the happy family doesn’t exist

At least the happiness doesn’t exist all the time and everywhere, and that’s OK, but shouldn’t we skip the happy and just call it family, really honestly? Families as the people they constitute go through all kinds of stages in life - happy, sad, pain, joy - and all is part of this experience and anything trying to avoid any of it can (and possibly will) create stuck emotions and in worst case illness.

How many families do you know well enough to say that you know they are happy all the time?

How many adults do you know that adore their parents?

How many adults do you know that adore their siblings?

Many families or the people constituting that family, often don’t even know themselves if they are happy or unhappy until hits them, often in the form of a Karmentum such as meeting someone, a diagnose or accident.

How can we ever know and what is does happy mean anyway?

If you have children you know that during their growth they go through different stages of evolution and growth when parents would often describe it as hard to deal with. The terrible two is a famous one, and it often starts when parents see a clear shift in the kid wanting to do things their way, not always a safe and clean way. The kid will probably see themselves as doing exactly, and finally, what they have been trained for during two years with parents, grandparents and others cheering them every time they tried, and now that they motorically can put their shoes on themselves parents don’t have the time to wait for them, will grab the shoe and put it on with hard hands. Now who is having a tantrum, the kid or the parent?

Another famous time when families going through a lot of stress, and are not always as happy as the Insta pictures show, is during the kids teens. There are well studied biochemical reasons for this but still so parents and kids end up fighting and breaking each others hearts.

This is the time most mothers commit suicide. It is also the time when teens self harm and are diagnosed with all kinds of mental disorders. Teens are really hard times and it is hugely stigmatized (also connected to self harm and suicide). A child psychologist described the teens as a reaching a point when they become a space rocket and shuts out, cutting all communication with the home base and parents can only pray and hope to get a signal back soon and that it’s not too bad news.

Families have parents and parenthood has gone through a huge revolution and evolution in only 50 years compared never seen in human history before. Parents have gone from being obeyed in a highly hierarchic system to more a family democracy, based on equal rights and freedom of speech and those born in one and bringing up in the other will often be squeezed. It has also seen the most extraordinary interest from scientists parenthood has never before been studies as much as children has never been studied as much, and it is clearly linked to women liberation as the studies are more often done by now working women.

Consequentially we have been bombarded with how we should be or not be over the past 30 years ago, to the extent that those that haven’t been able to keep up with the latest science on child development will be seen as shamed as a bad parent when issues and discussions and fights from the ashes of a patriarch family structure.