35 minutes, color
$75
Toward the end of That's a Family, Fernando, the elementary aged son of a Latina mother, describes his experience growing up in a single-parent household. He talks about the benefits of having only one parent to punish him and the closeness of his relationship with his mother. But what is most striking is his discussion of his father—a father he never knew. He expresses curiosity about his father: “Of course I have a dad—just not with me. I don' t know where his is, but I know he's out there.” He goes on to compare his experience with those that other kids may be facing:
Other kids like me, they only have one parent, maybe because one of their parents were on drugs…or maybe because another died or another is in jail or something, or sometimes the other parent just left and sometimes people like my mom decide to have a baby even though they aren't living with the other parent.
This single quote illustrates the primary strength of That's a Family. Though the film is made expressly for elementary aged kids, its scope and consideration of the identity and multiculturalism at it relates to different family structures and formations is relevantly deep and complex. And the film's interviewees, all elementary aged children, show us once again that kids understand these issues in far more complex ways than that for which adults give them credit.
Produced and directed by award-winning filmmakers Debra Chasnoff and Helen S. Cohen (It's Elementary), That's a Family intends to introduce kids to a wide array of family types. The interviewees, who double as virtual narrators of the film, include children of single-parent homes, gay and lesbian parents, multiracial families, adoptive households, and other diverse home experiences. As a result, the film is not only an excellent and important introduction to family structure diversity, but also a deep and informative tool for initiating general dialogue on issues like race, sexual orientation, and the complexity of identity and experience we all share. In that sense, the film is appropriate for an intergenerational audience.
Still, the filmmakers' decision to interview only elementary-aged children was an important one. Too often, we choose to "protect" children from conversations on issues that we consider to be too complex or depressing or intimidating for them. But who are we really protecting? The percentage of households consisting of a married man and woman and their own biological offspring continues to decrease. Most children are not in this situation, and those who are in this situation are routinely exposed to the diverse experiences of their friends, parents, role models, and others. Like Fernando, the kids in this film are, without question, the most enlightened experts on their own lives, and they illustrate that throughout That's a Family.
Another important contribution of this film is that, in addition to educating those viewers who have given little thought to the diversity of family structures and the relevance of this diversity to children, That's a Family can be an important tool for affirming the identities of those viewers who see their experiences reflected in those of one or more of the interviewee-narrators.
Overall, this film provides an important and previously non-existent exploration of family diversity from the perspectives of children in a variety of family situations. An extensive curriculum guide accompanies the film.
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