ABSTRACT
The second decade of the 21st century is fraught with challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic to many divisions which seem almost insurmountable. At the same, these difficult times provide important opportunities to reflect on our own family communication as we navigate some of the changes and challenges facing modern families. In this essay, I highlight three aspects of family communication that can help frame the events facing us in the 2020s and also foster better understanding and more successfully interactions in our respective families: (a) families in communication, (b) families as discourse dependent, and (c) voluntary families.
