Happy and unhappy families

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"All happy families are alike, unhappy families are all different". This is a famous incipit, of a famous novel. But is it really true?

No, you can't take millions of people and distill them into one trite phrase; there is no such thing as a family that is happy 100% of the time, or even 50%. Wherever there is more than one person, there will be dissagreements and disharmony.

I haven't known intimately happy families. So I don't know. Did Tolstoi know happy families? The incipit is of Anna Karenina, the tale of a very unhappy family.

When I hear of a 'happy family' I am immediately suspicious. I wonder what is really going on in that family. So much energy must be spent putting on this act of being the perfect happy family for the outside world. What is happening behind closed doors?
Where are the projected shadows, I wonder? I think of the person in that family who carries the shadow projections of that family- it is often the youngest child, or the 'odd' child-the scapegoat, and it makes me feel very sad.
Maybe they are really a genuinely happy family. But sometimes it is an act.

Yes the secrets, how many secrets. Suicides, mad relatives, money problems, sex problems. There is a stratification of some who knows and some who don't.

As for me I was the scapegoat, late arrived of an unhappy couple. Sister playing with me like a toy.

Happy family...I've always been afraid to order that at Chinese restaurants.

i dont think ive ever met a happy family in my life

To be brutally honest, I accept the potential existence of a happy family in much the same way I accept the potential existence of a creator god.

There's no technical reason why it shouldn't be possible, but I've certainly never seen it.