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The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. It assumes that every family wants two parents and the children in the house

The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. It assumes that every family wants two parents and the children in the house together as the optimal arrangement It also assumes that individuals prefer to live alone and not with friends or extended family I think the extreme end of this are homes for a married couple with no kids that have a gym, a pool, a garden and basically all of the other things that would’ve otherwise been community places. The happiest people I see are the ones who live communally. For example, I have a friend who is Catholic and she lives with four other Catholic girls in what’s effectively a woman’s long house. This is an optimal situation for her because she’s not married and doesn’t prefer to live alone because she benefits from the community they create. Obviously, some people prefer to live alone. I would have claimed was me up until I was married but in fact, I actually hated living alone. It was just what you do and so you work to make it as comfortable as possible. I currently live alone but would much rather live with my friends but that’s just not something people seem to want. We created a socio-economic trap where long term social groups atrophy or never form because we’re over producing things to cushion the loneliness we forced ourselves into.

munificent 3y ago
Another way that the nuclearization gets reinforced is that learning to get along with people different from us and be comfortable sharing a space with someone and making compromises is a skill that must be learned and practice. But when everyone's living arrangement is atomized and when consumer corporations tell us that we should have every personal whim catered to, we fail to develop that very important life skill and it becomes much harder to live with people than it would be otherwise.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I think this fits. In an effort to eliminate every possible thing that will cause you discomfort, you end up getting rid of the primary thing which can bring you joy. I have three kids and it’s a common experience I have with people with no kids that they only ask me about the difficult challenges, lack of sleep, etc… I’ve literally only met a handful of people who asked me about the fun and joy of kids.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    We saw the extreme of this in the British "heyday" for wealthy families; the parents would barely be involved with the children except almost second-hand. Perpetually raised by nannies until handed off to boarding schools. I think everyone will admit there are people who seem to get along with everyone, but people don't want to admit it's a skill that can be learned (mainly through self-change, but also through knowing how to influence conversations and let little things slide) because then it's just another thing they COULD do and don't (like going on a diet).
ericmay 3y ago
> The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. It's probably not a problem or a root problem, it's just a cultural feature that's experiencing challenges due to changing economic factors and bad regulation. It's ok and normal that the expectation in some countries including the United States is that people are more individualistic and that nuclear families tend to be the norm. I'd argue that the problem that's evading us here isn't solved by increases in communal living (although boarding houses and single-unit apartments with common spaces could help - but good luck enforcing cleanliness standards since we're a bunch of animals), but instead is solved by building with appropriate levels of density such that regardless of your living arrangement preferences you can still live near enough other people, restaurants, doctors offices, work, etc. and activities that are appropriate for the stage of life you are in. If you are single you might be renting or living in a small studio apartment. You don't have to hate living alone when you don't have to spend all day cooped up unless you want to drive 15 miles to participate in society. You can walk out your front door. The married (and obviously wealthy) couple can invite the neighbors over for a BBQ and to hang out by the pool. But you can't do that really in the suburbs. The four Catholic girls can still live in their long house and probably have an easier time participating in local charity or prayer events since they don't have to drive to go participate in those activities and make them a chore. Etc.
- giantg2 3y ago
  "You don't have to hate living alone when you don't have to spend all day cooped up unless you want to drive 15 miles to participate in society. You can walk out your front door." For some people, walking out their front door to be with nature might be their preference. "The married (and obviously wealthy) couple can invite the neighbors over for a BBQ and to hang out by the pool. But you can't do that really in the suburbs." I'm baffled by this statement. I don't have a pool and I'm not wealthy, but we still invite neighbors over for a cookout. This seems more normal in the suburbs that rurally or even in the city (although some places have block parties).
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I think people often have a vastly different opinion of the suburbs if they don't live there or they live in an "age-inappropriate" one which will often occur if you're living at home, for example. You may be the only 25-30 year old in a neighborhood that consists entirely of people ... your parent's age. That's going to have obvious issues unless you go out of your way to be friendly and outgoing to people who likely have vastly different schedules than you do. Whereas if you're a young family living in a suburb full of young families, you're likely going to "fit in" easier, and even if you don't go out of your way to meet people you'll continue to run into them because external factors are similar (bus arrives at the same time, school activities are similar, kids escaped and are riding the dog into the sunset, etc). Suburbs naturally tend toward this age-based stratification because of how easy and similar they are, and just from building schedules. Almost all the new homes in developments around here are "children" homes, clearly visible from the playsets in the backyards. Those houses will now be "in sync" for decades from that. Cities often are more mixed (though I would argue that suburbs should be, too), and even if they're not you can quickly escape to "your people."
dmm 3y ago
Collectivism is good because you have a tightly integrated communities that take care of each-other. Outsiders often see those parts and think it looks pretty great. But what they are missing are downsides of collectivism. All real-world collectivist groups have strict rules about acceptable behaviors, lifestyles, clothing, etc. Members who deviate from these rules are punished in various ways to pressure them to change: public shaming, expulsion, etc. And I don't think this is an accident. How would a community where members are expect to directly support each-other work if a member could just do whatever they wanted? Suppose you and I create a commune and a few months in I decide to just drink beer and play video games all day. Are you going to happily keep working and supporting me? I think the trend of modern people toward individualism is mostly the result of revealed preferences. People, for better or worse, want to make their own choices about their lives.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I think it also reveals that those pressure methods for collectives have weakened over time - and that this can also be a big part of the "EU/US political divide" - a country where everyone is already "collectively well-behaved" will have few issues with the "beer and video games" type people; a country where that's much weaker will have fallen back to "work or starve" as a final collectivism push. If you apply policies from the first country to the second you can get vastly different results.
- test6554 3y ago
  I've had bad group members in multiple class projects. Bad roommates in college that take food and don't pay their rent. I've seen people break shared resources and lie when called out. I've had dinner guests order more expensive menu items when they know the bill is getting split. It has influenced my opinions on collectivism substantially.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Voluntary association and options are the cornerstone of any collective endeavor. Collective with these features can be great. A marriage can be a great example of collective. A forced marriage, less so.
dnissley 3y ago
> The happiest people I see are the ones who live communally. I think we should be very careful here. Are you sure this isn't just grass-is-greener syndrome? By which I mean to ask: How have you chosen to live? Are you happy with that? And if not, are you making moves to get into a situation in which your beliefs about happiness (communal living) line up with your actions?
giantg2 3y ago
"It assumes that every family wants two parents and the children in the house together as the optimal arrangement" In the opposite direction, even this is not easily achievable today. Lots of single parent households. The US has the highest rate. It seems difficult to maintain relationships when the primary one that's supposed to be the longest lasting (outside of blood relatives) is failing at such a high rate.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Working (and living) with someone is hard work though movies and stories rarely reveal this. Society has mutually agreed that if two people don't want to put in the work, they can split. Society has yet to really get to the next step of "living with kids is hard work, so you can just abandon the kids". This is not to say that real reasons for divorce don't exist, but there are those who use it as the "easy way out". It's interesting that everyone's ex is the absolute devil, even if they happen to be currently married to someone else's ex.
  - times_trw 3y ago
    >Society has mutually agreed that if two people don't want to put in the work, they can split. Society has yet to really get to the next step of "living with kids is hard work, so you can just abandon the kids". Society has decided that kids are a fashion accessory and the primary driver of population growth will be immigration - it's cheaper too no need to things like schools.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
The crazy thing is how hard it is to not live this way.
yterdy 3y ago
My suspicion is that people who tend to want to live alone feel that way because of some experience with trauma. The baseline seems to be that people desire some measure of company, whether that be intimacy or conversation or just reassurance that they're not The Sole Survivor. When people say that they're happier without some sort of regular interaction, something has disrupted the natural inclination. Depending on circumstances, that may be optimal: if you're surrounded by abusers and people you can't rely on, self-sufficiency is clearly the approach least likely to see you hurt. However, if what I've described is an accurate model, it does mean that the prospect of an even better quality of life lingers in the background, should the happy-alone person find access to treatment for that trauma and a generally healthier and more pro-social environment. Maybe I'm wrong though, and there are just people who would rather be alone, and that is their max healthful state. Even if this isn't the case, I think it would be wrong to assume access to those healing resources mentioned above is readily available to any given individual; it's probably not helpful to hound someone to get therapy because they say they don't like company. All of this also doesn't mean that there aren't people who feel the need to shack up BECAUSE of trauma.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  This is actually exactly right in my opinion. I went from being a self professed “introvert/ambivert” from the age of 16-35 to “extrovert” by the time I was 39 by recognizing my massive unrealized trauma. Not completely there but I can manage my CPTSD with my care team and actually love love being around people. The difference is the kind of people I’m around and how i treat myself. I think the majority of people, myself included, are just walking trauma bags that have no self-awareness of their trauma, triggers and are primarily reacting to the world. Very few people are self-realized and contextually aware of their environment so they are operating with a very limited and narrow observation-action space compared to what they are capable of.
xtiansimon 3y ago
> “…homes for a married couple with no kids that have a gym, a pool, a garden…” And our personal lives are similarly rife isolating differences. Consumer culture makes us into people who like movies and buy projector screens, and sports and exercise so we buy fancy bicycles, and sometimes we are busy so we buy Peloton and we like travel so we buy RVs or touring motorcycles and we like music so we get a guitar and we like hacking so we have a home server and IOT devices. What living space we do have is filled with the clutter of our free-time consumer/internet passions. I don’t expect these multitudes of distractions make us good housemates (not unlike our mobile phones making us poor dinner dates). The people who I’ve enjoyed sharing space with shared my interests, but that is impossible selection to make from general public. You have to be in a community, and then select from there. I’m not a college student anymore.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. But this is what Capitalism negotiated with them. They said, work hard and you can have the American Dream. Now, Capitalists have become greedy. They wish to renege.

munificent 3y ago

Another way that the nuclearization gets reinforced is that learning to get along with people different from us and be comfortable sharing a space with someone and making compromises is a skill that must be learned and practice. But when everyone's living arrangement is atomized and when consumer corporations tell us that we should have every personal whim catered to, we fail to develop that very important life skill and it becomes much harder to live with people than it would be otherwise.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I think this fits. In an effort to eliminate every possible thing that will cause you discomfort, you end up getting rid of the primary thing which can bring you joy. I have three kids and it’s a common experience I have with people with no kids that they only ask me about the difficult challenges, lack of sleep, etc… I’ve literally only met a handful of people who asked me about the fun and joy of kids.
- bombcar 3y ago
  We saw the extreme of this in the British "heyday" for wealthy families; the parents would barely be involved with the children except almost second-hand. Perpetually raised by nannies until handed off to boarding schools. I think everyone will admit there are people who seem to get along with everyone, but people don't want to admit it's a skill that can be learned (mainly through self-change, but also through knowing how to influence conversations and let little things slide) because then it's just another thing they COULD do and don't (like going on a diet).

ericmay 3y ago

> The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. It's probably not a problem or a root problem, it's just a cultural feature that's experiencing challenges due to changing economic factors and bad regulation. It's ok and normal that the expectation in some countries including the United States is that people are more individualistic and that nuclear families tend to be the norm. I'd argue that the problem that's evading us here isn't solved by increases in communal living (although boarding houses and single-unit apartments with common spaces could help - but good luck enforcing cleanliness standards since we're a bunch of animals), but instead is solved by building with appropriate levels of density such that regardless of your living arrangement preferences you can still live near enough other people, restaurants, doctors offices, work, etc. and activities that are appropriate for the stage of life you are in. If you are single you might be renting or living in a small studio apartment. You don't have to hate living alone when you don't have to spend all day cooped up unless you want to drive 15 miles to participate in society. You can walk out your front door. The married (and obviously wealthy) couple can invite the neighbors over for a BBQ and to hang out by the pool. But you can't do that really in the suburbs. The four Catholic girls can still live in their long house and probably have an easier time participating in local charity or prayer events since they don't have to drive to go participate in those activities and make them a chore. Etc.

giantg2 3y ago
"You don't have to hate living alone when you don't have to spend all day cooped up unless you want to drive 15 miles to participate in society. You can walk out your front door." For some people, walking out their front door to be with nature might be their preference. "The married (and obviously wealthy) couple can invite the neighbors over for a BBQ and to hang out by the pool. But you can't do that really in the suburbs." I'm baffled by this statement. I don't have a pool and I'm not wealthy, but we still invite neighbors over for a cookout. This seems more normal in the suburbs that rurally or even in the city (although some places have block parties).
- bombcar 3y ago
  I think people often have a vastly different opinion of the suburbs if they don't live there or they live in an "age-inappropriate" one which will often occur if you're living at home, for example. You may be the only 25-30 year old in a neighborhood that consists entirely of people ... your parent's age. That's going to have obvious issues unless you go out of your way to be friendly and outgoing to people who likely have vastly different schedules than you do. Whereas if you're a young family living in a suburb full of young families, you're likely going to "fit in" easier, and even if you don't go out of your way to meet people you'll continue to run into them because external factors are similar (bus arrives at the same time, school activities are similar, kids escaped and are riding the dog into the sunset, etc). Suburbs naturally tend toward this age-based stratification because of how easy and similar they are, and just from building schedules. Almost all the new homes in developments around here are "children" homes, clearly visible from the playsets in the backyards. Those houses will now be "in sync" for decades from that. Cities often are more mixed (though I would argue that suburbs should be, too), and even if they're not you can quickly escape to "your people."

dmm 3y ago

Collectivism is good because you have a tightly integrated communities that take care of each-other. Outsiders often see those parts and think it looks pretty great. But what they are missing are downsides of collectivism. All real-world collectivist groups have strict rules about acceptable behaviors, lifestyles, clothing, etc. Members who deviate from these rules are punished in various ways to pressure them to change: public shaming, expulsion, etc. And I don't think this is an accident. How would a community where members are expect to directly support each-other work if a member could just do whatever they wanted? Suppose you and I create a commune and a few months in I decide to just drink beer and play video games all day. Are you going to happily keep working and supporting me? I think the trend of modern people toward individualism is mostly the result of revealed preferences. People, for better or worse, want to make their own choices about their lives.

bombcar 3y ago
I think it also reveals that those pressure methods for collectives have weakened over time - and that this can also be a big part of the "EU/US political divide" - a country where everyone is already "collectively well-behaved" will have few issues with the "beer and video games" type people; a country where that's much weaker will have fallen back to "work or starve" as a final collectivism push. If you apply policies from the first country to the second you can get vastly different results.
test6554 3y ago
I've had bad group members in multiple class projects. Bad roommates in college that take food and don't pay their rent. I've seen people break shared resources and lie when called out. I've had dinner guests order more expensive menu items when they know the bill is getting split. It has influenced my opinions on collectivism substantially.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Voluntary association and options are the cornerstone of any collective endeavor. Collective with these features can be great. A marriage can be a great example of collective. A forced marriage, less so.

dnissley 3y ago

> The happiest people I see are the ones who live communally. I think we should be very careful here. Are you sure this isn't just grass-is-greener syndrome? By which I mean to ask: How have you chosen to live? Are you happy with that? And if not, are you making moves to get into a situation in which your beliefs about happiness (communal living) line up with your actions?

giantg2 3y ago

"It assumes that every family wants two parents and the children in the house together as the optimal arrangement" In the opposite direction, even this is not easily achievable today. Lots of single parent households. The US has the highest rate. It seems difficult to maintain relationships when the primary one that's supposed to be the longest lasting (outside of blood relatives) is failing at such a high rate.

bombcar 3y ago
Working (and living) with someone is hard work though movies and stories rarely reveal this. Society has mutually agreed that if two people don't want to put in the work, they can split. Society has yet to really get to the next step of "living with kids is hard work, so you can just abandon the kids". This is not to say that real reasons for divorce don't exist, but there are those who use it as the "easy way out". It's interesting that everyone's ex is the absolute devil, even if they happen to be currently married to someone else's ex.
- times_trw 3y ago
  >Society has mutually agreed that if two people don't want to put in the work, they can split. Society has yet to really get to the next step of "living with kids is hard work, so you can just abandon the kids". Society has decided that kids are a fashion accessory and the primary driver of population growth will be immigration - it's cheaper too no need to things like schools.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

The crazy thing is how hard it is to not live this way.

yterdy 3y ago

My suspicion is that people who tend to want to live alone feel that way because of some experience with trauma. The baseline seems to be that people desire some measure of company, whether that be intimacy or conversation or just reassurance that they're not The Sole Survivor. When people say that they're happier without some sort of regular interaction, something has disrupted the natural inclination. Depending on circumstances, that may be optimal: if you're surrounded by abusers and people you can't rely on, self-sufficiency is clearly the approach least likely to see you hurt. However, if what I've described is an accurate model, it does mean that the prospect of an even better quality of life lingers in the background, should the happy-alone person find access to treatment for that trauma and a generally healthier and more pro-social environment. Maybe I'm wrong though, and there are just people who would rather be alone, and that is their max healthful state. Even if this isn't the case, I think it would be wrong to assume access to those healing resources mentioned above is readily available to any given individual; it's probably not helpful to hound someone to get therapy because they say they don't like company. All of this also doesn't mean that there aren't people who feel the need to shack up BECAUSE of trauma.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
This is actually exactly right in my opinion. I went from being a self professed “introvert/ambivert” from the age of 16-35 to “extrovert” by the time I was 39 by recognizing my massive unrealized trauma. Not completely there but I can manage my CPTSD with my care team and actually love love being around people. The difference is the kind of people I’m around and how i treat myself. I think the majority of people, myself included, are just walking trauma bags that have no self-awareness of their trauma, triggers and are primarily reacting to the world. Very few people are self-realized and contextually aware of their environment so they are operating with a very limited and narrow observation-action space compared to what they are capable of.

xtiansimon 3y ago

> “…homes for a married couple with no kids that have a gym, a pool, a garden…” And our personal lives are similarly rife isolating differences. Consumer culture makes us into people who like movies and buy projector screens, and sports and exercise so we buy fancy bicycles, and sometimes we are busy so we buy Peloton and we like travel so we buy RVs or touring motorcycles and we like music so we get a guitar and we like hacking so we have a home server and IOT devices. What living space we do have is filled with the clutter of our free-time consumer/internet passions. I don’t expect these multitudes of distractions make us good housemates (not unlike our mobile phones making us poor dinner dates). The people who I’ve enjoyed sharing space with shared my interests, but that is impossible selection to make from general public. You have to be in a community, and then select from there. I’m not a college student anymore.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. But this is what Capitalism negotiated with them. They said, work hard and you can have the American Dream. Now, Capitalists have become greedy. They wish to renege.