By Lucy Blake
Growing up, I had always thought of my family as being different from other people’s families. In comparison to other people’s family trees, which I imagined to be strong, tall and wide, I felt like my own small, family shrub was inferior. Thankfully, my job has changed the way that I think about families: both other people’s and my own. My PhD and postdoctoral research involved travelling all over the UK, conducting interviews and observations with parents and children in their homes, community centres and children’s hospitals. These experiences changed me; they opened my eyes, challenged my assumptions, and expanded my heart. These experiences also allowed me to appreciate that my family tree was more like other people’s families than I thought – complex, messy, and always changing.
My research on estrangement has also changed the way that I think about family relationships. Ten years ago, I could only find one or two academic papers on this topic. So in 2014, I jumped at the opportunity to work with a new charity that aimed to support individuals experiencing family estrangement, Stand Alone. The “Hidden Voices” report summarised the findings of an online survey of approximately 800 individuals who were members of the Stand Alone community. The report found that many factors contributed to family estrangement, with the most common being emotional abuse, a clash in personality and values and having mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships. We also found that the nature of estrangement was often cyclical, involving periods of estrangement and periods of reunification.
In publishing my first piece of research on this topic, I also learned that estrangement is a topic that affects many people’s lives, and people want to talk about it. A literature review that I published in 2017 was mentioned in a piece in the New York Times, attracting hundreds of comments, which then led to an invitation to write a book about estrangement. Whilst I wanted to write about what I had learned about this topic, I also wanted to acknowledge that those feelings that typically accompany estrangement, like shame, pain and isolation, are also common to those who wouldn’t categorise themselves as being estranged, such as those who are navigating the fractures that can accompany divorce. These kinds of experiences affect people’s lives and their relationships in different ways and to different extents. But what I wanted to emphasise was this: when it comes to the perfect plotlines of the family story, many people feel like they are outside, looking in.
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”
It feels particularly important to talk about the complexity of family life during November and December, when families are expected to be together during celebrations like Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas. Images on social media show snapshots of parents and children in matching pyjamas around Christmas trees. Adverts show grandparents, parents and grandchildren sitting around tables groaning with food. Whilst many will enjoy feelings of peace and connection during this holiday, the reality of family life is more varied than we might think.
Although we don’t see it on our social media feeds, arguments between family members are common. As much as we often feel alone in our pain, distress or sadness over the holidays, there are millions of people who feel the same way. Family relationships are complex and always changing, and if there are family arguments, tensions or stress, it doesn’t mean that we’re defective, or that our families are “bad”.
I have set out to share the lessons that I had learned about families in my book, “Home Truths: The Facts and Fictions of Family Life”. These are the lessons that have allowed me to develop a kinder voice in my head when thinking about families, and my hope in sharing them is that those who read it might develop a kinder voice too. This book is unlikely to appear in an article listing the “top 10 things to buy your family member this Christmas”; whether we are conscious of it or not, it can be easier to think of families as being perfect than being real. But the lessons that I share in it have certainly felt like a gift to me.