Family was never the problem

‘Far be it from me to advocate “family” entertainment. The word “family” as used in this phrase describes a dream unit presided over by a daughter’s idea of a father, kept spic-and-span by a son’s idea of a mother, and romped in (innocently) by a parent’s idea of children. In fact, if someone were to set up a production in which Miss Bette Davis was directed by Mr. Roman Polanski, it could not express to the full the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of an average family.’

-- Quentin Crisp

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This has always been one of my favorite quotations, but it hits differently now at my age than it did when I was a young man. Mr. Crisp was speaking out of a typical experience that homosexual men have, as so many of us come from darkly troubled families.

The problem is that it’s not true. This is not what “family” is. It’s a description of abusive and deranged families.

This came to mind this morning as I watched a young woman on social media (she advertises her Borderline Personality Disorder and her furry-dom, and her “pronouns” as part of her “identity”) tell me that protecting children from predatory “hobby” groups was being “horrid.” She could not see outside her own experience in her family; I don’t know what that experience was for sure, but given her BPD status, I can make a pretty good guess.

You know all these kids who think the "queer community" is the one who loves them, and that their parents are the evil ones? I was one of those kids. In my case, and, sadly, in most of the cases of these kids, their parents really were neglectful or abusive.

It's true that my family home was unsafe. My mother's Borderline and Narcissistic personality disorders made our childhood a version of Mommie Dearest. Her violent pedophile husband did the rest of the work before trying to murder his wife in front of her children. It was really true that I needed to escape.

But it soured me. It made me believe "family" was a cosmic joke. It convinced me that family was the root of all evil and suffering for children, especially for oddball kids, sissy boys, butch girls, and bookworms. I grew into an adult who made fun of normal, heterosexual families. I genuinely believed they were oppressive and hateful.

In the voting booth, I pulled the lever for candidates and policies that propped up the welfare state at the expense of normal, decent, self-sufficient families. I blamed the world’s "homophobia" for the severe emotional problems that plagued me, all to avoid looking the real villain in the eye. It was simply too painful then to accept that our mother did not love us children, so I created a fantasy world in which no parents really love their children.

You can see this souring in young people. At almost 50, it drags my heart down. It's finally clear to me how important, how natural and necessary, loving, stable, normal families are. Child abuse harms the child first and foremost, and for life. But it has second-order effects that harm society. Those children grow up into people like me who waste decades of their adult lives fighting for dysfunction, and frankly, for perversion of moral values. We grow up to be part of the social army that has destabilized our culture and immiserated children and parents.

I have so, so many regrets about who I used to be, and what I used to do. But it's not too late. Maybe you're a late bloomer like me (it's common if you come from abuse). That's OK. We can't change what we did in years past, but we can work to further and support good values in child-rearing and citizenship with the time we have left.

Family was never the problem. It is the solution.