This podcast celebrates family by exploring all its unique forms
Where did the idea of a nuclear family consisting of two parents and 2.5 kids come from? There's not an easy cut-and-dry answer.
Certainly it was the model on many an American TV show. But married couple households have actually been on the decline over the past few decades. And as housing prices remain high, people prioritize making career inroads and cultural attitudes over different identities shift, so too shifts what is "normal."
Austinite Julia Winston has been exploring all of this in the podcast " Refamulating ," which is launching its second season, and joined the Standard to share more about the new season.
Texas Standard: I'd like to start with a clip from your first episode from this season where you are trying to understand the genesis of the nuclear family. This is from a woman named Kristen.
I think we just live in a society where we are inundated with nuclear family propaganda. We are fed a constant diet of this idea that we are not really functioning, reasonable, decent human beings unless we are in a pair bonded, monogamous relationship. If we don't have it, or we don't want it, we are made to feel lesser than those who do have it and do want it.
So could you tell us, Julia, a little more about Kristen and how she helped you reframe the so-called American Dream ?
Julia Winston: So Kristen Ghodsee is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and she wrote a book called "Everyday Utopia." And it's about communal living and what, 2,000 years of different experiments in ways that people have lived that don't look like the modern American nuclear family.
And I read this book and I was really excited, reassured and curious about other ways that people have lived throughout history in different places and eras and cultures. Because I learned about some statistics not long ago that made me feel more validated and also really intrigued by this gap that I'm seeing where the majority of people in the United States actually don't have nuclear families.
But that is the – I mean, Kristen Ghodsee says the propaganda – the diet that we're fed. I mean, I personally have felt like this vision of getting married, having children, buying a house, white picket fence, the dog, this is like the dream. This is like what you're sort of told to strive for, what it means to be a successful adult.
And yet that has not been my experience as an adult. And when I've looked around at a lot of people I know and then when I looked at the statistics, it doesn't match. So there was this gap.
It kind of comes back to your own personal experience in a way as to how you got interested in this topic. Could you tell us about your family's story?
Yes. There's the story of my family that I came from and the story of the family that I'm sort of building.
I grew up in a family that was not a traditional nuclear family. We were a divorced family, blended. My dad is gay. And so back in the early 90s, this was very taboo. And so I grew up in a family that didn't look like the nuclear family model that I saw everywhere. So starting at a young age, I did feel shame about that. I did feel like we weren't normal, like we were somehow inferior or inadequate.
And then as I've gotten older, obviously I went to therapy and have done a lot of processing around that. But I found myself getting into my late 30s, being single, looking around and seeing, okay, a lot of people are sort of getting married. They're moving on, but there's a lot of people who are not. I didn't know what was coming for me.
And then I was asked by two friends of mine who are a gay male couple if I would donate my eggs to help them start their family. And it really rocked my world because I didn't yet have a vision for myself about getting married and having my own children. But then here I was, given the opportunity to help others start their family.
So I really sat with it. I said yes; I donated my eggs. They now have identical twins. And I am not married. I don't have children of my own. But I have been part of helping someone else start their family.
And so it's just been really an awakening for me about: What are all the different ways that people are creating families out there right now that don't look like the nuclear family?
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Well, maybe it's obvious, but why is it important to have these conversations about what's acceptable or what's normal for family?
Well, first of all, I think that when I mentioned those statistics – that more people in the United States actually are not part of nuclear families than are – I think that means that there's probably a lot of people out there feeling inadequate in some way.
And just that breaks my heart – and I'm one of those people who felt, you know, approaching age 40 and I didn't have this vision that you're supposed to "have." So it makes me feel a lot of compassion for a lot of us out there who just were not "measuring up," you know.
And then also, we are in the midst of a loneliness and isolation epidemic, a public health crisis that our surgeon general has proclaimed. And I think a lot of that comes from feeling like we are alone in our experience. And the truth is that we're not. But we don't have enough stories and examples of ways people are living that do reflect our own.
And that's why I think it's so important to share stories and tell stories and normalize stories of ways that people are living that don't reflect this script or this roadmap that we've all sort of been given.
Well, speaking of another story, we have another clip. This is from episode two , and it kind of gets back to what Kristen at the beginning was talking about. You mentioned this idea of communal living. Could you tell us about Bethany and TJ?
Yes. I wanted to hear stories about adults who are living more community-oriented lives than the sort of nuclear family, everyone in their own single family unit home. Because we have this crisis of loneliness and isolation. So how are people living in more connected ways?
And I hear a lot of people out there in my friend group talking about "I want to live closer to my friends. I want to live in more community." And I want that, too. And so I wanted to talk to people who actually have tried living with their friends.
And TJ and Bethany are two people who have done just that. So we told their story of living with their friends who are another couple in Washington, D.C. TJ and Bethany have children, and the friends that they live with and bought a house with don't. And so this is just a little bit of their experience.
Bethany: When you are living with your best friends, you can, like, talk about at dinner how much you hate your job. And we can all, like, put our heads together about what you could do. And you're surrounding yourself with people who love you and care about you and can just encourage you.
TJ: And it doesn't just put all the burden on like, one spouse, right? It's great to share that with other people and like, in the same breath that you're talking to your partner, you're able to share with two other people.
What else do you have planned for this season?
What you can expect in the rest of the season is hearing stories from ways that people actually do live and how they do have their family structured and how they're navigating that.
No matter what your family looks like, you are going to experience change because we're human beings. And that's one of the most fundamental parts of our experience of being alive is that things change and we have to adapt. And sometimes that can be really challenging and there's a lot of uncertainty.
So there's a lot of love and empathy and connection to be found just in hearing other people's stories. Really, I think of connection and storytelling as the medicine that we need during a time when I think many of us can agree that we're just struggling to be connected.
