on The Nuclear Family

My family was made up of a mother, a father, myself and my younger sister.  The "perfect" Nuclear family.  We lived in a rural little town where there was only one Black family and one or two Hispanic families.  People would regularly wear cowboy hats and boots without getting any strange looks, and nearly every male past the age of fifteen chewed Skoal or Copenhagen (not me luckily).

When I was born, my father worked at a plywood manufacturer as a glue-spreader.  It was back-breaking work, and the glue put off horrible, and I'm sure toxic, fumes.  After 15 years in the outrageously noisy plant my father had lost a good portion of his hearing and suffered from terrible tinnitus (ringing in his ears) for the rest of his life.  He had high blood pressure, partially from the stress of always having to watch out for the giant press coming down with the next layer of veneer, partially from the constant beratement from his supervisor who did his job like a Marine Sergeant constantly utilizing put-downs like "maggot", "faggot", and "girl", and partially because of his diet which consisted of over-salted meats and potatoes, loads of butter and boiled-down canned vegetables.

When my sister came along, my father's salary simply couldn't pay the bills.  This marked my family's first break with the Nuclear tradition.  My mother had to get a job with the local bank as a teller; a position she kept for 15 years.  My father's mill closed down and he transitioned to a job with the Eugene Water and Electric Board doing residential, then commercial energy audits.

Our next door neighbors, the Finnemans were also a typical Nuclear family.  The father, Dale, worked for the same mill as my father and had to find other work when the mill closed.  Kevin was one year older than me, and Susan was two years younger.  Their mother, Sharon had to find work at the local community newspaper.  During my entire time growing up, I never met anyone from the "perfect" Nuclear family, where only the father worked.  I met lots of people who tried, but could never reach this vision of supposed perfection.  The Finnemans really, really tried though.  They painted Kevin's room blue and he played baseball.  They painted Susan's room pink, gave her a canopy bed and piano lessons.  The kids went to Lutheran Sunday school, and Dale liked good old-fashioned country music and the Lawrence Welk Show.

My sister took tap dancing, guitar lessons, French, and played with Barbies.  I adored Star Wars, built with Legos, Read the Lord of the Rings and...... played with Barbies.  Perhaps this was an indicator that our Nuclear family was not exactly fitting the bill.

In her book "The Way We Never Were" , Stephanie Coontz takes a look at the non-existent Nuclear family.  Although sitcoms of the fifties, sixties and seventies showed these nice, white-bread and aprons families, they rarely reflected upon the real American family realities.  People rarely fit into simple square holes despite what some people's vision of the past.  Coontz feels these people are being disingenuous to their own memories.

My father's family was mostly made up of very large, powerful women and meek, genteel men.  The men earned the wages because women simply couldn't get employment, but the women took the checks and handled all of the family's business.  They "ruled the roost" as the saying goes.  My mother's family was also filled with powerful women who controlled the checkbooks.  Neither of these lineages provokes the model Nuclear family image.

Flash forward a few years and I finally came out of the closet and found my true love (together nearly 20 years now).  My mother developed breast cancer and passed away and my father developed diabetes and also passed.  I don't remember seeing these types of situations in any of those family comedies, but then it is difficult to make cancer and diabetes humorous.

The Finnemans didn't really fare much better.  I'm still in contact with Susan, whom after marrying and leaving our little rural hometown, suffered through tornadoes, illnesses with her children, and constant moves.  She and her brother Kevin became estranged, her father suddenly died of a heart attack (shortly after attending my father's funeral in fact), and her mother had a horrific car accident and could barely move for many, many months.

So much for our perfect Nuclear families.