Livre d'Or

*wrinkles nose* I really didn't like the feeling that I was going down that "ethnic families" rabbit hole, either. Except that reliable research does seem to support it to some extent (eg: that ACON report, the lead researcher was a lebanese man, I believe). And I am carefully thinking of this in 'protestant' terms, not just race, because it seems - again, observationally - that catholic families of a similar class/national background to mine do tend (not always, but at times) to have stronger family identity going on. And tend to frame it in terms of religion, too: the ideal of the 'cultural catholic', for instance.

Your last paragraph, absolutely! That really hits the nail on the head. It's not that it's bad to have networks of individual relationships, or to be firm about ejecting predators. It's that that particular set-up has some weaknesses sometimes, different weaknesses from genetic families, different weaknesses from things like churches, certainly, but still potential issues. What I want is to have some discussion about whether that can be mitigated, without losing the benefits of very broad freedom to pick whom you want to spend your life with.

I think to some people, networks of individuals have a strong appeal either because of ill experience with idenity-groups, or because their cultural background, intellectual bent, or personality, is more tuned to the individual than the group idenity?