In the history of Pedagogy, there are important precedents that illustrate how thinking about and practicing education in extreme or difficult contexts can lead us to formulate principles and methods that prove to be particularly effective and beneficial for all. Education, when tested under pressure, reveals its most essential features, those that sustain human development not only in times of comfort, but also in moments of loss, fracture, or transition. This approach is analogous to the one I propose here: by considering my family experience as something out of the ordinary, existing on the margins of what is considered "normal", I have arrived at conclusions that, I believe, can be of value when applied to more conventional family experiences.

We live in an era of cultural and social opulence, in which virtually any form of family life can be imagined, tested, or enacted. The multiplicity of family models reflects the richness of contemporary life, but it also risks blinding us to what is fundamental. Amid this abundance, it is often in the shadow of deprivation that we most clearly see what a child truly needs. In the dim light of a space without luxuries (when a child has no one to shelter them) the essential elements of education become starkly visible: emotional security, enduring love, and a stable structure that enables growth and the unfolding of personal potential.

Certainly, there have been and still are many alternative models for organizing family life, and some of them have offered bold visions for how to live differently. Yet experiences of non-traditional family life that involve the upbringing of children have struggled to offer consistent, successful outcomes. From the countercultural communes of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and Western Europe (Toledo Machado, 2022) to the early Soviet experiments in collective child-rearing (Kaminski, 2011), these initiatives often faltered in creating environments of long-term stability and emotional grounding. Even today, theories such as Donna Haraway’s (2016) notion of “making kin” offer imaginative and philosophically rich alternatives to traditional family structures. However, they remain largely speculative or metaphorical when it comes to child-rearing practices. Haraway herself explores kinship primarily through multispecies relationships, particularly with animals such as dogs, rather than through lived experiences of raising children.

My personal experience, viewed through a philosophical lens, has led me to consider that when families fulfil their roles in a sensibly imperfect manner (Luri, 2017), they provide irreplaceable goods that no other institution can replicate. These goods include indefinite emotional security, committed ethical guidance, and unconditional support. They are the quiet foundations that make a life liveable.

In our time, the ability to discern what is essential (to distinguish what supports growth from what merely distracts) has become a pedagogical and cultural imperative. And I have come to understand that it is in the places where opulence fails to reach that we can best perceive a child’s most urgent needs: a family that offers not only affection, but also reliability, a structured rhythm to life, and an enduring presence.

Massimo Recalcati, a prominent Italian psychoanalyst, addresses this issue in depth. In works such as The Telemachus Complex (2014), What Remains of the Father? (2015), The Hands of the Mother (2018), and The Secret of the Son (2020), he explores the shifting symbolic and emotional roles of parents in contemporary society. He emphasizes the family as a unique, irreplaceable site for the formation of individual subjectivity and for transmitting the intergenerational threads of meaning, care, and desire that ground human development.

I will weave together my personal experiences with my background as a philosopher of education. Firstly, I will present an approach to the work of Massimo Recalcati that helps articulate what I term the parental triad (a symbolic configuration of child and differentiated adult caregivers) which safeguards, amid contemporary family experiments, the formative roles that adults play in cultivating a child’s subjectivity. Recalcati’s work will be central, structuring part of the paper, but I will also draw on other thinkers to reinforce or nuance his arguments when appropriate. Although his psychoanalytic lens (rooted in Lacanian thought) might initially seem at odds with post-critical pedagogy, I argue that his focus on symbolic structures, desire, and generational transmission resonates with post-critical commitments to education as embodied, affective, and existential. Rather than imposing normative models, his insights offer a situated way to grasp the fragility and ethical depth of educational bonds, especially in disrupted or foster family contexts. Some may contend that these roles are best fulfilled within stable, heterosexual unions. However, this paper argues that, in principle, parental functions can be carried out within diverse family arrangements, provided the differentiated roles traditionally associated with “father” and “mother” are meaningfully assumed by distinct individuals, regardless of sex or biological relation. Secondly, I will explore how the challenges we have faced as a foster family can illuminate broader questions in contemporary educational thinking about families. The theme of this paper aligns with post-critical pedagogy (Hodgson et al., 2017; Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019; Oliverio & Thoilliez, 2024), inviting us to approach education as an intersubjective and existential encounter, not merely as critique or problem-solving. By emphasizing the symbolic structure of adult-child differentiation, the paper engages with post-critical pedagogy’s aim to re-centre educational discourse from within lived experience. Foster families exemplify a practice rooted in unconditional acceptance and attentiveness to the child’s singularity. When framed as spaces of shared vulnerability and grounding, families emerge as foundational to both individuals and communities. While political critiques of families have revealed their oppressive dimensions, we must also explore (with equal philosophical seriousness) the enduring educational goods families can offer. This paper seeks to affirm that possibility.

It is a biological fact that all children are procreated by someone, but not all become sons or daughters in the fullest sense. Likewise, not all who pass on genetic inheritance become parents in a way that transcends biology. Being a child, father, or mother is not simply natural, it is built daily through care, shared life, and mutual responsibility. More than genes, these roles emerge through emotional bonds, the transmission of values, and the sustained accompaniment of another’s growth. Yet beneath this nurturing function lies a profound ethical demand: the effort to uphold the promises made when a child is welcomed into a family. In foster care especially, where children have known betrayal or abandonment, the educational relationship is not only about love and support, but also about reliability, structure, and the moral imperative not to fail again those who have already been failed. This quiet, ongoing labour of commitment is perhaps the most pedagogically significant dimension of care. This triadic relationship (rooted more in ethical presence than in biology) is a structure held together by love, responsibility, and dedication. It is possible to be a father or mother without having procreated, just as it is possible to be a child without genetic ties to those who raise us. Every family worthy of the name is, at its core, a welcoming one. From this concrete and non-essentialist perspective, families like mine (who welcome children not only metaphorically, but also physically and legally) can offer insights relevant to others. This paper does not aim to define the family in fixed terms, but rather to affirm, from within lived experience, the educational value families can provide when they become spaces of sustained presence, care, and promise.

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