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It's astounding that we have come so far that this needs to be defended. Throughout history, civilizations which held the nuclear family as their most important

• Crito 13y ago
  It might surprise you to hear that there are single people who have children. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who are not single and no not have or want children. Due to advances in human rights and standard of living, having or not having children is now decoupled from being or not being single. A reversal of this would be a major regression in society.
  • rthomas6 13y ago
    How do you think the average quality of upbringing with a single parent compares to average quality of upbringing with two parents?
    • Crito 13y ago
      How do you think the average quality of upbringing is for a child who's parents are separated? How do you think the average quality of upbringing is for children who's parents should be separated, but are not? Relationships turning sour is a fact of life. If a relationship between two adults sours, I assert that it is almost always better for the child in the long run for the parents to realize this and separate. Of course if we could live in a utopia where every child gets two loving parents who get along with each other, that would be great, but that will never happen and it has never happened in the past. Increased separation rates are an improvement over the alternative. Wishing that there were fewer single parents is like wishing that fewer people had to experience life-saving surgery when the alternative is needing that surgery but not getting it. Yeah, it would be great if nobody received life-saving surgery because nobody fell ill in the first place... but that's not happening anytime soon. Edit: @ChuckMcM: I am aware of what he was alluding to. I believe that he has drawn the wrong conclusions from those statistics. Two parents being better than one does not imply that it is better for all of those children with one parent to have their parents still together. Many/most of those children are better off with one parent than with two parents in a shitty relationship. Crudely: 1 parent < 2 parents (in general) but more specifically I assert: 2 parents (in a bad relationship) < 1 parent < 2 parents (in a good relationship) The more children we can shift from the first situation into the second, the better. Moving them into the third would be great, but there is little way to enact public policy to encourage or facilitate that.
      • ChuckMcM 13y ago
        What rthomas was alluding to was fairly extensive research into the success outcomes of children of zero (orphans), one (single parent), two (dual parenting), and more than two (village parenting). Those studies suggest that two or more adults sharing parental responsibility for a child increase the child's success outcome significantly.
      • meric 13y ago
        You can go from 2 parents (in a bad relationship) to 2 parents (in a good relationship) But you cannot go from 1 parent to 2 parents (in a good relationship) Even if the 1 parent remarries. It just doesn't work like that, it's not and never will be the same, even if it's somewhat better than having only 1 parent. Please don't advocate for moving from the first situation into the second. Coming from someone who's lived it. 2 parents (in a bad relationship) > 1 parent You can fix it by removing no-fault divorce, and raise the age a man can marry without parent approval to 25. That'll make sure future potential parents pick their partners more carefully.
        • Crito 13y ago
          Yes, sometimes parents in a bad relationships can fix their relationship. Marriage counselling is a great idea for couples who's relationships are on the rocks. Very often however the situation is well beyond repair. Sometimes the relationships were built on a foundation of abuse in the first place, so there isn't even anything positive to restore. In those situations, we should provide all the encouragement and assistance to single parents as we can muster. > "Coming from someone who's lived it. 2 parents (in a bad relationship) > 1 parent" Your experience, while valuable, should be taken for what it is: your experience. (In the interest of disclosure, I feel that I should mention that my parents have never been separated. I was lucky.)
          • humanrebar 13y ago
            > I was lucky. Or you don't give your parents enough credit.
        • 13y ago
    • sexmonad 13y ago
      I'm curious how it compares to the average quality of upbringing with three parents.
  • humanrebar 13y ago
    > Due to advances in human rights and standard of living, having or not having children is now decoupled from being or not being single. But standard of living is not decoupled from being single or not, especially when kids are in the picture.
  • PeterisP 13y ago
    Even more, the classic concept of married couples having kids is now in the minority. At least for me, local statistics show that the majority of children are born to unmarried parents; and only ~65% of school-age children are raised by both parents. So it's not even a case for exceptions, but a socially accepted, very common phenomenon.
    • pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      In the UK, based on an ONS report: "Although unmarried couples are now more likely statistically to have children than married couples – a reflection of the fact that they tend to be younger overall – most children are still being brought up by married couples, as they tend to have larger families." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9953364/The-family-is-more-popular-than-ever.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9953364/The-family-is...
• nsmnsf 13y ago
  Why do you seem to have the idea that "no kids" implies "single"?
• mullingitover 13y ago
  > It is quite ironic that the vast wealth accumulated by the western world, which was built upon the nuclear family as its foundation, has now allowed the next generation such freedom that they can dally as singles for significant portion of their lives. Freedom? More like not being able to afford the expenses of having a family. I'm 36 and make above the average income for a person in Los Angeles, but I can't afford a house and can't fathom trying to raise a family on my income. It would basically be a choice between having children or having a retirement. If this is freedom, I hope I don't get any more liberated than I already am.
  • cylinder 13y ago
    How did this rule come about, that you need to own a house before you can have a child?
    • mullingitover 13y ago
      You don't. However, having a house, a family, and a retirement fund was a realistic goal in generations past, and it's not really a 'middle class' option anymore.
      • stefan_kendall3 13y ago
        It's not an achievable goal in San Francisco, but not everyone lives in San Francisco.
        • geebee 13y ago
          It's semi-achievable in San Francisco. It takes two incomes, and you have to make sacrifices. In SF, applications developers, dental hygienists, and registered nurses all earn, on average, around 100k a year. Two of them together would together earn about $220k a year in SF. That's workable.
          • aspensmonster 13y ago
• chc 13y ago
  Describing the traditional Chinese or Roman family structure as "the nuclear family" really seems to be stretching things. From all I have read, they were very little like the 1950s ideal that the phrase evokes. I haven't done a complicated study or anything, but if I were to guess, just from reading about various cultures throughout history, I would figure that clannish extended families were more successful historically than the "two adults form a unit, have N kids and raise them until they leave to find mates and then goto 1" model of the nuclear family. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
  • jquery 13y ago
    Indeed, the modern Western "nuclear family" is quite the oddity, historically, with clan-like arrangements dominating history. There are a number of downsides to the modern nuclear family, including inability to spread risk sufficiently, familial alienation, and strong dependency on a single romantic coupling. The nuclear family is a massive undertaking of concentrated risk that few are properly equipped to deal with. As society continues to globalize, it provides fewer benefits over its alternatives. Visit any nursing home with its abandoned elders to see the fruits of the nuclear family. Is it truly a sustainable model for the future?
    • judk 13y ago
      Perhaps morbid and cruel, but nursing homes of abandomed elders are certainly sustainable.
• _zen 13y ago
  Nuclear family is a rather right-wing, conservative word. Its followers do not usually support gay families, for example. Did you mean to use that term? I can tell you for certain we are NOT heading back that way. Society will only become more acceptable to alternative families.
  • vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    The word itself isn't right-wing or conservative in any way, it simply describes a particular family structure. Followers of nuclear family as the center of society are called familialists, typically. Yes, they tend to be conservatives.
• mrow84 13y ago
  To question a different part of your argument to other commenters: I am very much under the impression that the nuclear family is a fairly unusual mode of societal organisation, historically speaking, because it doesn't provide enough security to protect one's small family from the unpredictability of life. Instead most cultures have, when unable to provide large scale welfare programmes, adopted a range of other measures for spreading risk throughout kinship and other groups, such as extended families, where success and failure is spread across family members. edit: I should have also mentioned that I firmly support the greater social freedom, such as the ability to choose the nature of one's family, afforded by our more integrated and (in my view) enlightened states.
• danford 13y ago
  What evidence is there that the nuclear family is some sort of evolutionary trait? If anything it's a cultural/religious thing. I believe what would be our "natural" tendency would be for one male to mate with multiple females and impregnate them as often as possible. There is no evidence that "Traditional family values" are the key to a successful economy. The term "nuclear family" is also something that came right around the time of the second world war, an anyone who has taken American History can tell you that the reason our economy thrived in that time was because of the war effort. We also had an extraordinary amount of optimism because at the time we were almost un-arguably the most powerful country in the world.
• zeteo 13y ago
  > civilizations which held the nuclear family as their most important asset have absolutely dominated the world I'm not aware of any civilization that "held the nuclear family as their most important asset" (whatever that means). Ancient Greek literature does not wax poetic about the paramount importance of the nuclear family, neither does Renaissance Florence. Confucian ancestor worship is the only system of ethics that comes close to that (and it's about the extended family) - but I doubt that's what you meant. > simple evolutionary forces, which for K-selected species [...] Anyone who threw even a cursory glance at the Lotka-Volterra equations [1] would not talk of evolutionary forces as being "simple". > singles are very productive in short bursts, but these are unstable And yet some of the most creative / productive people in history did not also create nuclear families (Michelangelo, Kant, Turing etc.). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation
  • VaedaStrike 13y ago
    Ancient Greece did not genetically survive. We have remnants of their culture NOT by virtue of their genetic fitness nor the continuance of their civilization, merely because we discovered their artifacts and the people whom they enslaved had children who fancy themselves as the children of the masters of their ancestors. Don't be fooled, Ancient Greece's failure to mention the importance of the nuclear family should be evidence as to what happens to cultures that lay aside such. Namely they are wiped out and their heritage is merely whatever is picked up by those near by after their society dies and goes through the throughs of civil and social collapse. The fact that Florence had a Renaissance to go through, thanks to discoveries of artifacts of the long dead Greeks and Romans. And as per some of the most 'creative'/'productive' people being single presumes that their accomplishments sprung out of their heads like Athena. None of them would have the very culture they played off of that enabled their greatness without the existence of nuclear families.
    • vacri 13y ago
      The Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, but I've never seen anything suggesting that they lionised the nuclear family. "Lay aside the concept of nuclear family" didn't seem to stop them, and few cultures have lasted as long as they have. The whole point about the term 'nuclear family' is that is refers to the (generally WASP) family structure in the nuclear age. It is specific to the modern age. Trying to retrofit it to historical civilisations is only going to end up in trying to explain away why this one or that one doesn't fit. Strangely, you dismiss Ancient Greek culture as not being up to the task, but then grant that Florentine success was only because they copied old Greek culture. It's also worth mentioning that the Renaissance wasn't just central Europeans rediscovering archaic artifacts, as there was a host of new ideas and technologies being founded at the time, eventually accelerating into the Enlightenment period.
• deeviant 13y ago
  The insinuations that: A) People that don't have kids are single B) Being single for extended amounts of time leads to some sort of emotional insecurity and "inevitable" burn out Are, frankly, far more insulting to me than the totally mathematically sound thesis that somebody with 4 kids may have less time in their life for other things, like work. As for myself, I'm soon to be married, with no plans for kids in the future.
• tedks 13y ago
  >Moral of the story: don't be so quick to condemn the old ways of family life. They have survived for millenia, and will continue to do so long after we're gone. Humans existed for tens of thousands of years without doing anything interesting. Humans did lots of things then. Most of them haven't survived into modernity; if you want an idea of what humans used to do before agriculture, there are still some cultures existing now that exist at that stage. The wealth of the West was maybe built on nuclear families; it was also built on colonialism, slavery, white supremacy, patriarchy, and corporatism. Plenty of things have existed in the brief infancy of humanity. Very few of them are worth taking with us into the future. Starting a family is sometimes the right thing to do. Remaining free of children is also sometimes the right thing to do, just like it's sometimes right to stay single and sometimes right to have a partner, or more than one partner. Whatever you do, be intentional and do it because it's the right thing for you to do in your life, not because of any societal diktat or because of pressure from other people.
  • humanrebar 13y ago
    > Whatever you do, be intentional and do it because it's the right thing for you to do in your life I'm not going to morally judge someone for benign lifestyle decisions, but it's baldly not true that someone can just live whatever life one wants without affecting the people around them. Keeping your kids out of school, verbal abuse, avoiding vaccinations, trapping people into relationships with pregnancies, running out on child support, substance abuse during pregnancy, unprotected sex with strangers ... there are clearly things that are intentional and (ignorantly) someone's right to do. And they are clearly the wrong thing to do, for the individuals involved and for society at large. I realize that you probably didn't mean to include all those decisions as valid in your sweeping case for non-judgemental social norms, but the fact is that norms are incredibly important because, especially when it comes to family, decisions do affect other people. If we can agree that some norms are important, the only discussion is about which are important, why, and how much. I'll go one further and defend social diktat since it's probably not something most people consider. Given that norms are important, I'd rather people enforce these norms outside of the laws. The norm used to be that gay sex was a bad idea. People were (and are) thrown into prison and legally executed because people decided to turn social norms into laws. Since norms are greatly affected by technology and culture, keeping enforcement confined to social pressure provides a level of protection to people who decide to try something outside-the-box.
• PeterisP 13y ago
  The "old ways of family life" are NOT nuclear family, and are incompatible with that concept. Throughout history, most civilizations have lived and raised their children in extended families (or other community/group arrangements), not nuclear families. The switch from extended family to nuclear family become viable only during/after industrial revolution. A separate couple rising their kids is not 'traditional family' - a traditional family would delegate significant parts of the childcare effort away from the young adults/parents, so they'd focus on their work; a nuclear family doesn't do that.
• NextUserName 13y ago
  >Society will inevitably return to its nuclear family origins, as the fun loving singles will not provide offspring in quality and quantity to compete with these traditional families. On two conditions only. Much of our false wealth must be shed (which will happen within the next 10-20 years) and we must stop enabling/encouraging non-nuclear family population growth. There has to be real consequences to fatherless children and women with 5 kids from 5 daddies. Now we just give unwed mothers money, free stuff and moral permission to do it again and again.