The fallacy of ‘happy families’

Gary’s observation begs an obvious question: Why do so many dysfunctional families produce great writers? And why do well-adjusted families (like mine, for instance) rarely produce great writers?

Two obvious answers spring to mind:

1. Great writing requires great empathy, which in turn requires great suffering.

2. The essence of drama is conflict; well-adjusted families are just plain boring and consequently lack dramatic material. As Tolstoy put it in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Tolstoy was wrong

But these explanations strike me as a bit too facile, because….

1. Tolstoy’s notion of happy and unhappy families was actually mistaken. Families are complex, constantly shifting organisms that defy simplistic labels. Some individuals are more capable, reliable, and creative than others. But it doesn’t follow that entire families can be labeled the same way.

Most of us love to generalize about family dynasties like the Kennedys, Fords, and Bushes. We admire the Rockefellers and Adamses for their apparent traditions of public service, the Waltons and the Pritzkers for their business ingenuity, the Sulzbergers for their business stewardship, the Rothschilds for their synergy. We shake our heads sadly at seemingly dysfunctional families like the Mondavis, the Guccis, and the Kochs. Often we judge people on the basis of whether they came from “good” or “bad” families.

But if all family members act alike, how come Albert Einstein’s parents and siblings were merely ordinary? How come J.P. Morgan Sr. was a world-beating titan, and his son was an empty suit? How do you explain the fact that virtually every U.S. president has had some sibling whom he wanted to hide in a closet?

The fact is, rogue siblings aren’t the exception, they’re the rule. Recent studies have concluded that there’s often greater personality and income variation within families than there is between families. For all our tendency to lump families as rich, middle-class, or poor, three recent national studies found that three-quarters of income inequality in the U.S. actually occurs within families. “If we lined up everyone in America in order of income, from the poorest person to Bill Gates, and tried to predict where any particular individual might fall on that long line,” suggests Dalton Conley, director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University, “knowing about that person’s sibling would help us very little.” (Click here.)

2. That said, it follows that all families — like all human relationships — are dysfunctional to some degree. O’Neill and Williams are popular because they articulate the doubts and fears that lurk in the deepest unspoken recesses of every family.

No booze, no drugs

3. That said, allow me to introduce Gary Day to a writer who will bring joy to his heart: a woman who, despite all obstacles, fashioned a freelance career by writing columns and essays about her resolutely — nay, aggressively — well-adjusted suburban lifestyle.

I speak, of course, of Sally Friedman, a frequent contributor to the Inquirer, the Jewish Exponent, and Ladies Home Journal, not to mention several publications I’ve edited. Sally has spent most of her adult life in the sheltered suburban sanctuary of Moorestown, N.J. She’s been married (happily, she insists) to the same man for 53 years. She and her husband put their three daughters through Penn, Harvard, and Yale. Now Sally has a granddaughter at Barnard. Divorce, drugs, alcoholism, psychotherapy, or even raised voices seem never to have disturbed her tranquil household. Yet at the slightest excuse — Thanksgiving, Passover, Women’s History Month — Sally will write about it.

It’s not as if Sally hasn’t suffered her share of domestic crises. There was the time, some 25 years ago, that Sally’s daughter announced that she was moving in with her boyfriend. Or the time, “after a marathon session in front of the bedroom mirror, with my trying on every dress in my wardrobe in a tempest of frustration and insecurity,” that she asked her husband how she looked, and he glanced impatiently at his watch and replied, “You look OK. Now let's get going." Or the time Sally’s youngest daughter went off to college and left her an empty nester. Or the time Sally went for her annual mammogram — and found she was OK. Or the time this year when new younger members infiltrated her health club, forcing her to wait to use the equipment. Or the time when — hey, wake up!

Secret fantasies

“I came late to the great banquet of women's rights,” Sally mused recently, “but I lived to savor the meal.” Also: “I've loved one man, and he's been by my side as I've grown from girl to woman to person.” Methinks the lady doth protest too much. But this is a woman whose cup is never half empty, always half-full.

Regrets? “I've had a few, as that old Frank Sinatra song goes,” Sally writes. Well, what are they? Does Sally secretly fantasize a career in the CIA or on Wall Street or as a lap dancer at Delilah’s? Does she yearn for a one-night stand with George Clooney? In the autumn of her life, what’s left on her to-do list before the long dark night sets in? Would she like to sing Carmen at the Met or at least slash her next-door neighbor’s tires? This no-drama mama isn’t saying.

Sally’s story lacks the dramatic arc suitable for Broadway or Hollywood. But it does, I suspect, resonate with millions of people who’d just as soon eliminate the drama from their lives. Socrates was surely correct when he observed, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” But Sally Friedman is on to something, too, with her implied observation that survival and even happiness often depend on refraining from examining one’s life too deeply.