Extended or nuclear family?

[Old_alum]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/

thoughts?

 

[Pirata]

Interesting article.

It parallels my life experience with the decay of our extended family.

I have more affinity now to friends than family.

My wife and I live 60 miles from our nearest relative which is our daughter and SIL. From there it grows to hundreds and thousands of miles.

 

[Old_alum]

Sadly, it is happening to all of us.

Another sad note was how short the period of (my) normalcy had been—-1950-1965

the (imho) exponential exacerbation from personal “screens” of iPhones could also be depressing

is there a cure?

 

[HALL85]

Excellent article. Thank you for posting.

I guess the question is, what’s next? some factors to consider. Birth rates are plummeting (Cost of raising children and couples marrying later), Healthcare costs continue to rise, and we are going to be left with a large inventory of three and four bedroom homes that are not going to be a fit for smaller nuclear families. I also saw some stats that job relocation is also down substantially. People are valuing staying in an area, benefiting from family, etc. and technology is enabling that.

Hard to predict, but will we be a society that reverts to more extended family structure in a geography? Parents moving in with children to defray costs.

 

[Merge]

thoughts?

I have some causation / correlation disagreements in the main premise of the piece but I don't necessarily think that he is wrong that generally isolationism is bad for our country. In fact, one of the things that drew me towards supporting Mayor Pete this time around was his belief in building national service opportunities. I really do believe we need to figure out a way to fix how divided we are, and service opportunities would be a great way to start. A lot of who I am today was built on having opportunities like that through my church. I'd like to see opportunities like what I experienced outside of a religious affiliation.

is there a cure?

I would probably say yes, but it depends how you frame that question. I don't believe Brooks proved his theory that the problems he mentions are a result of nuclear families specifically, but I agree with him that building an extended family within our communities would help.