Family life isn’t perfect. Still, most of us would prefer life with our families than without them. By family, I mean the original context of persons to whom you especially belong. I also mean the people you live with now in marital, communal, or more tentative commitments. Families are built of an amalgam of materials: some parts genetic and others emotional, circumstantial, institutional, or otherwise essential. Some family members are a given when you arrive on the…