No, the nuclear family is not the reason we're all miserable, but if the nuclear family is your sole outlet for community then it may well be. I've recently re

No, the nuclear family is not the reason we're all miserable, but if the nuclear family is your sole outlet for community then it may well be. I've recently realized that my wife and I are very much people who want a "village" for lack of a better word. A wide circle of friends whose lives we regularly move through as they move through ours and is in close geographic area. It takes effort and time, especially with peoples busy schedules. It means that we do things like host a Halloween potluck on our front lawn for the neighborhood before we were off to trick-or-treat with the kids, that we speak to our neighbors when we're on walks and know their dogs names, making some encouragement signs for the elementary schools 5k run that passed in front of our house, and dozens of other things. We've made our home in an area that facilitates this, with a little "downtown" area with a pharmacy, a neighborhood bar, and a few restaurants within walking distance an easy 15 minute commute from city center. We can't go anywhere on the weekend without seeing and talking to someone we know or being introduced to someone we don't. And as a bit of an introvert I don't always enjoy every interaction, but I do crave it for my family. I don't get into playing with kids much and their volume is at time stressful, but I love seeing mine run around with friends on long summer evenings and being so excited to see them when we're out running errands and how my wife enjoys being able to catch up with our friends for a shared dinner around our table or theirs on a week night. It also means that there is some amount of shared responsibility for each other, which means things like being offered a generator when our power was out for a couple of days thanks to this seasons hurricanes. It means an extra set of hands for whatever tasks is usually no further than a text message way. It means that our homes are full of condolences and offerings of food/child care when there is a serious sickness or death in the family. It takes a lot of work, and the stay at home parents (mostly women and maybe as much as a quarter or so of the families in our group) all put a lot of effort in facilitating these kinds of relationships, reinforcing those connections on a daily and weekly basis that the whole profits from. Its not for everyone, but for people like the OP finding a community like this can go well past solving any sense of isolation.