I Before E...Except After C, Weird

While families can have a negative effect on individuals, the product of one of these families can be a source of good. People can overcome all odds to be totally different from their family or have a different outlook because of their upbringing, which can make them lessons in disguise. That childhood mixed with their life experiences makes a personality that is unique.

Many capable human beings have grown up in dysfunctional families. Robert Crumb had a gruesomely perverse childhood and grew up to be rich. Not everyone may condone the content of his work, but people like Crumb are individuals. They are unique and can help us see things in a way we never have before. Highly respected intellectual families have to begin somewhere. There is no reason that the children of a prejudice, dependency, and ignorance fostering home cannot be the revolution in their family that starts a trend of capable generations.

Another thing to consider is that the families that foster prejudice, dependency, and ignorance probably didn't have ancestors that were exactly like them. At some point, there was a respectable family's child that somehow took a wrong turn and went on to raise a family that was dragged along in that wrong turn. Families can't keep a stranglehold on their children forever.

Families change over time like anything else. Eventually, there will be that child that will rebel. It may be a good child rebelling against a bad family or a bad child rebelling against a good family, but there will always be rebels and exceptions to the rule that keep stereotypes from reigning fully. As long as the human mind is not completely understood, there is no security in making assumptions about what causes people to be a certain way.


Written March 20, 2001