“Family” Articles

A hero’s journey certainly isn’t about less than family, but should be about more.

Our writers share how traditions shape their Christmas celebrations.

D. L. Mayfield recaps the latest episode of The Good Place, “A Fractured Inheritance.”

Why do so many outsiders feel the need to correct the childlessness they encounter?

We’re 11 years removed from saying goodbye to the Cohens and The O.C., yet pop culture writers and fans alike regularly indulge in heated discussions about this hyper-self-aware soap opera’s merits and cultural impact.

In Ant-Man and the Wasp, Marvel reveals the importance of intact families—wherever we might find them.

Instead of viewing each other as only possessing weaknesses to be overcome, in A Quiet Place the Abbott family reminds us that our weaknesses can make each other stronger, and the strength of community is only possible because of its vulnerability.

Joyce Byers—an axe-wielding woman who strings lights in the darkness to lead her son home and who knows when to let her son feel actual pain—is a paragon of motherhood.

District 9 is hardly a family film, but family is at the core of the story.

Lady Bird invites us to consider the nature of our love and our roots in a time when the concepts are as nebulous and mishandled as ever.

The National’s latest, Sleep Well Beast, affirms that if heartbreak is particular to our times and places, to our own networks of relationships, then grace must be as well.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is not only what many audiences need, but how they need it.

Like the March family, the Church exists to be a unified body poised to bless the world.

Eleven longs for somewhere to belong more than most, though almost every character in Stranger Things 2 mirrors this struggle in some way.

Write for our magazine! Submit a pitch by 11/2 for a feature article on the theme of family.

In Spider-Man: Homecoming, the villain Adrian Toomes represents a disturbingly plausible version of a very natural human tendency: the idolization of family.