Unofficial adoption

So I've been talking a lot about formal adoption, but perhaps even more common is unofficial adoption. When families throw their kids out or kids leave, when spouses kick each other out or somebody just needs to get away, friends, neighbors, and family frequently offer up their home, energy, and love. I have several friends who are not on speaking terms with their families, but still have a place they call home, a place to visit on Thanksgiving.

These scenarios illustrate our continuously morphing definition of family. A class I took back in college suggested that one of the dominant components of the Generation X identity was a desire to find one's true family with one's friends. I myself went through a period of time where an ex-boyfriend's mother took me in when I wasn't on good terms with my own parents. Perhaps the definition of family and parents is flexible not only in terms of biological or official relationship, but flexible also depending on the time in a person's life.

For children, I would contend, family should be a little more clearly defined, because for a long time, family does define the child in a big way. The danger of the foster system is that, after years of being shuffled from home to home, children begin to believe they don't really exist for anyone in a consistent way, because no one does for them.