This is another excellent question.
Fiction is about conflict, and that conflict is often in the context of a family relationship. It may be a stage-of-life thing, but I’m over books where the teenage protagonist has #FirstWorldProblems with their (in my opinion) reasonable parent or parents. I’m also not keen on books where the parents are made out to be some kind of ogres … who have magically produced a well-adjusted child or teenager. #YeahRight.
But there is more to family relationships than parents and children.
There is also siblings … and there are a lot of stories which feature siblings.
Susan May Warren’s Christiansen Family series features the Christiansen siblings (and their parents). Now, it has to be said that they aren’t always “healthy” family relationships, but the emphasis is on acknowledging problems and doing whatever you can to fix the relationships. That’s healthy.
Dee Henderson’s O’Malley romantic suspense series features seven adopted siblings, so that’s a different kind of family. They also disagree, but they’re all noble adults who would do anything for each other.
And, of course, there are Clarke and Marty’s family from Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke, and the Baxter family by Karen Kingsbury, as I mentioned last week.
It’s interesting that all the examples I can think of are series.
I really liked Deborah Raney’s Chickory Lane series. I appreciated that the parents and even a grandparent are still alive and in the picture, playing important roles in their adult children’s lives. I liked the interactions between the adult siblings and their spouses too. Very good series.