Family and Kinship

For the month of February the Pagan Blog Project is talking about love. As I am single, I thought I would talk about Familial love. Family and the household were important in both ancient Greece and Ireland. Kinship ties meant a lot to them.

In Modern America, we are not taught that much to have strong familial bonds. We have a small family of just your brief immediate family. Where as in the past it was much larger including others, such as your cousins, aunts and uncles and further relations. In fact a common insult is "you live with your mom!" which is used as an insult to young people around my age, 20s. This is not to say, I don't have plans to move out of my family's house after college. It is the connotation that bothers me, that when you are my age, you need to weaken your family ties even if just a little bit.

I would argue that the opposite should happen. When I get my own place to live after graduating from college, my ties will weaken unless I maintain them. I know that I am not as close to the rest of my family as I could be. Though I hope that does change in the future.