After being missing for 51 years, Melissa Highsmith has been reunited with her family. Highsmith was kidnapped from her Fort Worth, TX, family in 1971 when she was 22 months old. Who was her kidnapper? Well, that was her then first-time babysitter, a woman Melissa’s mother had just met. Shockingly, Melissa’s kidnapper did not abscond with her to another state or country. In fact, Melissa was raised in Fort Worth under the name “Melanie.” Highsmith had no idea she was kidnapped, nor did she know that her family was searching for her. Thanks to a 23andMe DNA match, the mystery of her disappearance has been solved and Melissa has been reunited with her parents. While the love of a parent for a child is the heartwarming aspect of this story, from a sociological perspective, it opens the door for us to discuss the broader topic of family.
For our purposes, family is defined as a group of people connected by blood, marriage, adoption, or agreed-upon relationship. Even though Melissa’s background was significantly outside the norm of what most people experience, she still experienced a family of orientation, the family in which you are raised and socialized as a result of birth, adoption, or a blended family. In Highsmith’s case, she was born into one family and socialized for the majority of her childhood in another.
Families are socially constructed and historically changing. This means how families look varies over time and from society to society. For some people, marriage is a prerequisite to starting a family. Marriage is a socially constructed relationship that assumes financial and sexual cooperation between two people. Interestingly, the rate of marriage in the United States has been on a steady decline. In the 1990s, it was 9.8 per 1000. In 2020, that number dropped to 5.1 per 1000. While this might not seem like a huge change, it is worth noting that the rate was 12 per 1,000 in the 1920s. Instead of marriage, many couples are choosing cohabitation, a residential pattern in which a couple lives together without the benefit of legal marriage. Recent research has found the rate of cohabitation in the 18-34 age bracket is 242 per 1000. That number stands at 60 per 1000 for adults over the age of 50.
Melissa’s kidnapping means that for 51 years, she lost access to her biological nuclear family, a family consisting of one or more and children. She was not raised by her parents, nor was she able to grow up with her four siblings. Highsmith also missed out on a relationship with her biological extended family. This would have included other kin such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins living in the same household or nearby.
