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Family by Choice

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Clarissa

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Another phrase that people use unthinkingly is “family by choice is the best kind of family.” The only reason it’s “the best” is that it facilitates fluidity and makes you more convenient to the fluid markets. The price you pay for erasing the boundary between the concepts of friendship and family is neurosis. Because offering even the most intimate sphere of your life for the fluid markets to consume is traumatic even if you refuse to recognize it.

As Zygmunt Bauman said, the only choice that consumerist societies don’t allow you to make is to stop choosing. 

2 responses to “Family by Choice”

  1. adrianaurelien Avatar
    adrianaurelien

    I always thought people said that family of choice is the best to make themselves feel better about having a shitty family that is no longer part of their life (usually because their family disowned them or because they were abusive.)

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  2. Pen Avatar
    Pen

    There’s a really old quotation (I think maybe from the Bible?), “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” This strikes me as a sort of “family by choice” quote, but was written long before modern consumerism. It’s actually misquoted a lot as “Blood is thicker than water,” which conveys the opposite.

    I don’t think it’s about erasing the boundary between friends and family at all. It’s more about defining a connection beyond mere friendship between (typically) non-related people. If anything, it creates a more defined boundary between friendship and family.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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