Families: can you write about them?

After seeing an old post of mine quoted on Reddit, I wanted to clarify a point about families. In my Stanford guidelines, I suggest not choosing "families" as the topic for What Matters Most. That's not a proscription or an absolute "no, no, no, never!" Rather, it's a function of my having seen a number of essays about family that don't work well. Families tend to be so important to us -- both in good and less-good ways -- that it can be hard to encapsulate everything that 'family' means in a brief school essay. Too, the essays that I've read often veer into "save it for your therapist" territory. However, by all means incorporate your family into your story if it makes sense and the focus is not on your individual family members but on you, and how you have learned, grown, evolved because of their influence. Draft out your thoughts and see how they read. For Stanford, the (op...