A family is the collective context wherein children are reared. When a couple do not have children their coupledom is termed a marriage or a partnership, not a family. When children reach adult age – eighteen years – they need to ‘fly the nest’ and become their own person, independent and responsible for their own lives. Flying the nest is primarily an emotional leave-taking of the family, not a purely physical one. Nowadays, because of economic circumstances, many young adults remain on in the home of their parents, but it is the nature of that residing that requires examination. Eighteen year olds and upwards do not need to be parented; when they allow that they stay in a co-dependent place with their parents and, often with brothers and sisters as well. The young adult may complain that it would upset his parents were he to assert his independence and the right to take responsibility for his own life. The reality is that unless he separates he may remain enmeshed with his parents for the rest of his life or may eventually leave the house in a rebellious storm of protest and blame his parents for his unhappy state, sometimes never to return.

I recall when I wrote the book The Power of ‘Negative’ Thinking in 1996 several journalists interviewed me and, subsequently wrote articles on the theme of the book and my own personal experiences as a child, teenager and adult. Following such publications a number of individuals whom I vaguely knew approached me and exclaimed: ‘I never knew you came from a dysfunctional family’.  Regrettably, at the time I was not quick enough to do two things: one, to assert that in my view there is no such phenomenon as a dysfunctional family and, two, to return the statement to the person who said it: ‘how is it that you need to make such a comment?’