No Need For Jealousy

I never particularly cared about the origins
of the phrase 'nuclear family', I was educated
to ask less about what words meant, just as long
as they meant what adults wanted them to mean
when they said them, and they were not angry.
But my teachers could only bind so much ignorance
into me without being seen to do so. Later I learnt
that 'the nuclear family' referred to a household
of two generations, respectfully related by blood,
no bastardy*. The nucleus being the working male
owning the property. Older models were sustainable,
the extended family, living alone with family nearby.
Life in a caravan or on a barge+. Homelessness
too-if life was charitable enough and there are a series
of safe places to stay and do casual work (all this
was long before The Big Issue). I wish the proponents
of exclusively nuclear families understood clearer
that they don't need to hijack the media and exclude
all other models of family to defend their values.
The more the media is hijacked by nuclear family values
supported by (male) home ownership the weaker
every other family type social structure becomes.



*The fear of bastardy (children conceived out wedlock)
was a pet fear of my mother, and for all I know still may be.
It was undoubtedly a cause for fear for thousands, if
not millions, of single young women before the advent
of 'the pill'. That fear was the cause of many of the
genealogy (should that be gene-eology?) section to ripped
from the front of A3 size ornate covered Family Bibles.

+My great great grandmother on my mother's side
was a bargee, she travelled the canals transporting goods,
and according to my mother she was 'a wise woman',
meaning that she had a knowledge of healing herbs
and was probably a self trained midwife. Grandma Clifton
as Mother knew her died in 1956, five years before
I was born. She also wrote herself a recipe book
in mirror writing which was not treasured after she died.