zlacker

My experience has been that "chosen family" is a thing that works when you're young, but almost always falls apart when you get older. This has happened to countless people I know. Life throws all kinds of curveballs, incentives change, conflicts arise, sometimes very intense conflicts. Empirically, chosen family is a structure that works in a particular place and time, then disintegrates when conditions change. Real family isn't like that; there is a very strong anthropological connection wired into us that doesn't go away when the situation changes.

Of course it's different for everyone, some families are so tragic they may not be worth preserving, etc. But that's an outlier-- the modal experience is that the power of family is precisely in the fact that you don't get to choose it.

>>coffee+(OP)
> there is a very strong anthropological connection wired into us that doesn't go away when the situation changes.

I have not found this to be true.

>>coffee+(OP)
Modern western societies kind of broken that. A culture of Kicking your kids as soon as they are 18 years old is not very conducive to a culture of strong familiar links like, let's say, the culture of early 20th century Sicily.

>>elzbar+y2
I moved out at 18 (like most of my peers) and my extended family lives far away to begin with. I think I have an alright family situation compared to some friends, but it's not like I see any of them more than once or twice a year?

If you can get friends who live nearby and come over once a month that's probably closer than the modern us family structure tbh

>>coffee+(OP)
And I have seen multiple counterfactuals. Even people who are descended from the one who was part of the "chosen family" continue to visit and treat them as family.

An adopted child is also a form of chosen family. As is a spouse.

>>stetra+f9
I think the point that's being made is-- it's a lot easier to stick together over the long term when you spend the first 20 years of your life together in a family unit. It's possible to build long term, stable bonds under other circumstances-- just less likely. It's also possible to screw the former up.

>>mlyle+zc
Sure. And I know people who have gained "chosen family" in that first 20 years of life.