Evolving the Traditional Family "Sweater" to Include All Definitions of Family
Evolving the Traditional Family "Sweater" to Include All Definitions of Family
Is your childhood "sweater" still serving you or is it suffocating you? Solo parenthood removed my ill fitting sweater.
Dear Stork’d Family
Last week I found myself with a large amount of windshield time driving to various meetings and appointments. The perfect time to pick up a new podcast.
Recently learning that I am one of the last people I know to discover the incredible podcast, Wiser than Me with Julia Louis Dryfus (yup, the comedic genius from Seinfeld among others). I jumped right in with her interview with Sally Field.
About half way into the episode, Sally Field shared something so powerful, I can't stop thinking about it.
She discussed trauma, how she learned to cope with trauma, and evolving past her own coping mechanisms. She explains that her coping mechanisms for childhood trauma were like a sweater -
The brain is incredibly creative...and the brain figures ways to help the child survive… but you know, the task of a grown up person is to realize what garment you have knit for yourself to survive as a child in the winter of your childhood, but when you’re in the summer, so to speak of your adulthood, you’re boiling hot, and you can’t figure out why am I so fucking hot all the time is because you can’t take off this garment that you needed for yourself as a child and you no longer need. And you can’t realize, you don’t realize that this way of behaving, this functional way that your brain taught you to behave to survive, it gets in your way, now, it keeps you from really being able to move forward. And you have to be able to… see how a pattern of behavior from childhood is no longer serving you, is in your way, and it’s making you suffer.
- Sally Field (emphasis my own)
Wow-- that image is so visceral I can feel the wool itching my skin and the unbearable heat of wearing a thick, uncomfortable sweater smothering me in a summer heat wave.
“ you’re boiling hot and you cant figure out why am I so fucking hot all the time?”
Her words have me thinking about the many invisible sweaters we have knit for ourselves in the winter of our childhood. The many ways in which the very thing designed to protect us or support us later constrains us.
***
Traditional Family Structures are the Too Tight Sweater
One such garment is in limiting our allowable and socially accepted family structures to those of the traditional nuclear family.
For many of us, living the life of the picture-perfect heterosexual couple with two kids conceived “naturally” in suburbia is suffocating.
For others of us, it’s an unlikely dream. We aim for such a life but find ourselves injecting chunky needles full of hormones into tender bellies or signing divorce papers with broken hearts.
And yet, the traditional image of a family is exactly the handmade sweater that certain politicians are forcing over our squirming heads.
Project 2025 and the Christian Nationalism movement– particularly as it relates to the obsessive need to control women’s bodies and what a family must look like– is exactly this sweater that Sally Field talks about. What the authors and supporters of Project 2025 are missing, however, is that while the traditional “American Family” may have once served the American public socially and economically - this nation has outgrown it.
This nation is made up of solo parents (23% of households are headed by a single adult), divorced couples (nearly 50% of all US marriages result in divorce), same sex (over 1.2% of US marriages are between same sex couples), experiencing infertility (17.5% of the adult population faces infertility), and childfree (38% of American adults do not have children). All these stats can be found in my last post here.
***
Solo Parenthood Removed My Ill Fitting Sweater
Personally, I can attest to the sensation of my skin crawling under the weight of this “what-a-family-should-look-like” sweater in the form of my poorly matched relationships. I can also taste the big gulping breaths of relief when it is removed.
When I committed to solo parenthood the first sensation I felt was a head to toe sigh of relief. The moment I finally said “yes” to the voice in my head suggesting I just go for it on my own, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and certainty. It was like a wave of groundedness and knowing washed over me - this was my path and it was the absolute right one for me.
At that moment, I removed my sweater and put the “shoulds” of family life on the shelf. I haven’t looked back. That certainty and self confidence in this choice has only grown over time.
***
Not Every Sweater Needs to Come Off
The thing I love most about Sally Field’s analogy is that our garments are supposed to change over time as seasons of life change and as we grow into ourselves. The sweater existed because it fit at one point. It was the thing we needed at the time - be that a family structure that suited our nation’s economic structure or a vision for our life that fit our emotional needs.
Similarly, my current family structure and my desired outcome to expand family may also have to evolve.
As many of my followers are aware, I have been trying for a second baby for nearly two years. Secondary infertility has cut deep and required immense sacrifices - financial of course, but time away from work and my son to pursue various fertility treatments, changes to my diet and lifestyle, changes to my body (IVF weight gain is no joke), and the way I navigate certain relationships.
Just last week a friend asked, “you spend all your spare time encouraging people to reexamine their definition of family, when is it time for you to reexamine yours?”- effectively she is asking me if the quest for a second baby isn’t a new sweater I have knit for myself just a little too tightly.
It may come to pass that this sweater, like the one in which I expected to have a partner before starting a family, may need to come off. But for now the voice inside me says “not yet”. I still want this particular knitwear. It’s too soon for me to abandon this vision, and fall is just around the corner. I plan to wear this sweater very soon (fingers crossed and baby dust sprinkled).
So, now that I have overworked this analogy, tell me, what are the sweaters you are removing for yourself or perhaps have already shed? What are the sweaters you are choosing to keep wearing as the next season of life emerges?
Julia
Gestating Around the Internet
I was honored to be a guest on the Infertility Chick podcast with host Abbe Feder - hear all things Solo Parenting and my attempts for a second child
How the extreme stress of parenting hurts low income parenting the most
I can’t stop thinking about how preventable Amber Thurman’s death was, and the son who unnecessarily lost his mom
A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying after Texas Abortion Ban
Listen to Stork’d Season 6 here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.
Listen & Subscribe on your favorite platform! Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts, Stitcher.
I want to continue to evolve the vision I had for my family. I have the 2 kids who are 2.5 years apart and marriage of 10 years to a person I want to continue to build my life with- but buying into the nuclear family sets us up for failure, and intentionally creating more community makes my life so much better. During the isolation of the pandemic lockdown, I saw how much I rely on all the caregivers in my kids' lives, and I now definitively know I need to rely on other people who love my kids to give them the life I want for them and the parents I want for them. My twin sister is still TTC her second child and I am very much trying to give her the space to think about her decisions about expanding her family away from any pressure from the rest of her family. We love her almost 5 yo miracle baby and if the quest for her second living child needs to be shed then we will support that decision as well.
I love the trauma survival sweater analogy. Thank you for sharing xx