The Myerson Family

The downside of Family Life Like Libby Purves in The Times I’ve been trying to avoid mentioning the Myerson’s, but as everyone else is, well, why not? Whatever your views on the rights and wrongs of the case, for the sociology student it does at least offer a fresh example to put alongside all that rather tired stuff in the textbooks about R.D. Laing, and what the texts and specifications love to call ‘the dark side’ of the family.

The Myerson case is a good reminder that families aren’t always the wonderful supportive units that some like to portray them as. And indeed, despite my apparent lack of reverence to Laing, the Myerson episode can be seen as a very clear and easy to grasp example of precisely what he meant by such long-winded terms as ‘reciprocal interiorization’.

Here’s what Purves said: ” [The Myerson wrangle].. is really a debate about who has power: who stage-directs and records an emerging life. The affluent, settled adult or the young, troubled, irresponsible but exclusive owner of that life? It is a moral question all parents meet, with more or less grace. It brings tension over exams, universities, careers, clothes, love affairs. I cannot judge whether they were right to throw the boy out. But I do know that they have no right to claim ownership of his story, flog it to Bloomsbury, confirm it as non-fiction in a Bookseller interview and put him through a publicity mill. Jake Myerson belongs to himself. They all do. That is the bit the childcare manuals forget to mention: you have to let go mentally even if you still care financially and physically for a young adult. To throw him out physically, yet retain publishing rights in his troubles, is disgusting.”

For my money, that hits the nail on the head. From a sociological point of view - focus on Purves’ use of the word ‘power’. Some sociologists - not functionalists perhaps - would say that families are never free of power relationships. That insight might be one to help you open up what the critics of the family - including Laing - are talking about.