We're adults. We can take it. If you're going to use the word, commit to it!

Andrew is hardly the only offender on this issue, but I have to disagree with the underlying assumption that "everyone has a screwed up family they could write about."

My family is so functional and ordinary, I routinely wonder if we're some sort of unique, shining gem in a sea of problems. We have no major drama. No alcoholism. No suicides. No divorce or unplanned pregnancies. No arrests or diseases or longterm family rifts. You have to go digging into the extended tree to find anything like this, and we don't see them very often.

The biggest "problem" was a simple family move a decade and half ago when one company was laying off and another was hiring. It's made it harder to keep in touch with the grandparents... and that's it. Hardly an issue in the internet age.

Does every family really have problems? Am I living in some sort of naive cloud of denial? I don't think so.

@JayEssTee: Gee I'd have thought so but maybe it's just that all of us with family problems end up talking to each other in bars and all you problem-free folk are at home being content or something

In my own case, you can find an art-mediated story of some of my own problems if you go to www.shanesongs.com, click Lyrics and scroll to bottom.

Meanwhile, had a real OMFG moment reading this article since I knew both Jenny and her sister in Canberra in the 80s. Lovely, clever and interesting girls they were (undoubtedly still are) but the husband swap thing really happened and it definitely left both girls with some issues - as the book apparently demonstrates. eg, when I knew her, Jenny declared herself bankrupt in her early 20s after borrowing (what seemed an) enormous amount of money for a new sports car and writing it off in a drink driving crash within a month.

As a parent myself, I'm pretty sure I'm fucking up some of it for my kids since I'm only human but I'm equally sure I've made a big improvement on my own experience. That said, maybe I'm just an adrenaline junkie but after 15 years as a parent, I wonder whether I'd've been bored without some upheaval and excitement from time to time.

On the other other hand, as I say in another song:

I've got problems, we've all got problems, but what do we care, don't do shit about 'em

@patioman: Hope that's OK profanity owning-wise

you are not alone! My family is remarkably functional and always has been, with some minor, unremarkeable exceptions. My sister and I always laugh at the fact that we were ostracized by other kids in college because we were "too normal to understand" their plight. To which I say, thank god!

I must take strong exception to this observation that everyone is a casualty of a screwed up family. Some of us are mere victims of casualties of screwed up families. We had someone marry into our family who not only believes that families damage children (?!!!?), but promulgates that belief like a religious zealot and has, as a consequence, brought about untold emotional damage to our once upon a time relatively normal family. He is like that character in one of those dreadful family dramas who walks around for two acts in brooding judgment of everyone else and then takes center stage in the third act and tells them all how dysfunctional they are. Oh, yeah? Gosh, we didn't know that. Thanks for telling us, asshole.

1) Interesting article-review of interesting memoirs. Thanks.

2) Honestly, I have no idea how to pronounce "O'Hehir". Did you get mocked in grade school, Andrew?

3) In my experience, the children of completely un-fucked-up families are often just as fucked up as the children of troubled unions.

I'd say your numbers (normal, uncomplicated families) make up maybe 1/8 to 1/4 of families.

My wife's (huge) extended family is really functional and normal. A little stuff here and there, but by and large, happy. Family gatherings are a blast. My in-laws are awesome.

Then there's my family. Serious affluenza and mental health issues on Mom's side, and hard-to-categorize dysfunction on my Dad's side (he died of illness when he was young, so I frankly don't know how he would have fit into things). Family gatherings range from mildly enjoyable to pure pain. During the last dinner at my house, one close relative wanted to eat mashed potatoes while lying in my bed. While wearing an eye patch.

We are going to great lengths to make sure our kids get a lot more exposure to my mom's side.

And I am trying really, really hard to not mess up my kids. It's really not hard if you have reasonable self-awareness and are reasonably unselfish. But I am meeting so many parents that lack at least one of these.

... that a red diaper baby has written a book. Although the details are not so great. The SWP lead a large section of the established peace movement in the 60s, so they were not so irrelevant as young Mr. O'Hehir implies. In addition, if you don't remember, much of the world was up for grabs during this period, including the U.S. Tens of thousands became Marxists in the U.S. alone, and millions around the world.

However, cramming politics down your kids' throat is never a good idea - just like shoving religion down their throats is not such a good idea. Doesn't mean most of America doesn't do it everyday, in their own 'mainstream' way, of course.

Everyone arguing about their clinical diagnosis about what's wrong with their family. Who really cares?

Am I the only one with a dysfuntional yet awesomely boring family?

no disrespect intended to these two particular, but :

have these memoirs been fact-checked?

this preposterous dysfunction is what the left desires for all of us...and of course, amidst this weirdness, there will be absolutely NO JUDGING.

What a bunch a' freakazoids