REINTERPRETING MASTERPIECES: reflections on the non-traditional family

"The family is one of nature's masterpieces."

George Santayan, Life of Reason

‘Las Meninas,’ the 1656 painting by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez, is considered to be one of, if not the, most technically perfect pieces of painting ever produced. At first glance the detail, balance and perspective seem crystal clear. The work is very straight-forwards. However, as one enters the sphere created by this work one imperceptibly slides into illusion and enigma emerging from that very clarity. Ultimately, one is left with the paradox that both the clarity and the enigma are somehow correct. Perhaps that is nature of the dream of life and why Pablo Picasso so radically reinterpreted this masterpiece in 1957.

On the waves of the Revolution of 1968 the nature and role of the family has, like much in Western Civilization, also become radically repainted by some. In addition to cultural forces, the economic activity required to maintain a bourgeois living standard has mobilized many women to work outside the home to a degree that it is now the norm. Both have placed a great deal of stress on the traditional nuclear family. Thus, Western societies are beginning to look again at this masterpiece of nature and ask what it means.

Perhaps the best method for examining this question is to begin with defining the term ‘family’ within a Western context. The family has been understood as the basic unit of a male and female in a monogamous sexual relationship who are the care givers to their offspring. The primary rights and responsibility for these children belong to the parents. This has deep roots, in Rome it was reflected in the infamous patria potestas granting the father the power of life and death over his children.

Much like the masterpiece ‘Las Meninas’ a closer look at this definition reveals that the relationships are not as clear as they appear to be at first glance. The reason for this is that there are two components to this definition: the static roles and the dynamic relationship between them. Further, there has always been a degree of fluidity with both sides of the definition.

Adoption is the classic example. This demonstrates that what marks a family as such is not exclusively genetic since the role of ‘offspring’ is fulfilled by a child not produced by the parents. Yet, he completely fulfills that role.

The key question is: what is the scope of this class ‘family?’ Is a lesbian couple who cohabits for six months and has a cat a family? Conversely, are an older, unmarried couple who take-in a troubled teen without legal formality who then matures and regards them as parents not a family?

I would argue there is a double-line of demarcation that sets the boarder: permanence and self-sacrifice. Both of these are rooted in a deeper emotional attachment than friendship.

The illusion and enigma of the family then becomes that there is a very real possibility that the biological family in which a man was born may not fall within these parameters at all. Yet, he may find substitutes which meet all the criteria in people who are outside of the world in which he was raised.

A center-Right critic might well assert that the fact I had to predicate my previous statement about our theoretical lost boy on the biological family demonstrates the primacy of that form. Whatever close ties he may forge are merely a copy or a substitute for the true family.

But, should the non-traditional family conform to the class of a family as outlines, then it is not a ‘copy’ but is the family in se. If one is operating on the archetype of the Cleavers as a true family then the Bradys are excluded since their relationship is not based on the same narrowly defined genetics as the Cleavers. The family is a spectrum not viewed through blood.

A Left reader with a Postmodernist orientation may take this last sentence as an endorsement of the following view: ‘the family is an artificial social construct with manifold forms. Because it is an arc, no primary metaphysical definition can be enshrined to define it so all familial expressions are equal.’ That reader would be incorrect. To begin with, ‘familial expressions’ can be reduced to the random handshake with a stranger. To argue there are no boarders is to reduce all human creation to dust.

The traditional nuclear family has proven to be a valuable and fundamental institution of Western Civilization. This is likely to continue. Given the social disruption caused by divorce and single-parenthood any attempt to further dismantle it will only yield dismal results. But, like all masterpieces, the family too is subject to reinterpretation. Some may produce banal silk-screen knock offs that (thankfully) will be quickly forgotten, others, a more serious attempt at a full reprinting. In the final analysis, stable and strong non-traditional families where individuals may be cultivated into better moral beings only preserves the institution.

Santiago del Dardano Turann's poetry appeared in issues 8 and 10 of The Externalist.