“The Anti-Nuclear Movement, Or How to Create a Modern Family”
Julie Barbieri
Sunday September 2, 2007

I was a very lucky little girl. Aside from an angelic mother and a father who could teach me everything from fast pitch softball and the perfect jump shot to trigonometry and calculus, I had the grandma to beat all grandmas. I kid you not. I don’t think I can find the words to convey to you just how much she spoiled me. Really. For years I spent at least one weekend night with her, and I always loved the instant when my mom left the house. Gram would turn to me and say, “Do you want to go to the store?” Oh yea. A trip down the candy aisle had me in heaven all night perched in front of her television watching PG-13 movies on HBO while I munched on homemade donuts, buttered popcorn, candy caramels and chocolate stars. As I grew older I learned to be careful what to ask for or I might get it, and I couldn’t turn down a gift from Gram. If I was sick she always showed up with a bag of goodies that included an Archie comic book and green jello. Born on her 50th birthday, Gram and I had an incredible bond. I never owned a key to her house, across the alley from my own, but I never needed one because the door was never locked. I had a second home when I needed one, a second mother, a safe and loving and open place into which I was always welcome. My remarkable nuclear family—mom, dad, brother, dog and me—in our safe, rural community, had an extension without which we wouldn’t have been the same.

Now let me tell you a bit about another family…
Dave and I went to Kauai for our honeymoon. We rented a tiny efficiency, snorkels, and a soft-top Jeep, and made it our mission to see every corner of that tiny island. We swam with sea turtles at one end of the road, lay on the beach, kayaked the river, and hiked the mountain. I was three months pregnant at that time (that’s a story for another day) and so we were facing a new stage in our lives not only as newly married, but as soon-to-be parents. On one of our excursions, we went to Polihai beach at the end of the road going clockwise around the island, and there met the most extraordinary family. Two men, both ex-husbands of the same woman with whom both were on non-speaking terms, were camping on the beach with their combined five children ranging in age from 3 to 10. They welcomed us with beer, a toasty fire, some poached cow meat (don’t ask, I didn’t try it), and plenty of recommendations for my pregnancy and birth that included particular massages to sooth my sore back and the tools necessary should we find ourselves stranded in the woods when it came time to cut the cord!

I did say “extraordinary,” remember?
They had no money (hence, the poached cow and illegal fishing poles), but they really were one of the happiest families I’ve ever met. The kids were tanned and healthy, and were so excited to have visitors to talk to, demonstrate their swimming prowess and play with. They all slept together in two tents after one of the dads told bedtime stories. They called us “Auntie” and “Uncle.” Don’t get me wrong, I do not want to romanticize what was a fairly dire situation, but happening at that particular time and place, our adventures on Polihali led me to truly contemplate Family.

As an atheist with an intellectual bend toward postmodernism, I have to admit that I’m not sure what the word “family” means. I know what organizations like Focus on the Family believe it means, I know what legislation and our welfare system believe it means, and I know what it looked like growing up. But as I have built and nurtured my own family over the past 8 years, I have come to seriously question what “family” should mean now… and what I hope it will mean to my children as they grow.

Now the title of this service is a but out-dated since the stereotypical “nuclear family” that I grew in—mom, dad and kids—no longer describes the majority of households in the United States. But I chose to use the term “nuclear family” deliberately in order to address a larger issue in our society that is reflected in Hillary Clinton’s words: the complexity and contentiousness of modern life and how it effects the family. Though the nuclear family may have fragmented, I do not think that the anxiety around the problems of the nuclear family has dissipated. The concept, the idea, the ideal of the nuclear family still permeates our society no matter what statistics tell us about the make up of the modern family.

I believe that to a large extent women of my generation inherited a conflict between two radically different cultural constructs: the “Leave It To Beaver” 1950s traditional household, and the radical feminist movement of the 1970s. Let’s face it, the “have it all, I can compete like a man in my shoulder padded business suit” of the 80s was not the answer. But the “educated woman returning home to raise the kids” method we’re seeing today seems like another sell out to cultural pressures. And of course all of these constructs ignore the large population of families that have no choices at all regarding working outside the home.

If we can learn anything from the ugly response to gay marriage, it is that the American psyche still holds a religiously conservative view of what constitutes a true “family.” Legally speaking, the nuclear family is the basis of many of our government organizations, including, significantly, the welfare system, which was established based on the notion of a two-parent household with a wage-earning father, and continues to disadvantage single mothers with young children. For all the talk of family values and the protection of the traditional family that emanates from Washington and certain fundamentalist Christian organizations, little is actually done to make the plight of families any easier. Many still struggle, on their own, to find any part of that theoretical village Clinton wrote so eloquently about.

So now let me tell you a little about Apple. Apple was our first au pair, a young Thai woman who spend a full year living with us and helping with the kids. For ten years before she came to Cincinnati she lived in Bankok, apart from her family in order to go to a good high school and college. Her parents are wholesalers in her coastal hometown, and her one brother works for a software company. Apple is very mellow, frighteningly skinny, is excessively clean; she is a great cook, though she doesn’t love cooking, she likes to read children’s literature and goes out to clubs most weekends to dance to R&B.

Apple left one month ago. She was so sad to leave and according to her latest email she wishes she could have stayed here longer. The house seems different without her. I miss the smell of her food creations and all of her friends who were constantly in and out of the house. In fact one friend stayed with us every weekend for almost 5 months!

For my children, living with Apple helped them learn to embrace and love a new family member from a different culture and generation than their parents. Through her they met all kinds of new people, heard many different languages and began to appreciate the worlds’ enormous diversity. At one dinner that I consider the highlight of the year, there were seven different languages spoken at our dinner table. Priceless. Celia gave Apple the most trouble; they had a bit of a power struggle that lasted several months. But in the end they came to have a very deep bond, and it felt wonderful to see Celia develop the ability to fully trust a person other than her immediate family. But in some ways, oddly enough, I think Apple’s stay with us benefited me the most.

Pragmatically speaking, the au pair program offers Dave and I full time, in home day care in exchange for room and board and a bit of pocket money. I know of many families who view the situation as just this—an economic exchange, a business transaction. But for me this arrangement is much more. Apple and now Aura are helping me achieve something I could not do without them. I have made choices in my life such that my mom does not live across the alley, so I have to come up with a different family structure. By having flexible, affordable child care for my kids, I have the ability to pursue my graduate degree full time while still participating in the lives of my kids and having something of a life with my husband as well. I look at it like this-- we are three adults living and working together with one common goal: love Julian and Celia as learn and grow and thrive.

Three days before Apple left, Aura arrived from Finland bringing with her a sense of humor, a love of life, and an energy that is simply infectious. I will never forget the night when all six of us sat around the dinner table and we talked about family and love and the roles we play in each other’s lives. The Barbieri household has been truly blessed.

All of this is to say that I believe we need to collectively create a new meaning of family. I am proud to be part of a religious community that supports and creates new versions of families as part of its fundamental belief. But we also need to talk about how we can support the modern family, in all its guises, throughout our society—and I believe that will mean significant changes in our economy, our government, and the way we view ourselves.

I am working on creating a workable family for myself and mine every day. When we moved here 2 years ago, we moved away from a large family we had created in Portland, Oregon. We left behind many aunties and uncles, neighbors and friends, and access to my parents two hours away. Slowly, starting with Northern Hills Fellowship, I began to rebuild. Though we have no aunties and uncles as of yet, we do have a vibrant little village, of which this sanctuary and those classrooms out there are an important part. Life might be easier were I content to stay home and not pursue my dreams. I could have the ideal “nuclear family” that James Dobson wishes for all good Americans (minus the atheism of course). But I do not like the burden of being a mother in our culture today, I do not want to do it all myself. In a time when many of us live far from our parents and family, we must look to our neighbors, our friends, our religious community, and elsewhere to create the village necessary for any family, no matter its composition. Apple and Aura have been true family members who help fill in gaps from my absence. This is my own village.

Thank you for being part of it.