It's a Vonnegut quote. I think he was lamenting the shift he had witnessed in American culture, from his common personal childhood experience – in a very large

It's a Vonnegut quote. I think he was lamenting the shift he had witnessed in American culture, from his common personal childhood experience – in a very large family – to the 'nuclear' family that tended to characterize America from the 1950s onwward. 'Slapstick', where I grabbed the quote, was written in 1976.