In defence of all families

Family features prominently in the discourse of several European parliament candidates hailing from the conservative right and far right of the political spectrum.

From the likes of former Nationalist Party MP Edwin Vassallo, who is now running on an independent ticket, to ABBA’s Ivan Grech Mintoff and Imperium Europa’s Charles Sammut, the candidate who believes ‘Hitler did some good’, the defence of the family is a key election plank.

There is nothing wrong with putting the family at the heart of policy making but the big question here is which type of family are they talking about?

It doesn’t take much to understand that the family they are referring to is the traditional unit made up of a man, a woman and their children. They espouse a nostalgic yearning for a time when the traditional family was championed at the exclusion of other family set ups.

Within this context, the discourse on family is simply a guise for a patriarchal view of society where the primary role of women should be to care for children and home. It is a view that denies women the right to make their own choices about their sexuality, their health and their lives. But the discourse on family is also a guise for side-lining the LGBTI+ community.

Of course, families should be supported by the State. From financial assistance to families that are raising children, to support for first-time house buyers, to ensuring pensioner families can live adequately, public policy should provide a framework of support for families where the basic building blocks of community are born and nurtured.

But the support structures should be there for all families without distinction. Society has moved far along the road of recognising different family set ups at law and it would be cruel to back pedal on this. If anything, progress now requires the legal framework to be translated into cultural transformation so that tolerance of diversity and non-traditionalist families changes into acceptance.

There is still too much prejudice at grass root level that has to be countered by more education and outreach.

This is the progressive change this leader believes in. Nostalgia has a habit of sugaring the ills of the past and makes us see only the beautiful aspects of a life gone by.

We do not yearn for a family set up where the man believes he can rule the roost at home to the point that his wife is just a submissive appendage. We do not yearn for a family set up where the woman is constrained to give up paid employment because it is her duty to take care of the children. We do not yearn for a family set up where gay men end up getting married to women to avoid being ostracised from family and community. We do not yearn for a family where gay, lesbian and trans children are tacitly or forcefully bullied into conforming with traditional stereotypes. We do not yearn for a family where domestic violence is acceptable because the alternative would be family breakup that is scorned upon by parents. We do not yearn for a family where unhappy adults continue to live together at all costs.

The past could be a good teacher but it must never shackle progress. Nostalgia has a habit of getting in the way of change.

Let us not kid ourselves; these fringe political voices want a traditional society where diversity is shunned and non-conformists silenced. No thank you; we’re way past that point.