We have been doing a lot of research into community and support structures and have been drawn to look at traditional cultures as models of society that managed to get so much right. However, it is not as simple as that. We have evolved as a race and the challenge for us will probably lie in trying to bring back some of the old whilst embracing the new. This moving article illustrates why.

"Progress lies not in women fighting men, but in women and men together fighting the ancient stupidities that have been bequeathed to them."  Steve Biddulph - Manhood

I found this quote in front of my diary the year that I had my baby, my first and so far only baby.  It was a year of upheaval - I fell pregnant in Greece, where I was living at the time, and I returned to Perth to birth her.  Perth, my home town from which I had been absent most of the previous 9 years. 

This quote reminds me of my prevailing thoughts and passions of that time, as I was pushing out into the total unknown of being pregnant to a Greek man, and totally unsure of how the future would go.  I was, as ever, optimistic, but a big part of my optimism was my hope that the father of my child was ready to start a new family with me, along lines which I could feel comfortable with.  I was of course very apprehensive about his expectations of me as a wife and mother to be, knowing just how backward life in Greece was.  Having lived in Greece I had seen the men hanging round the cafes eating and drinking, twirling their ubiquitous worry beads, looking mightily at ease with themselves.  I often used to think “who’s picking up the tab for this?“  A silly question of course.  The women.  

And yet there is a strange paradox in this picture.  The men sit back and do look  mightily at their ease, but they are entirely disempowered in the home.  Women rule over all aspects of their life that are most important to them - what they eat, how their home looks, what their relationship to their children is, and what connubial rights they can reasonably extract from their spouse.  In a way, the caffeneio is a Greek man’s castle - their home has already been usurped. 

But I digress from the contrasts between a basically nuclear family, and the close-knit, extended family culture that I have gotten myself embroiled in. 

In our society, it is very common to hear a couple announce that they are “starting a family”.  It means that after a period of time together, usually living together, they have probably decided to get married and are now ready to throw their hat in the ring and have children.  Starting a family.  Their way, their rules.  However, this concept has no relevance whatsoever in an extended  family based culture like Greece‘s.

I had no idea how deep and precious that concept was embedded in my own psyche - the right to  start a family, my way.  And I didn‘t know how precious was that right until I was faced with the prospect of losing it all.  I moved back to Greece with a 7 month old child and moved in with her father, who still lives with his parents.   I had only known him for five months before leaving him to return to Perth and birth my daughter - his parents I had never met.  We had never lived together, and my Greek was barely survival level. 

What I failed to appreciate when planning my move to Greece is that if you move into this close-knit, family based culture, you will be slot into a pre-determined role, however ill-suited to you personally. 

I love to write, read, do mental things, and as regards housework, I have always secretly believed, like Quentin Crisp, that after a while the dirt doesn’t get any worse.  Housework is nothing short of an art form in Greece, and cleaning products are the second most advertised commodity on television (after hair removal products). 

I never had a hope in hell really.  On my first day, mother in law elect gave me a balcony cleaning lesson - punctuated by incomprehensible mime and many misunderstandings.  Day three was how to scrub the clothes by hand - the washing machine being strictly reserved for washing whites.  (That was about when I decided that disposable nappies were probably my best option).  As for cooking, I very soon realised that I just couldn’t compete with Mother and gave up trying.  I used to love cooking, but before I knew it, all my confidence as a cook and my pleasure in cooking were gone. 

Obviously it was always going to be a really difficult adjustment period.  I was faced with learning the language,  understanding the culture, coping with parenting in a city where I knew few people, fewer parents and where playgrounds were derelict and downright dangerous. 

However, I believe that I would have successfully made the transition, if there had been some kind of hope of adjustment on the father of my child’s part.  Such a thought never really entered his head, and it took me a while to understand that he didn’t always see that there were specific roles and that they were in fact choices, not laws.  As far as he was concerned that was how life went, and it was ludicrous trying to change things.  Men go to work, women look after children, women rule the house, men shirk the house, drink coffee and fiddle with worry beads. 

He is an intelligent, philosophical person.  But he had absolutely no interest in “fighting the ancient stupidities that had been bequeathed to him.”  And frankly, why should he?  The privilege of doing absolutely nothing, and yet having a family is mighty tempting.  The pleasure of being looked after by Mum forever after rather comforting.  To swap it for some new fangled idea of equality and totally conscious, empowered choices was just not attractive to him. 

And so, as all this slowly dawned on me, I realised that there was actually no hope of us starting a family.  I couldn’t join in his family, and agree to be undermined and undervalued for the rest of my life.  And he couldn’t join his new family because it was all too hard and he didn’t really like me all that much anyway. 

In a mildly dramatic episode I turned a scheduled trip to England into a return journey to Perth.  He didn’t seem to question the bulging suitcases (half winter, half summer clothes), he decided against accompanying us to the UK, and so we escaped easily, if traumatically. 

I was bowed down with guilt.  I was putting my needs as a person above the needs of him, his ageing parents, and in some ways, my daughter.  However, I was spurred on by comments such as “Never mind, next time you’ll have a boy” that the grandmammas would say to me with a consoling pat.  And I knew that I wanted my daughter raised in a culture that would value her as a female (as opposed to a drudge). 

And so on to Plan B.  I still want my daughter to have contact with her father.  He still wants to have contact - a phone call a month, perhaps some chatting over the Videocam, and the odd visit. 

In fact, I am still recovering from his last visit, when he brought his ageing parents with him.  They all stayed at my house (why did I do that?  why?) and I spent most of that time answering his parents’ questions about why I wouldn’t marry their son and return to Greece.  They cheerily agreed that yes, life was much better for a child in Perth, but that didn’t alter the fact that there was only one way to do things, live in Greece as a family.  Anything else was ludicrous.   Me citing the incompatibility between their son and me cut no ice at all.  “That’s marriage” his mother told me. 

And then I began to truly treasure the culture I grew up in.  For all the tendencies of the nuclear family to be isolated, over-stressed and all the rest, there is a chance for each family to create the family they want, to do it their way. 

For some odd reason, I decided that I wanted to make a gesture to the grand-parents, and get my daughter baptised in the Greek Orthodox church.  I asked grandmother to be godmother, thinking she would be delighted and honoured.  Also, it had to be someone Greek, and I didn’t really know anyone else.  There was one family that the father of my child had met on a previous visit.  He invited them on the night before the Baptism, at 9.30 at night. 

Surprisingly, they showed up at the church and I was introduced to them, a couple in their sixties.  The grandmother had pounced on them (people to speak Greek to!) and soon the woman turned to me and said “Why didn‘t you tell me?” but the Greek was too fast, I was called away not sure what I had omitted to say. 

The congregation was not large, and those who understood its hour long litany numbered five.  The rest of us had to endure it as best we could.  I was entertained by wondering why the woman who had asked the perplexing question was standing next to me instead of sitting down with the rest of the congregation.  Around half way into the ceremony, I was told that she in fact was the godmother of my child, the grandmother having asked her to fill this important role on the doorstep of the church, 30 seconds after making her acquaintance.  That is what I hadn’t told her - that she was to be godmother.  An understandable oversight, as I was completely ignorant of this strange fact. By then the ceremony had taken on farcical proportions.  After my poor daughter had been stripped, dunked, smeared in oil, and had her hair trimmed, she was to be dressed in her new white frock.  We went over to the precious box which had been packed by the grandmother with all the goodies and - no dress.  There was a quick exchange of “where is the dress”  “I don’t know, I didn‘t pack the wretched box” and there was nothing to be done but force the sodden child back into the slightly crumpled frock she came in.  At the end of the service the priest offered to marry me and my child’s father and I croaked out “Not today”.  Can you imagine the video we have for posterity? 

The circus of the service was nothing to the trauma of the following week.  For now I knew that my gesture of baptism had been turned into a commitment to raise my child Greek Orthodox.  I had to return to church no less than three times in the next week so she could receive communion.  A two year old. 

Even worse, the pressure on me to return to Greece escalated, the voice also being taken up by this stranger in my life, my child’s godmother.  Over and over again I fought against this anguished voice instructing me to capitulate and give away all my rights and needs to ensure that a social system would survive.  I fought and fought, especially against myself, feeling like a was a spoiled brat, putting my needs above all others.  Barely civil by the end of the visit, I put the troublesome visitors on the plane and returned home to cleanse my house and gather my shattered nerves. 

Without a doubt there are many traditions in the extended family which are sensible, warm and precious.  There are others which are stupid and damaging.  Take away the right to examine these traditions and you have institutionalised stupidity, and disempowered misery. 

So next time I am pondering the shortcomings of the nuclear family model, feeling isolated and unsupported, I will remind myself of the benefits and blessings of its freer construction.  The realities of the extended family can be every bit as hideous as the pressures we face.  Let us rejoice in our freedom!  Amen 

By Pip Brennan

This article originally appeared in Birthplace Magazine