Fewer divisions make it fun for kids to hang with the 'fam'

"Hey dude, what's up?" Typical intro line for our 26-year-old son's telephone rap with one of his buddies.

All generations have their slang expressions and communication short cuts. For the most part, I was up to speed on his particular dialect. So I knew that he was talking to a friend and that they were trying to figure out what, if anything, was planned for the upcoming weekend.

"Oh, not much, just hangin' with the fam," his side of the conversation continued. And as it didn't seem to involve me, I started to tune it out, returning my attention to the picnic pavilion filled with four generations of our family.

A few minutes later, however, my instant replay (evidently in "slo-mo") rewound to the last statement I'd overheard. "Hangin' with the fam …" -- now that was a new one.

Actually, I kinda liked it. "Hangin' with the fam …" sounded like something "cool" (my generation's slang) to do. Just "kick back," "groove," "mellow out" with the "fam."

Okay, enough slang. It wasn't really the creative use of slang that struck me, anyway. It was, rather, that a young man his age would not only choose to spend time with his family but even admit it to a friend.

And not just any family, but one made up of not only four generations but a multitude of stepfamily configurations and complications. No matter how overgrown the family tree, however, it seemed to him that we were just family.

That sure wasn't the way things were when I was 26. It wasn't that I disliked my family, it was just they seemed so out of touch with what was really happening.

They didn't understand such issues as the Vietnam War, or the civil rights movement, or the war on poverty, or the sexual revolution, or all the other cultural chasms that divided the generations.

Of course, in retrospect, our families understood a lot more than we credited them. We baby boomers were just so caught up in our own self righteous truths and angry rejection of anyone else's perspectives that we didn't take the time to find this out.

I guess things have changed.

Sure families, especially parents and teens, still struggle with all the inherent issues of growing up. Families will always find it difficult to address questions, including what it means to be an individual, what it means to be in a relationship, how much freedom and responsibility are appropriate and the meaning of life.

When you add the complications of multigenerational blended families, it makes all of the above even tougher to sort through.

On the other hand, as I interact with my own adolescent and young adult children, I don't see the culturally-based misunderstandings, anger and alienation that so characterized my life at their age.

Sure, I may at times seem to them like a technological Neanderthal. And I sometimes don't totally grasp the rate of change and amount of uncertainty that is such a part of their lives. I, perhaps, want them to be responsible and "settle down" more quickly than they're ready. But these usually aren't the sort of misunderstandings that threaten to tear families apart.

While parents today certainly don't deserve a break, maybe we have less hard times than we gave our own families a few decades ago. Perhaps the lack of social issues that polarize generations, or the presence of issues like the environmental crisis or the current war, has brought families together.

"Hangin' with the fam."

I like that. And I feel awfully grateful that my 26-year-old considers me to be "fam" worth "hangin' with."