The Broken v. Intact Family

The nuclear family still needs outside support

The original Duncans circa summer 2010 at my maternal grandparents’ 50th anniversary party at their home

When I was in law school, we spent a lot of time talking in my family law class about how the government will not interfere with an intact family. The heteronormative nuclear family is continually presented as an ideal, especially during an election year. We saw during the pandemic how much the nuclear family model failed us all when the village was truly taken away from parents. As I think about all the people who care for my children on a daily basis, I am thankful for the community support- the bus driver who gives them a fist bump or high five every day as they exit the bus, their soccer coaches, Little Gym staff, piano teacher, the teachers and administrative staff at their school, parent volunteers, and of course their two sets of local grandparents. I wrote about Found Family on The O.C. last December, and finding your people in real life is incredibly important. As I have been reading

Amanda Montei

’s series on the language of dating shows this week, she wrote about the idea of the “broken family” and how much the fear-mongering of divorce pushes people to stay in relationships or for parents to feel like their kids will never recover from separation and divorce. Indeed this season of The Bachelorette has spent a great deal of air time discussing Jenn’s single mother and her lack of models for a healthy, loving relationship.

"I only want to do this once"

My parents have been married for 37 years after first meeting at age 12 and 13 at the county spelling bee circa 1977. My dad tells me he knew her when he was 11, but she didn’t notice him the first year because she won the first year. The second year of their rivalry his grandma told him not to let the Kohler girl beat him. They are from small towns in Chesterfield County, SC, and there was one high school between their two towns. She’s from the “big city” of Pageland that currently has a 9,000 population, about the population of the fictional Stars Hollow. Jefferson is about 1000. They began to date at age 15 and 16 and have been together for 44 years in October. Their first official date was the school Halloween disco, though my parents love to talk about the time they played the Newlywed Game at church and my dad said their first date was eating spaghetti at her parents’ house after the Miss Central Pageant. I had often heard this story growing up because my dad and grandpa initially bonded over how my mom didn’t place higher. As we prepare to go on our annual beach trip with my granddad and parents, I have thought many times about their relationship with each other.

My grandpa turned 89 a couple weeks ago, and my dad has now been a major part of their family for almost 45 years. My maternal grandparents were married for nearly 61 years at the time of my grandma’s death in 2021. With both my parents and grandparents, I saw moments of disconnection over the course of my life, but I could always see they respected each other, and they tried to communicate effectively. My grandparents especially had this Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn chemistry where they were argumentative but you could always see the love there. I saw my mom be passive aggressive when resentment would build over time, so I have tried to advocate for what I needed in my own relationships more directly. In high school, my dad would talk about my explosive arguments with the boy I liked, and I remember my mom telling me when she met Nemat that she thought he seemed to truly calm that part of me and recover quickly from any of my outbursts. Learning about emotional regulation over the last few years has helped us all to discover more tools to deal with triggers, but it is definitely a work in progress for every member of my family.

My dad’s mom remarried the only man I have ever viewed as my grandfather when my dad was 12 and they will have been married 47 years in February. She was married to her first husband for about 5 years and did not have an easy time getting pregnant- he was in pharmacy school in a different city and he left her to go live with the mother of his twin daughters when my dad was 9 months old. I’m fuzzy on the timeline but I know my aunts are about the same age as my dad. As a twin myself, I enjoyed getting to meet them when I was in middle school and my one aunt was named Elizabeth Duncan just like me before my marriage. Occasionally my grandma will refer to her divorce and broken home; it was her 86th birthday this week, and she was talking about attributing my dad’s sensory meltdowns solely to the divorce. I told her my dad likely had undiagnosed ADHD and while the upheaval of routine may have exacerbated some of his symptoms, it is good she got divorced. I’ve met her ex-husband a few times, but I will never have a relationship with him because he never tried to establish a relationship with his granddaughters, and he’s never reached out to meet his great-grandkids since my dad sent him a card announcing my oldest son’s birth 7 years ago.

All this to say, the broken family idea does not come from the divorce itself but the aftermath of the divorce if a parent decides to stop parenting and stop being connected to any member of the family. In the 1960s I assume it was more commonplace to live full-time with a birth mother with no scheduled visitation. My dad’s memories of his biological dad from childhood are riding to his drugstore an hour away and having a soda at the counter. My mom told me my dad has said he had a lot of male family members who filled the gaps of his father’s absence in his early childhood. He lived with his grandparents until he was 12, and he still saw them on a daily basis throughout high school. His grandpa died when he was 16; he chose to be called Pop in honor of his relationship with his grandpa. His uncle spent a lot of time with him as well. My dad is glad he didn’t have to spend every weekend with his dad in a city far away from his community; he’s a small town boy and he loved growing up in Jefferson.

My 7 year old said recently he thought his biological grandfather was dead and was shocked to hear he was still alive. I told him we hadn’t seen him in over 10 years; he attended my sister’s wedding in August 2013 and did not attend mine in October 2014. Abandonment is a different issue than divorce. Divorce can be great for everyone involved, especially if there are other friends or family to fill the gaps.

My family history has certainly created a pressure to make my relationship “work.” My husband’s parents have also been married for 40+ years, it will be 43 years in January. When my youngest brother-in-law got married in 2017, the preacher named the amount of years every couple had been married in our family, and it was very impressive. I have talked to my family many times about how lucky I have been to marry into the Heydary family and how I feel I struck gold with them almost 10 years ago. I love my husband and continuously working on our connection and parenting as a team are important to me. I wrote a few weeks ago about our Connection Challenge, and we have now reached the last week. It felt good to take 10 minutes minimum every day to focus on our relationship as a couple, and knowing we would have that time every day helped me keep more minor irritations in perspective most of the month. We have worked to sustain our connection over the last thirteen years of our relationship and almost 10 years of marriage, but our effort is not the secret to our family’s success.

We are successful because we have people filling the gaps when we are spread too thin, and when we need support for our kids to do their chosen activities. Voting blue is important to me because the majority of our country lacks adequate support beyond the nuclear family, and care work is not truly valued. My sister works as an infant teacher, and I know she is appreciated at her center, but preschool teachers are not nearly as appreciated as they should be for the care they provide because care work (whether done by mothers or teachers) is tremendously undervalued. Homes are not broken because parents decide they would be happier apart. Homes are broken because families don’t have support beyond the valorized idea of the nuclear family.

Thank you to

Amanda Montei

for inspiring me to think about my family of origin and overall perspective on love as a narrative act this week. I love The Bachelor franchise, and I love the cultural discussion of the show as it has been a mainstay of reality television for two decades. Subscribe to

Mad Woman

for great content every week.