The foundation of family is integral for developing individual character, personal security, and meaningful social relationships. The absence of domestic kinship in one's upbringing leaves one yearning to fill the void of the primordial desire for affection. Yet such an absence deprives guidance on how to develop human relationships appropriately, leading to disastrous outcomes in attempts to fill the void of affection. The perpetuation of insufficient parental love is universal, with many countries and communities witnessing victims of child abuse or neglect growing up to perpetrate the same abuse upon their children. 

"Cromer" and "The Valley of the Moon" by Paul Yoon, two stories from his collection *The Hive and the Honey*, exhibit a parallel in which adults deprived of the stable foundation of home and family strive to fill such voids through immature attempts to adopt children or child figures. Harry's and Tongsu's respective ideals to claim fatherhood over the injured child and Eunhae and Unsik reflect their lack of parental guidance and societal isolation. Through Harry and Tongsu, Yoon exposes the necessity of familial kinship before attempting to develop one's family.

The premature absence of respective parental figures and subsequent societal isolation for Harry and Tongsu left both men in social insecurity. Upon the deaths of Harry's and Grace's fathers and the elopement of Grace's mother, Harry lost the ability to form and retain interpersonal relationships, having grown "more solitary ... to the life outside their shop windows and each other" (Yoon, 74). Likewise, upon his return to his former home in the mountains, Tongsu severed his connections with human civilization, "[growing] his own food" and "[thinking] less of ... bodies sleeping and living and sh**ting and pissing and working around him" (Yoon, 129). 

Societal isolation due to the absence of parental guidance was inevitable, especially under challenging circumstances such as the Korean diaspora and the aftermath of the Korean War, respectively. The discomfort of accommodating foreign customs and mockery due to his North Korean heritage decimated Harry's network until "[Grace] ... was the only person left that could be called his family" (Yoon, 74). Nor could Harry rely on his past lineage as his foundation since "their fathers never spoke about their lives before this one" (Yoon, 72). Such constraints limiting social progression conflicted with Harry's desire to extend his family through children, culminating in his excessive obsession with the injured child and Cromer. 

Likewise, Tongsu's remoteness due to the premature death of his parents deprived him of his social foundation; like Harry, he could "[no longer] think of his parents and his sister" and could "recall neither their faces nor their voices anymore" (Yoon, 130). Tongsu's response to such was to find kinship with a pig because it showed absolute obedience by "[following] him around all through the house" and did not require interpersonal communication with it" (Yoon, 134). Had Harry and Tongsu not lost parental guidance so prematurely, both men would have retained their social foundations amidst hostile circumstances. As such, they would have extended their intimate networks without resorting to their respective methods. 

Upon unsuccessful attempts to find familial kinship from their respective child figures, Harry and Tongsu resort to destructive interactions with people within their intimate connections. Harry's encounter with the injured child reinvigorates his innate desire for children, prompting him to abandon his work and "[ask] Grace to cover for him" (Yoon, 79) to travel to Cromer. At Cromer, he finds a child resemblant to the injured child he encounters and stalks him. On the other hand, unsatisfied by his adoption of Eunhae and Unsik, Tongsu's relationship with the children wanes to the extent where he "ignored their glances" and did nothing but "stare across at the valley floor" (Yoon, 140).

Harry and Tongsu differ in that while Harry's destructive behavior stems from his void of a family foundation other than Grace, Tongsu conflicts with how his new family with Eunhae and Unsik vastly differs from his ideal relationship. Even so, the insecurities of both men directly manifest in their interactions with their respective targets. Harry's sense of loss in losing connection to the child he nearly psychologically perceived as his own translated into the abandonment of his daily life and the threat he imposed upon the resemblant boy in Cromer. Likewise, Tongsu was crestfallen that Eunhae and Unsik never came to "call him their father" (Yoon, 135) and never exhibited the same unidirectional affection as the pig. As such, he perceived the pig's death as the complete replacement of his ideal child figure, the pig, by his flawed child figures, Eunhae and Unsik. He was crestfallen to the extent that he was "[behaving] illogically and recklessly and selfishly" and translating such frustrations into physically assaulting Unsik. The insecurity of the absence of satisfactory family relationships prompted Harry and Tongsu to behave irrationally and cause harm to their respective perceived child figures. 

Not only would the presence of a prominent family have prevented such longings, but parental guidance would have deterred Harry and Tongsu from such irrational and inappropriate pursuits. The absence of a supportive family foundation led both Harry and Tongsu to translate their absence of such relationships to the child figures they found kinship with. It is human nature to fill one's voids of insecurity. However, the absence of human relationships stemming from parental support deprives one of the capacity to fill such gaps through appropriate and mutually lasting manners. As such, attempts to build one's family in the absence of familial security inevitably lead to the perpetuation of harmful relationships. As witnessed by the universal occurrences of child abuse and neglect perpetrated by former victims of such, the necessity of parental and social security is irreplaceable for constructive character development, especially amidst challenging circumstances where societal isolation is prevalent.