EP 44 What happened to the Nuclear family unit
#FAMILY #NUCLEARFAMILY #FAMILYVALUES
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EP. 44
As fewer and fewer children grow up in nuclear family units—today, less than half of all children are living with two parents in their first marriage, a significant decline from 1960 when nearly two-thirds were—this American vision of family life is both increasingly uncommon and incompatible with the demands of modern life. There’s universal agreement that family life has become harder and less stable for everyone, at least by some metrics, and that’s especially true for working-class folks. And yet we don’t yet have any model of family life to replace the nuclear family. That’s because, Brooks writes, “while social conservatives have a philosophy of family life they can’t operationalize, because it’s no longer relevant, progressives have no philosophy of family life at all.” Seldom do I agree with Brooks, but on this point, he’s correct.
Progressives are finally beginning to understand that the decline of nuclear families among working-class and poor folks is better understood as one symptom of growing economic inequality, not its cause, as conservatives typically contend. But the right continues to argue that decades of deviation from the nuclear family unit is a sign of cultural decay, employing fears about “family breakdown” as a dog whistle intended to blame black people for their own hardships. The pundit class, meanwhile, is locked into a debate over the best way to rebuild nuclear families, rather than explore alternative arrangements or philosophies of family life that might serve us all better.
