I have come to realize that there is no relationship more damaging to the human psyche as that of mother and child. Literature shows us Oedipus, who killed his father and had children by his mother. Freud could trace just about any depression or psychosis in a person back to the mother, and obviously had mommy issues of his own. Robert Bloch created a character, Norman Bates, who was driven to kill his controlling mother, and then assumed her identity. Alfred Hitchcock made millions by turning that story into the most successful and widely recognized horror film of all time - Psycho. Mothers are often the brunt of Jewish comedy, with their guilt trips, their interference in personal matters, and their refusal to allow their progeny to marry outside the faith. "Why don't you ever call? When are you going to get married? Mrs. Neiderbaum's son-in-law is a doctor - why can't you meet any nice young Jewish doctors?"

I am an orphan. I lost my mother to cancer just as I was entering puberty, and my father a few years later. At the time, everyone - including me - felt terribly sorry for me. But as I grew older, I realized that maybe I was better off than some others. My best friend has done what many girls do - she has struggled against becoming her mother. She has struggled, and she has failed. In every way, she has become exactly like her mother - from her very best qualities to her very worst faults. Will this happen to me, since I have been so long without her? Or am I free to become whomever I choose? My ex-boyfriend was plagued by a controlling mother, and she was the eventual cause of our breakup. She would call my house at odd hours, looking for him, and would show up at my door unannounced. She was mean and vicious to me, as I had usurped her position as leading lady in his life. I thought I was going to have to take a restraining order out on her.

And then there's the relationship both men and women have with their mothers-in-law. This is where my husband lucked out in marrying an orphan. There was no one he had to impress but me. No one had to approve of our union, and there was no one to argue against my wearing a black dress to get married. No one, that is, except my mother in law. I ignored her ranting, and frankly would have done the same if she was my own kith and kin. I know that I have lucked out by having a relatively sane mother in law - someone who has accepted the fact that her son has another woman in his life, and just wants him to be happy - but the two of us have come to an impasse on a subject that is very important to her, and means next to nothing to me: family. Not that I begrudge those whose family units are still intact. It's simply that I don't feel a strong desire to adopt her family as my own. I married her son - not her daughters. My husband and I have a wonderful relationship, but we have chosen not to have children (a whole other war zone of a subject!). I do not like children - at all - regardless if they share my DNA, or that of my husband. Which means that I don't want to spend time with my nieces and nephews, just because his sisters think it's appropriate. My husband occasionally chooses to see them on his own. I feel that I have grown up enough to decide who I will spend my free time with - and unfortunately, due to having completely different interests and personalities, that does not include several members of my husband's family. I do, however, keep contact with his three remaining grandparents, and one of his cousins, because I happen to like them, and enjoy spending time with them. Same goes for my parents-in-law - in moderate doses! Yet his poor mother does her best to keep her children together, blames me for tearing them apart, and stubbornly refuses to entertain the notion that perhaps her son has little interest in his sisters and their new families, either.

The human race is one of the few species that insists on maintaining a relationship between parent and child past the age where the child can fend for itself. Does this make us a more civilized, evolved race - or an archaic one whose days are numbered? Have the animals got the right idea by weaning their young and letting them go? Of course, to completely shun other members of our race would lead to isolation. (I will not mention how it would also lead to violence, since our species seems to have a penchant for violence, regardless of how much or how little family a person has. The Middle East is a prime example - parents sending their children out to become martyrs to a cause they, the parents, believe in.) Isolation can lead to madness, so perhaps it's time to lay waste to the old adage "You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family." Who says? Having lost my parents at such a young age, I found that there was a huge outpouring of love and inclusion directed at me. Some of it was lip service, and disappeared quickly. But of what remained, I was able to choose to be around people who had similar interests and personalities, and our bonds of friendship grew to familial proportions. We gave each other something - comfort, kinship, understanding, and a soft place to fall. Are these not the very basic reasons for the existence of family? I cannot, however, say I had the same reaction toward my multitude of cousins, most of whom led lives I wouldn't want, and had values that I couldn't align myself with.

So I chose my family. I had good friends around me, and older ones to guide me like a proper parent would. I chose my spouse (and he chose me), and we consider each other family. What reason is there to deny that privilege to others? Perhaps they may choose to have the mothers and brothers that nature gave to them. But then again they might not. There shouldn't be any hard feelings. How many times have we seen mothers unable to connect with their children - and mothers who shouldn't be mothers at all? Those kids should have the option of finding their own soft nest, and their birth-mothers might have something very valuable to give to someone else, if not to them. If I had to do it all over, I would choose my same sire, but I would prefer to have the mother I found after mine died. I was able to bond with her in a way that my own mare's background, choices, and interests didn't allow. That would mean I would have one parent with one spouse, and another parent with another spouse, and they wouldn't all live together. So what? That's what this world has come to for many children, anyway.