I know you and I have sang the beautiful song of what a family is in our kindergarten years. We have drawn with crayons and looked at the drawing with such awe and given it to our teachers who have clapped and cheered us on for such exquisite artistry.

“What makes a family? ” teachers asking.

“A father, mother, and child(dren)!” kids responding delightfully.

You and I have been that child, singing our lungs out of what we have been told and meant to believe a family is. Such ignorance, innocence and naivety in a child cannot surely be judged.

Now we’re all grown up and know that family is for sure not just about having a father, mother, and children. If it were that, that means I who has been raised by a single mother would be lacking in this. What about you? You who has been raised by a single father. You who has been adopted, or raised in an orphanage maybe by relatives or by the streets. What of those who have been raised in blended or polygamous families? Or those that have two mothers and fathers. Do we consider these as families?

In a twisted way of sorts, majority of us have not grown up in this ‘nuclear’ family construct but we remodel our path, choices, and beliefs into this paradigm. Regardless of how far off we have been raised from this ideology we strive to reach for it and somehow, we still fail to attain it.

Isn’t it funny that we’re raising our kids and telling them to sing the same song. So, what is the truth about family?

Family is love. It is all persons who seek to be loved, love one another and nurture that love. It is not just the people around you and definitely not just about those whom you share genetics with but rather, all those who engulf you with love and seek to protect it and vice versa. In essence, family is all individuals who consciously and unconsciously make the choice to nurture, be present and protect one another. Anyone can be your family: online fans, colleagues at work, schoolmates, nurse, patient, driver, church friends, house-help/nanny, neighbor, and any child that you seek to shower with unconditional love.

Who do I blame for telling me that a family has to be nuclear? My preschool teacher, the education system, societal norms? Maybe just place it on myself for lack of enlightenment.

Where do I place my naïve belief of a nuclear family? Do I shove it away ? Nope, probably not. Because family can be that, part of that, and many more people.