According to the Oxford Dictionary, a family is “a group consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit”, but this definition of a family is entirely too specific to apply to every American. In fact, only fourty six percent of children in America live in a household in which both of their parents live and are married (pewsocialtrends.org), and I am not included in that fourty six percent. I have lived 1200 miles from my mother since I was five years old, so I know that proximity and where you live does not affect who you consider family. There are so many different types of families, and one should not be more widely accepted than the other. Many people believe that a family always consists of a mother, a father, and children, all living together in one place. However, that is becoming less and less true as society changes and people, including me, live with a different idea of how a family works. …show more content…
People are often confused about this, offer words of comfort, and ask me how that works or how I feel about it, most likely because they are stuck with a preconceived notion of how a family is supposed to work. But truthfully, I feel completely normal about my family because I have never known any differently. To me, my family functions exactly how one should, we love each other, offer words of advice to one another, and do what we can to make sure the others are safe. I’m just as close to my mother as any of my friends are, I talk to her on the phone, text her, and visit her when I can, and her physical proximity to me has never affected the love and connection that I have with