Construction and re-construction of family life.

• Author: Jack Watson

This issue of Law Now is devoted to the topic of family and family law. That topic, of course, is a difficult one, because the word family has far from a certain or commonplace meaning, although there are those who strongly assert otherwise. The ambiguity is that one cannot be confident that there is, let alone that there ought to be, a common meaning for what constitutes a family. It is plain that in ordinary experience and ordinary discourse people use the word family interchangeably for a number of human life situations. The Criminal Code of Canada, for its part, as an expression of the discourse of law, does not talk about family as such, but its offence provisions cannot be isolated from notions of family and family life in Canada.

In one sense, all law is about family. Law is part of the glue which holds our rather extended family -- our country -- together. We have seen recently how Canada, as a family, has been on the verge of breaking up because of the same sorts of internal miscommunications, sensitivities, and disrespect problems that occur inside families. Indeed, politicians and the media used terms like divorce when discussing the issues. What particularly distinguishes Canada as such a family was the strength of its family ties holding it together as against the influences that, if unrecognized and ignored, could tear it apart. The entire process of thinking and talking about both dividing or re-establishing our national family, moreover, was dominated by the notions, values, procedures, forms, and terminology of law.

But I digress. There is, for all of us, some conception of family that can be differentiated from nation or country. Indeed, that notion of family is the most common one that comes to mind when we hear the word family mentioned. But what is it that comes to mind?

We have often heard the expression nuclear family. We have also often been told about the collection of golden rules known as family values -- occasionally by people we might think don't have a clear idea about them. But do we all understand these expressions the same? Do we all respond to hearing these expressions said by others in the same way? Should we? Perhaps (a lawyer's answer, to be sure.)

What family connotes to us is not -- for all the media might mischievously and mockingly say about us -- not the husband-wife and one-and-a-fraction kids plus dog or cat supposed to be the nuclear family, i.e. in the era since the atomic bomb wiped out...