For most of the 20th century, the word "family" in America evoked a predictable picture of cookie-cutter cleanliness: the happily married husband and wife, their 2.5 kids, and one improbably well-behaved golden retriever, all under the same roof. But the nuclear family has steadily eroded over the last 50 years.
The first major death knell came with the 1973 oil crisis and the two-year recession that followed, which signaled the end of the West's postwar prosperity boom. Since then, the nuclear family has crumbled piece by piece. In 1970, more than two-thirds of American adults between 25 and 49 lived with a spouse and at least one kid. By 2021, only 37% of adults fit the bill, Pew Research found.
Although it may be premature to declare the nuclear family officially over, the model is beginning to look more like a fringe lifestyle choice than the bedrock of American society.
The demise has sparked no shortage of (often racist, sexist, and homophobic) political backlash. From Elon Musk, the father of 11 kids, to the failed GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, defenders of so-called "traditional family values" decry the potential economic hazards of plummeting birth rates and the social disorder caused by unruly men without wives to rein them in. Some even argue that the nuclear family is the cornerstone of democracy itself.
Others, meanwhile, have eagerly cheered on the shift away from the stifling gender politics of the four-person norm. Critics include radical family-abolition scholars such as M.E. O'Brien, whose 2023 book "Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care" argues that the contained family structures "cannot carry the immense burden of work placed on them." On the other end of the political spectrum, in an early 2020 cover story for The Atlantic, the conservative columnist David Brooks declared the nuclear family "a mistake." Since the onset of the pandemic, the looming cloud of skepticism hanging over the whole concept of the "nuclear family" has only thickened.
Like it or hate it, the future of the family has never appeared so uncertain. For a society structured around the ideal of the nuclear family, its demise has left everyone wondering: What happens now?
The article continues here. It's well worth a read, and to me, explains why old white men are so conservative ---- they feel threatened by the shift in society. Whereas they were once the pinnacle of society, now others --- women, Blacks and gays --- have risen. Things have shifted, and continue to shift. And the "ideal" society they revere, which in fact only existed for a few decades in this form, which they however see as the only way society can be organised, is changing, irreversibly. Expect the culture wars to continue. Futilely.
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