The Bittersweet Gift of Auntiehood

I recently stumbled upon this article by Carolina Gonzáles in the On Being blog. It talks about the decision to have children, or not, and also about the roles we play in our extended families given those decisions. She looks at assumptions we have about what the nuclear family consists of in the United States, and in her native country of the Dominican Republic where family lines extend well beyond the immediate family. We are moving out of a period in history when having children is expected if you have a partner and the biological ability, and into one in which we can choose to be parents, to adopt, foster, or otherwise play supportive roles (or not) in the lives of the next generation. I appreciate this thoughtful, expressive and honest piece about the bittersweet nature of the decisions we face today, and the ways we can and can't be there for each other as we create 21st century families. 

Here's an excerpt from Carolina's essay:
In mainstream U.S. culture, aunts and uncles have no special status. The focus is on the sanctity of the nuclear family, with some indulgence granted to grandparents and their doting.

I’m always shocked when Anglo friends tell me they speak to their siblings only occasionally and know little about the details of their lives. Dominican families, even ones as assimilated as ours, are tight, sometimes asphyxiatingly so. Every member of our extended families — from second cousins to comadres to “tíos” whose blood connections we need diagrams to trace — has a place in our lives. Our aunts and uncles have a prestige rating just below grandparents. They are more than surrogate parents. They are courts of appeal, guides to mysteries too embarrassing or trivial for parents to endure, refuge from parental martial law. 

​Read the full article HERE.