THIS IS MY FAMILY : My wife, me and our cat makes a family of three. By all account, we are a full fledged functional family. We take walks together, have tea together, watch the world cup finals together among other wholesome family activities.
But we just don't fit in nicely with what this Google image which I downloaded from Facebook defines as a family, nor that of the general public understanding of one. Perhaps the difference lies in that our cat is adopted and not conceived by us therefore we are not a "Biological Family" as most families are.
But this is not totally true either. There are other family structures that are not exactly biological and yet are admitted and accepted into mainstream characterization. Family with adopted children or parent is one that gets to enjoy social protection and benefits like all other Biological Families.
Indignant, I ranted it out to friends and someone showed me the part in Singapore's constitution that makes reference to the definition of a family. True enough, cats are being discriminated and deliberately left out of Singapore's constitution. Indeed if my family do not fall categorically within the narrow definition of a biological family, it should at least sympathetically into the definition of an Experiential Family.
Like a smack on the face I have been told that my broad definition of a family as deviant. But don't you realized that this so call "Deviant Family" may easily make up half of Singaporean families? Even the normal Biological Family has become deviant if you may, dressing up their dog as a child for their wedding ceremony. My friend who has a girl and a dog are calling them both daughters. Many families have taken their animals as very much part of the family, even to sleeping on the same bed as our cat does.
Is it time to challenge the constitution to allow animals to be definitively and categorically stated, even as gender is also not definitively and categorically stated in that part of the constitution my friend showed me?
But we just don't fit in nicely with what this Google image which I downloaded from Facebook defines as a family, nor that of the general public understanding of one. Perhaps the difference lies in that our cat is adopted and not conceived by us therefore we are not a "Biological Family" as most families are.
But this is not totally true either. There are other family structures that are not exactly biological and yet are admitted and accepted into mainstream characterization. Family with adopted children or parent is one that gets to enjoy social protection and benefits like all other Biological Families.
Indignant, I ranted it out to friends and someone showed me the part in Singapore's constitution that makes reference to the definition of a family. True enough, cats are being discriminated and deliberately left out of Singapore's constitution. Indeed if my family do not fall categorically within the narrow definition of a biological family, it should at least sympathetically into the definition of an Experiential Family.
Like a smack on the face I have been told that my broad definition of a family as deviant. But don't you realized that this so call "Deviant Family" may easily make up half of Singaporean families? Even the normal Biological Family has become deviant if you may, dressing up their dog as a child for their wedding ceremony. My friend who has a girl and a dog are calling them both daughters. Many families have taken their animals as very much part of the family, even to sleeping on the same bed as our cat does.
Is it time to challenge the constitution to allow animals to be definitively and categorically stated, even as gender is also not definitively and categorically stated in that part of the constitution my friend showed me?
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