of family integrity,” but having lived her life and gone done a divorce, she now sees that this is simply not true.\r\nThis bursts not only the bubble of her expectations, it places the rest of her family, including her children, into a division that implies imperfection and an inability to perform up to anticip ate standards.  Kingsolver equates the â€Å"judg[ing of] a family’s value by its clean up symmetry is to purchase a book for its compass” (308).  Oddly, the â€Å"children of divorce” are profoundly unaffected in many ways, and where adults see defeat, they see the opportunity to have two different homes and two sets of things as advantageous.  for certain this isn’t always the caseâ€as it is not always the case that a child raised(a) in a â€Å"traditional family” goes unscathed.  Each side and each experience isâ€dare I sound outâ€individual.\r\nThe closing anecdote in Barbara Kingsolver’s piece places the term Stone Soup in to context, and it is in this recollection that real advice can be seen.  go the story hinges on the soldiers’ plan, what happens all around them is of tint importance.  The message in the story is that both sides mustiness be ready and willing to accept their adversary: the hungry soldiers gave in to the townspeople who in change state gave in to the hungry soldiers, and in the end, everyone is better for having shared.\r\nThe same is true of the modern family.  No one should be forced to give up the ideal of â€Å"family” anymore than anyone should give up the ideal of having a closet filled with food; however, everyone has got to be willing to acknowledge that their definition of â€Å"family” is relativeâ€much like the â€Å" rich” cupboard, and often simply adding to the pot what you can is sufficient.\r\n survey Cited\r\nKingsolver, Barbara.  â€Å"Stone Soup: What Does It Mean To Be a Family, Anyway?”  The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues Across Time.  8th ed.  Ed. sarin H. Muller.  LaGuardia: City U. of New York, 2003.  305-310.\r\n'