Children thrive in a loving family, no matter how unconventional | Gaby Hinsliff

A pro-family government would need to embrace a sometimes messy, blurry but realistic concept of what it seeks to support

It was love, rather than duty, that took a good friend of mine to a funeral last week. But it was the kind of love that can be hard to explain.

She hadn't lost a blood relative, or a friend. Instead, the funeral was for the first wife of my friend's much-married father, a woman for whom - unlike a cousin or a sibling or even a step-parent - there isn't an official word. But still, she was family, the beloved mother of my friend's equally beloved older half-sisters, a fixture in all of their long-interwoven lives, even though they had never all lived together under one roof. As always in grief, it isn't only love for the deceased that brings us together, but love for the living and bereaved.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist