Is it healthy for families to argue and fight?

My family loves to fight. Nearly every time I go for dinner with my nearest and dearest, I can expect an argument, a heated discussion, a feisty altercation. Forget sweeping things under the rug; we’re the kind of family who rips up the carpet and the floorboards beneath, digging into the foundations to see what we can find.

It’s been like this for as long as I can remember. Around the dinner table as kids, debate was encouraged, which often ended with me – the younger, dumber sibling – running to my bedroom in tears. As we grew older and more evenly matched, my older brother and I would spar, criticising each other’s arguments, pointing out weak logic or flawed assumptions. Eventually, my younger brother entered the fray, along with my husband, who could argue underwater.

Over time, we’ve evolved our technique, added in more listening and less pedantry, but it still occasionally ends in tears. And yet, I wouldn’t change it for the world. In fact, I think most families would benefit from a little argy-bargy over Christmas dinner or Easter lunch. No need to roast just the food!

For us, these conversations have brought us closer, helped us better understand one another. From body image to drugs, periods to politics, woke culture to work culture, we’ve gone there. These topics act like a jumping off point for deeper connection, a vehicle to uncover hidden stories that have shaped who we are. Each time we lock horns on a thorny topic, I learn something about my loved one that makes sense of their opinion. We are, after all, the sum of our experiences.

Such fights have also humbled me. It’s rare to have people who will challenge you to be better, call you out when you’re telling a story that’s biased, blinkered, or objectively incorrect. And while it’s important to surround yourself with people who align with your values and support your convictions, we also need those who will counter us with love. Partly because that counter encourages us to bolster our arguments, but also because there’s always another side to the story.

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Recent research revealed that politically, Gen Zs are divided along gender lines, with young women becoming increasingly liberal while men veer more conservative. It’s easy to throw out “Andrew Tate” or “the extreme left” as reasons for this schism, but the reality is far more complicated. If we believe this is an issue – which personally I do – we must find a way to knit our society back together, one conversation at a time.

And so, as a young feminist who was educated by a liberal university, I actively work to understand views that are not always in alignment with my own. For my brothers and my husband, who are all “straight, white, cis men” living in a culture that both privileges and derides them for this fact, talking to me exposes them to ideas they might not otherwise get to hear.

When I hear stories of families unable to talk because of differences in politics or perspectives, I despair: Teens unable to communicate with their parents because neither side can listen; siblings who are so disconnected that their conversations are polite and meaningless; people whose arguments are so rigid and flimsy that disagreement becomes a form of trauma.