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The Postmodern Family Clan
- loraa 8y agoCults are good at this.
- loraa 8y agoAs always, I guess a bunch of millennials don't have a clue about cults.
- loudtieblahblah 8y agoIt's as if Lennart Poettering redesigned the family.
- brodouevencode 8y agoComplete with feature creep.
- sandyhatches 8y agoI love this so much.
- mac01021 8y agoDoes something about this remind you of systemd?
- smashcash 8y agoAs explained in the article, postmodern family clans have a lot of (financial) benefits over single-couple families. But it would be very sad if financial reasons (such as expensive housing) would be what drives people to live in such clans.
- chobeat 8y agoWell, material limitations always determinated societal structures. I don't see why it should be different or more sad now.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- resiros 8y agoFunnily the postmodern family clan looks quite similar to the old fashioned non-nuclear family: The grandfather would have multiple children, which all live in the same household. Each of the marrying sons will bring their wives (and then children) to the main household. The whole family will help each other and the responsibility of children will be shared between everyone.
- chobeat 8y agoWell, postmodernism is about reverting the changes that illuminism and capitalism brought to the world and that are not working with society, so I feel it's totally fine to go back to more functioning structures.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 8y agoIt says at the end that this "postmodern family clan" is explicitly NOT "An extended or multi-generational family defined by consanguinity".
- iguy 8y agoWhere such families existed, they had ties of blood to bind them. The brother who loses his job will be supported by first-degree relatives, not by people he met on Tinder-for-couples. (And even better for stability if his wife is also related to the clan.) But it's worth knowing that such families were not common everywhere. Nuclear families have certainly been the rule in England for at least 500 years (we have good data) and likely much longer. France is the same, but Russia is different, IIRC.
- Charlaxy 8y agoThe increasing rate of generational change makes this more difficult to organize than in the past. One hundred years ago, a granddaughter was basically living the same lifestyle as her grandmother. Today, the two would have less common ground and more likely to be in different political hemispheres.
- leovingi 8y agoCongratulations, you have invented the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment
- quantummkv 8y agoEverything old is new again
- hanklazard 8y agoInteresting read. I think this idea underestimated the challenges posed by having more adults in a family unit, especially when major decisions are made. Life events like moving to a new city, finding new employment, etc can be very difficult even for two people. Add in a few more and it seems that every major decision is being made by a committee—I imagine this could be very frustrating and problematic. Jim + Sally create a family clan with Dan + Steve. Amongst them there are 5 children. Dan loses his job and the finances get tight. Steve is supportive of Dan taking a new job, but it is a two hr commute each way. That means that his duties taking the kids to school on tues and thurs will have to be shifted to Sally or Jim (Steve can’t drive due to a vision issue). Both Jim and Sally are already working long days and would prefer for Dan to just keep looking for another job closer to home. Many meetings and many arguments ensue. In this way, a PMFC just seems to create more entanglement between adults who would otherwise be free to make independent decisions.
- iguy 8y agoLooking on the bright side, just imagine how many divorce lawyers could be saved from unemployment!
- sovietmudkipz 8y agoEntertainment instantiation of the multi-parent idea... Have you ever watched Futureman (M rated comedy)? In season 2 in a post apocalyptic world family units are composed of 5 parents. Each parent has a role to play. Your proposal made me think of that family setup. How would a multi parent family unit deal with personal relationships? In the show, every parent was “married” to each other and they collectively engaged intercourse as a group. In reality I bet people would have favorites and that would collapse the parental dynamic.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoIt would seem that throughout history and across the world, societies with at least a pretense of long term monogamous relationships have survived longer than polyamorous ones.
- 8y ago
- tryum 8y agoThey call that a cluster in the NAG :P
- UweSchmidt 8y agoThe claim that the changes outlined in the first paragraph are good for the individual and society could use some proof. Either way, the fact that the article speculates about a revolutionary new family concept shows that there are a few unsolved issues. The ideas proposed in the article seem completely delusional to me. I would consider staying on good terms with a former partner a success, and being cool with their new partner a nice bonus. Moving in with those guys, even shouldering that other dude's unemployment, as the article suggests? An unfair, possibly disrespectful proposal. Stereotypically, it could be the idea of someone who likes to have both the earning power and stability of the former, and the curious attractiveness of the new parter, conveniently combined in one household? Fundamentally, the idea of a 'clan' goes contrary to the overarching trend of Individualism, which has brought us so many individual freedoms but dismantled so many formal and informal social constructs. Individualists will not submit to an artificial 'clan' unless forced by massive external pressure. A struggle to survive that has created those social constructs in the first place.
- sandyhatches 8y ago"...and they probably met online." That's really gonna need some citation. Given the rise of online dating to cultural acceptance is only within the last decade or so (sorry no source, I'm not a journalist :p), I find it incredibly unlikely that those family units have surpassed offline meets in number so as to make "probably" accurate.
- Communitivity 8y agoI loved Robert Heinlein's books. Though I disagreed with his philosophies about women, his predictions about the future were amazing. He predicted something similar to this, and called it S-Groups.
- shard972 8y agoI'm sorry but i just find the idea quite horrifying for the children involved. On paper everything is just daises but I just don't see this turning out well if this were to start becoming a common trend. Or maybe the human race can transcend the nuclear family, I guess we will find out soon enough.
- kaybe 8y agoWhat kind of problems do you envision?
- 0x445442 8y agoI see these types of stories as propaganda aiming to placate younger generations into accepting a lower standard of living than their predecessors. The ones I really get a kick out of are all the Tiny Home shows popping up. I know, I know, some people really are embracing simplicity and being unencumbered by the responsibilities past generations faced. However, what these types of stories are really saying is; sorry but because of inflation and the ponzi scheme that is our financial system you young folks are just not going to have what your parents and grandparents had so you'd better start embracing things like family cohabitation and tiny homes. Instead of accepting this drivel I'd really like to see the gen Zers call bullshit and start demanding that they can be plumbers, electricians, nurses etc. AND still have single, detached family dwellings in Palo Alto.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoNo one is being stopped from asking for $200k+ salaries.
- Charlaxy 8y agoI have similar thoughts every time I see food trucks that are charging full-service restaurant prices for people to stand on the street and eat carbs. There's an argument to be made that it's faster or more convenient than full-service as well as higher quality than conventional fast food and that you're paying for that, but it's also asking consumers to accept less than previous generations expected for their dinner experience, while paying as much or more. I see it as a symptom of the rising cost of running an establishment, instead of a reflection of changing tastes. Some humans are too good at making virtues of inconveniences instead of tackling the source of the inconvenience. I'm pleasantly surprised whenever I see a Tiny Home that isn't a death-trap with a single exit.
- kiba 8y agoThere's no need for such a dichotomy. How about we live simpler lives and yet become wealthier? And I have no idea why would we want to all live in single detached home when the alternative is to densify and reduce humanity's footprint on nature.
- poilcn 8y ago
- patrickg_zill 8y agoHeinlein speculated about this in the book, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Except they were family corporations that were multi-generational as well.
- josephpmay 8y agoThis concept really appeals to me, but I’m disappointed the article failed to talk at all about what could go wrong. Another comment here discussed the difficulty in decision making for big life choices, but in addition to that what happens when one of the couples falls out of love and wants to divorce? Suddenly the other couple might be expected to “choose sides” and the messiness of a normal divorce is compounded by semi-related children and communal responsibilities.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoIt's basically reinventing an LLP business. Operating a home or family has a business aspect to it, and a single spouse is great for providing a backup income, labor, and obviously to help procreate. However, even a single spouse comes at a cost of adding politics to the business, just like adding a business partner would. And the more business partners you add, the more politics you get.
- jnbiche 8y agoAll of the benefits described by the author's proposed "postmodern family" are already enjoyed by much of the world's population, a large portion of which lives in extended family compounds. From India to the Middle East, and S. America to much Africa, families live together in multigenerational housing. Indeed, even many Americans lived in this type of arrangement up until the WWII era. And the benefits to this living arrangement are significant: multiple income streams provide resiliency against sudden sickness and death, better living quarters, available childcare instead of having to pay someone outside the family to do so, etc. Unfortunately, modern Western society has decided that living in multigenerational living arrangements is shameful, and indicates failure. I support the idea of this author's "postmodern family clan" (although I don't like the name). Particularly for those people who don't have extended family, suffer from abuse from family members, or are estranged from their extended family. However, we should also consider the advantages of the living arrangements enjoyed by much (most?) of the world's population -- the extended, multigenerational family unit.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThe likelihood of 6 adult individuals meeting and having sufficient overlap in goals and interests and habits to create a cohesive home is laughable. It's hard enough to do with just 2 financially independent individuals, not to mention navigating relationships when the value of one individual drops relative to the other(s).
- jnbiche 8y ago> The likelihood of 6 adult individuals meeting and having sufficient overlap in goals and interests and habits to create a cohesive home is laughable. I disagree. Already, there's a significant movement underway in the US called "co-living", which shares a lot of the features described by the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coliving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coliving
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThat's great until you throw a child into the mix. Or a sick in law who needs care. Or anything more complicated than a clean kitchen and bathroom.
- bmj 8y agoThis is straight out of Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos.
- tuned 8y agois the concept of clan by definition pre-modern?
- purplezooey 8y agoTogether, the couples can purchase a large home... Yes, of course!
- gjsman-1000 8y agoOverall... great way to cover up the lower living standards. What next? 5 parents? 6 parents? In fact, could the entire society be parents together? Completely idiotic.