The article wouldn't have been as marketable if the title was "Could Not Doing Things With Others Be The Reason We are Lonely?" Yet at the bottom of the article the author explains that she joined a group of other people who were also caring for their children and made friends. That has always been the solution to feeling lonely and isolated.
We could find all kinds of things to blame from television to HVAC systems to larger houses to the Internet. Picking nuclear families as a target seems like quite a stretch. There are plenty of pictures from the time period she mentions that show people outside talking over fences, on their front porches, helping each other, and otherwise interacting with people around them. When we stop doing those types of things, we get lonely. The social unit of nuclear families isn't the reason people feel isolated.
The focus on the nuclear family, in American terms, seems to be a product of post-war development and suburban living in the 1950s. And yet even harsh critics of the 1950s mostly focus on the people excluded from or hurt by that lifestyle; atomization and familial loneliness are hardly ever raised as major objections.
(I've certainly seen the isolation of housewives raised, but that's not the same as "the nuclear family" and in fact was largely about a stay-at-home lifestyle.)
So I think you're exactly right here: the nuclear family is at worst one of many changes that enabled social isolation. The actual fact of isolation didn't set in until much later, and it's origin could be equally well blamed on problems from cheap consumer goods (no need to share or borrow) to the decentralization of media (no shared icons like Edward R. Murrow).
A proper treatment of the question would admit that the problem is polygenic and look for shared causes or solutions. But the hot-take approach is to pick one convenient issue and treat it as a singular cause.
It sounds like you've hit on an opportunity for further exploration and writing. Will you be taking that on, or were you just postulating? I'd be interested in reading it.
Well shit. I wasn't planning to write it up, but I do have a whole list of thoughts on this topic. Tell you what - I'll hit up this comment with some more extensive thoughts in the next two days?
Meantime I can recommend some relevant, interesting reading here (not my blog, but definitely one that's helped me think about this stuff): https://balioc.wordpress.com
So as a sociological phenomenon, our relative aloneness is interesting, but I've been hearing about it for decades, not in a way that just applies to mothers. The whole "we used to know our neighbors!!" cry seems a bit dated now.
The interesting twist these days is social media. Even though you are being social using those apps, from what I've seen, it doesn't fill the gap.
Nuclear families though? I'm not sure how they get the blame outside of the general trend.
I think the question is a correlation versus causation question that sociology seems to have a hard time answering so far. Our society's increasing relative aloneness (to past societies, especially) is definitely correlated to a sense of the strong nuclear family as the preferred household unit (over various sorts of multi-generational or clan/tribe household units).
This article posits two causations, with ideas like the 50s suburban American dream (of advertisers) causing a stronger focus on nuclear family as household unit, and the stronger focus on nuclear family as household unit as a causation for increased relative aloneness.
If those posits are correct, then yes a case can be made that you can directly blame the modern conception of strong nuclear family as household unit for the general trend of relative aloneness.
I think another thing is the definition of nuclear family and making implications about that.
Nuclear family, in vernacular tends to mean a fam where there is a mother figure, father figure (this includes same sex couples) children and by extension associated relatives (grandparents, cousins, etc) who you have some contact with, as opposed to a family where there is either a missing mother figure, father figure or both or those figures are peripheral and often times absent (aka broken homes).
Of course, we can define a nuclear family to mean other things as well depending on context as well as to serve a narrative.
My understanding is that "nuclear family" means just two parents and their kids, and no more[0]. The associated relatives you mention are considered "extended family", and in this structure, usually do not live with the nuclear family.
If you consider cultures where it's common to have multiple generations and cousin-families living in the same house, that's in stark contrast to the nuclear family.
> ... as opposed to a family where there is either a missing mother figure, father figure or both or those figures are peripheral and often times absent (aka broken homes).
Not at all. The nuclear family is a family as you describe, as opposed to one living with extended family (grandparents, for instance).
Isn't, however, this gandparental extended family just the previous gen nuclear family?
There is no reason to consider a nuclear family an island onto itself. Extended families are often times, but not always, the linking of multigenerational nuclear families. Now, one can have extended families that are not blood relatives.
But yeah, it is tricky sometimes. If you get shipped off to aunts and uncles or other relatives while mom and dad figs stay together because of issues beyond their control that may not be a nuclear family as it is disruptive to the kids.
I think the context in the article here is "nuclear family [as household unit]", with the elided part in square brackets implied. So there may be no reason in general to consider the nuclear family an island unto itself, but this article is referring to the trend to think of a nuclear family as a household unit (island) unto itself.
A nuclear family as a unit unto itself is most evident when people move to the city or cross country for [reason]. Then you rely on the tendrils offered by modern communication till you establish yourself and begin forming new local relationships. In some settings it may be difficult to do.
It can be difficult in the suburbs as elicited in Robert Adams's "New West"[1] and it can also be difficult in the dense cityscapes of Japan[2].
We can dream of the times people were born and died in the same house or village and lived in multigenerational houses out of need rather than will. Today economies are different and the way we organize depends on many things, economic ability, economic forces, culture, etc. Some for the better, others for the worse.
“Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.”
Worth noting that "neoliberalism" as a term must be taken in context of the era in which Chomsky wrote this.
Both "neo" and "liberal" as word roots are relative by nature, and no longer apply in a modern context to that which they were attributed in this case.
Because "the left" has all but abandoned the working class. The used to care about shopping malls taking out the little guys and global trade undermining local jobs but the former is now seen as unwilling to adapt to the new economy and the later is seen as racist. "White male" is now used as an insult when it should form the core of the left.
Spot on. This is something my wife and I have known for a while now. The shitty part of this reality, is that there isn't much anyone who isn't extremely can do about it. In countries like Denmark, there are many apartment communities which have communal areas and kitchens, which allows folks to have "villages" in close quarters to city centers.
My experience on the west coast of the USA however, is that no such thing exists outside of convalescent homes for elderly people.
Some people have gone to extreme lengths to buy up land with a 503c corp in order to create communes in the countryside, which is great! While that solves the issues around villages and communal living, it divorces itself from the life and culture of society at large. How can we still benefit from communal living, while still providing the option to work a modern job in a downtown office?
Next up: "Could modern work in downtown offices be the reason why we're all miserable?"
I'm only half joking.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that staring at a computer screen 40+ hours a week is not healthy at all. Couple that with the known psychological ill-effects of social media together with the hysterical, outrage-driven news-cycle, which we consume while staring into said screens, and the effect is downright toxic for mental and physical health and general happiness.
It's pretty much a given that staring at a screen 40+ hours is bad for you. It's bad physically and mentally. I used to take long trips between 6 and 8 weeks for vacation and I always noticed how after a few weeks I started seeing the world around me much clearer than when I work. I think we are losing the ability to take a break.
>I think we are losing the ability to take a break.
I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've been feeling a huge sense of urgency lately. The news just keeps coming that endemic corruption has finally eaten through the woodwork, and I feel like if I don't take the opportunity to learn while the learning is good, I'll be screwed in 2-5 years when the norms collapse.
I guess that's a similar mindset to 'preppers', but I'm focusing on knowledge rather than things. Soon enough, I probably won't be able to look up how to...oh I dunno, make a blacksmithing forge on the cheap.
Maybe if we felt like we lived in a stable situation, we'd be more able to step back and breathe. Relentlessly tap-dancing on quicksand isn't good for anyone's mental health.
It is, but the people in those eras bled and died for the protections that we are starting to eschew rather than strengthen. And people do have less time today than they did in the early 20th century. Smartphones have made sure of that. Maybe it's a moral failing to waste a significant amount of time on them, but do you know many people who don't? It seems more like a reliable exploit than an individual failing to me.
"Things used to be worse" cannot be used to excuse "things will not get better."
> I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've been feeling a huge sense of urgency lately. The news just keeps coming that endemic corruption has finally eaten through the woodwork, and I feel like if I don't take the opportunity to learn while the learning is good, I'll be screwed in 2-5 years when the norms collapse.
I think you can blame that on social media, the mainstream media and the internet in general. There's definitely a 'sky is falling' panic on sites like Twitter and Reddit. Might be best to sometimes switch off your smartphone, avoid TV news and take it easy.
In Japan (mostly Tokyo), the concept of "share houses" are super popular. With the ever increasing workload on everyone, people have a hard time spending social time with others. These share houses, with large common living areas and kitchens, give people a little bit more social interaction than they'd otherwise get. I've lived in a few myself, and as long as its a quality house (medium price range and up), it's a great experience.
I read an article a few days ago (possibly posted here on HN) that was talking about a group that's been buying up properties in SF and turning them into (more or less) communal homes for middle-income people who make too much to qualify for affordable housing, but not enough to afford SF. They have small private bedrooms with semi-shared bathrooms, but with a large common kitchen and eating area where everyone can get together and cook and eat together.
I hope something like this takes off; it's interesting that it's coming about in SF because of housing costs.
Being isolated is a social function that has nothing to do with marriage.
At least within a family there is a micro community. There's no reason not to be active and engaged as families.
If anything - the 'problem' is modernity and consumer culture.
When people lived in villages, and everyone knew everyone - it may not have been great, but I suggest people were less lonely.
Even the more isolated people in small towns - have places they can go 'where everyone knows their name'. This is fulfilling - to know that 'people care' even if they don't know you very well. It's something to be 85 years old in a town where basically every resident knows you, and knows about you.
I agree with what you're saying. I think the author was wrong in trying to pin it completely on the "nuclear family."
I was more or less agreeing with the notion that many of us pursue this path to self-sufficiency with our nuclear families. We buy our own house. Do our own laundry, our own cooking and yard work, our own house repairs, etc, etc. After all that work, I personally find I have little time and energy to socialize.
So then we work harder so we can afford services like maids and gardeners.
I think the answer is akin to what the author mentions: we need a village! It would be great if I used my handy skills to help my neighbors, and the local green thumb helped me with my yard in turn. It would be great if a retired woman in the neighborhood wanted to help take care of the babies for a night while my wife and I go out.
Back in the days of villages, this was how it worked. Now, along with the consumerist culture you mentioned, and the dogma about self-sufficiency, we are all working ourselves to death.
+ We don't put a number value on these things, so it doesn't work into the GDP, ergo, things that do have a numbered value get overrepresented in policy making. This is how 'big business' and business/libertarian types move against communities without realizing it.
+ 'Old' cultural artifacts come with a lot of baggage (ie gender, sexuality), and it's hard to change - so lefty progressive types like to discount almost anything 'traditional' in favour of modern 'culturally secular' values of their own intellectual making. But they throw the baby out with the bathwater. This to me is how progressive type people and thinkers move against communities without realizing it.
I am originally from a very small town, and I go back often, and I am very thankful for it.
What scares me the most about modern culture - is the suburban kids I know have the concept of 'community' completely erased from their cultural knowledge after only one generation in the 'new world'.
These are the types that get sold 'Starbucks' as being some kind of legit 'community meeting spot'. They don't grasp that the 'warm glow of a Starbucks' is manufactured in a marketing meeting!
We are very much in alignment. I wish there were more folks that think the way you do -- then we might actually find good solutions to these issues.
I am one of those suburban kids, but thankfully as an adult I've learned how important community is, and I've been in search of it ever since. You've hit the nail on the head with the baggage that comes with cultural traditions. That's one of the things that makes finding community very difficult.
I honestly think kids these days view online communities as the most important, since they have much more freedom to "go there" and meet others without the restrictions of having mom drop them off, or even more broadly, without the geographical restrictions they might have. Unfortunately, online communities can't make up for face-to-face bonding, affection, or support.
Being part of a Nuclear family doesn't mean that you can't branch out and be more involved in a community. Raising kids is hard, and can be lonely but also gives you a strong bond and shared experience to talk to a HUGE part of the world and make introductions.
The community, layout of housing, etc are all extremely impactful on this. So too, is the ability of the community to organize. You can have a GREAT community in a cookie cutter suburb. This is especially true if you have communal gathering areas like a pool, park, etc.
I guess what I'm saying is that the Nuclear family is not the underlying reason for any of this. The ability to be alone if one wants to be alone for all things (think about how technology has basically enabled you to function without any human interaction if you choose, and people DO choose this), and the idea that you're being rude by taking the risk of saying hello is a larger cause.
EDIT/ corollary: Advice to new parents - try to find a place with other young families. They're all looking for this connection. These are some of the strongest networks that you will find especially if they live in close proximity.
At the bottom of her post she says she did just what you suggest. She started interacting with other people. I don't think the whole "nuclear family causes misery" thing made much sense. She evidently didn't either since her solution to being lonely was to go do things with other people rather than trying to change her family social unit.
Honestly, that author's note at the bottom reads a lot like "this whole post is wrong, but I already wrote it."
If joining shared-interest groups solves isolation induced misery, then the nuclear family isn't an irreparable problem. It's at worst one factor in broader atomization, and should be viewed as such.
I have a very weird perspective because both my parents worked from home AND homeschooled us. We did a lot of church activities and swim team. We were 0% lonely, in fact I longed to be alone as a kid ;)
And I was homeschooled by a single mom who obviously had to also work to put food on the table and a roof over our head. I'd say I was 95% lonely. In general kids need the socialization an organized school would provide.
Wow that must have been difficult. I would personally not homeschool my own kids, but I think it's a good option in certain situations. I'd like to send my own kids to a school, but one that's maybe more a "hippie" school that allows them ample free time and activity.
If you're part of a nuclear family in urban/suburban America, you'll notice that neighborhoods tend to turn over at about the pace children go through K-12 school. That is, new developments are frequently bought up by new parents (or aspiring couples), then the houses start turning over in 8-12 years as kids grow up. It's a natural cycle.
I think a lot of people here are missing the psychological effects of the nuclear family because of a focus on housing or community.
I think she's right to point at the nuclear family, because of what it is: self-sufficient. Income, forming a household, reproducing the structure in the next generation, it's all there. You don't need other people. And when you don't need other people, it's easier to go it alone. It's easier for other people to go it alone. You don't have your friends help you move, instead you hire movers. You don't cook together, at best you host, and then as we dive into modernity we neither host nor cook. We hire people to watch the kids. We don't want to burden other people. We don't actually NEED help, so we don't ask for help. We'll finish it all off by hiring people to watch us die.
I see some wisdom in the conservative critique that the state should not replace family, should not replace mutual support, that needing each other is a gift for both the person who needs and the person provides help. But it's not government per se, it's the professionalization of support.
It's small, but I have extended family that shares carpooling for the kids. We need to talk about schedules, and sometimes we resent each other, and we take over for each other when someone is sick, and it can be annoying, but I see all these kids regularly, and we can't fall out of contact.
I SHOULD invite people over for dinner, except also have them help me prepare for dinner, maybe even clean for dinner. I personally would not be offended to myself receive such an invitation. But I don't do it. It would pierce the facade on our nuclear family, and my wife is not comfortable with compromising that facade. (Being a man I don't place any self-worth in my housekeeping, and so it is admittedly easier for me to expose any failings.)
> I SHOULD invite people over for dinner, except also have them help me prepare for dinner, maybe even clean for dinner.
This bit really resonated with me. I don't personally enjoy cooking. My girlfriend and I have started doing it reasonably often for simple, easy-to-prepare meals. We ended up hosting Thanksgiving at my place this year, and almost everyone showed up early, either bringing something to eat, or bringing some raw materials of things so we could prep and cook together. It was so much fun, and was a truly worthwhile and bonding collective experience. We'd done this in previous years, but this was the first time I hosted, and it actually felt really different from that perspective.
My friends and I haven't done this for random non-holiday occasions, but I'd really like to do this again.
It's a "thing", too -- Friendsgiving. And it is fabulous, and hopefully has become the stimulus folks needed to casually reopen their doors at dinner time to any of their friends and neighbors. I miss this from when I was a kid [born in '77].
I was entertaining the theory the other day that when families first emigrate they carry over customs from the farms or inner city neighbourhoods they came from, but following generations lose touch with those customs as the new built environment is no longer facilitates them.
I was on a Sunday evening bike ride in the summer, in an older but still suburban style neighbourhood with lots of immigrants. The kids were all out playing, the neighbours were hanging out on their front porches and mingling with other neighbours doing the same. I was like 'wow, this is like the idyllic 1950's vision of the suburbs except everyone is brown.' Then you get out to the newer outer ring suburbs where all the white people live and nobody is outside.
There are things like getting exercise and talking to your neighbours that are essential for a person's health and happiness, but when their circumstances make these things unessecary there is a tendency not to do them. We're suffering because of it.
The whole uptopian notion of the mechanized garden city that America embraced as the standard model for modernity was poorly thought out. Now it's like a paperclip maximizing AI: Mindless and unstoppable.
That's interesting - but it seems like the absence of kids playing outside is very recent in US culture. I grew in, in SF west of twin peaks, and all kids played outside unsupervised for hours. This had been true for generations, going way back, through wave after wave of families, both immigrant from overseas, relocated from other parts the US, or born and bred in SF.
This really doesn't happen where I live in SF neighborhood (with two kids), nowhere near to the same extent. And it still is a very immigrant heavy neighborhood, and unusually diverse in terms of country of origin, even by SF's (perhaps diminishing) standards.
Part of the reason, I think, is critical mass. of kids I'd happily allow my kids to play outside, but there isn't a giant mass of kids already out there, which was the case when I was younger. This may partly be due to the collapse in the child age population in SF (not a collapse, it seems, in infant or toddler ages, it's stroller bumper cars around, but people often move when their kids get older). In my time (early 70s to today), it's gone from like 25% to below 14%, which in such a short time does represent a kind of collapse.
But even that doesn't seem to explain it, since the less expensive SFH neighborhoods south of 280 are still the parts of SF with percentages of under 18 residents similar to the more remote 'burbs.
But it got to the point where I enrolled my kid in the YMCA school after-care program, because it seems like that is where most of the after school socializing goes on now. It is somewhat unstructured, schoolyard play, but there's an authority figure around to appeal to. I don't want to overly nostalgize the lack of any supervision when I was a kid, there actually was some bad shit, but no doubt, kids are growing up in an environment that is different from the zero supervision environment I had when I was a kid. Something is probably lost in all this as well.
I think that the issue is less to do with the family and more to do with the fact that as an adult most of your adult interaction comes from your profession. Your friends as a child and young adult come from school, as an adult they only come from social groups that form around things such as sports, hobbies, and social groups such as a church.
With a move to first world status there is usually an associated decrease in religious adherence. People then naturally define themselves as what they do first. Getting friends as an adult is very hard as competing schedules and interests can conspire to push people apart, so the default is to make friends with those with whom your work. As a stay at home parent that requires actually seeking out the parental groups.
tl;dr making friends as an adult is difficult and can lead to loneliness.
As somebody who tried to find a community with religious adherence, I can sadly report making friends in that environment is equally difficult as it is in the real world, you still have to impress people, adopt their vocabulary, etc.
It can certainly be difficult regardless of whether or not there is a defined place, but the benefits of a repeated time and place for events, much like sports bars, is what I was getting at. In a sports bar you would still need to support the local team and learn the lingo to impress people, but that doesn't mean it's easy.
I grew up in Mexico, where extended family is usually part of one's daily life. Upon moving to the States, I first experienced freedom. Extended family provides joy, companionship, and support, but it also can create worry, anxiety, and the feeling that you must support them emotionally and there's a need, financially too. Not unlike having a big group of friends.
After coming to the US I understood that being alone, freeing yourself from the extended family brings focus to your work. No longer do you have to worry about this big group of people; you can start thinking about just yourself, your work, and your schedule. A nuclear family could be a worry too, but it is something that's perhaps more predictable, as the group is more homogeneous and close to you.
After a few years, I started noticing the loneliness. First as overwhelming silence, which at first I enjoyed because I'm an introvert. Then it became obvious to me that most people have simple life problems that could be so easily solved with a big support network. Can someone care for my kids today? Or my pets for a few days? In an extended family situation, you can find someone that would gladly do that for you. They want to see your kids, they know your pets. Are you feeling really sick? Someone from your family will drop by and make sure you have something to eat. These things create a feeling that "someone out there cares for you" that is unmatched even by friends. You wouldn't want to burden your friends. And perhaps your friends will offer to help, but it's nothing like the unconditional support offered by the extended family. Your friends will usually be of your same age, and thus facing the same challenges in life. Your extended family will include retirees, homemakers, and other people with free time that are always willing to trade time for companionship. And once you reach old age, you will do the same for your younger relatives.
totally agree. My wife comes from that sort of background. We're both super jealous of her older sister who lives with husband, kids, grandparents, and a couple aunts/uncles/cousins. She is going back to college, never has to cook a meal, and always has someone to watch the kids on a moments notice. By contrast my wife works harder as a stay at home mom and is generally more stressed and depressed here in the states. No amount of effort spent joining groups and arranging playdates even comes close replacing the casual socialization and miscellaneous bits of support that happens naturally in an extended family.
In my opinion people have forgotten how artificial life has become in the West specially in places like the US.
Cities are not designed for walking but for moving with a car. In Winter streets are cold and depressing without light.
People have no friends, they eat fast food, could not sleep because they need the time for commuting or stress anxiety.
This as a whole makes people miserable.
It is not being alone. I go kayaking in Argentina with very few people and it is just amazing experience and you are almost alone in nature.
It is just the need to reconnect with the basic essence of humans and nature. Friends, sleeping what you need, love, not just sex, eating well.
We tend to postpone the basics and say "I will sleep well, or eat well, or spend time with family, lovers and friends when I made it". The business deal, the loan is paid but as a result the inner self becomes void, and life flies by.
We have to live an artificial life, there is no other way to feed an exponential growth population, but we have to be careful not going too far.
> Cities are not designed for walking but for moving with a car. In Winter streets are cold and depressing without light.
Isn't this more of an American thing? Over here in Europe, most cities seem perfectly walkable, with their general designs staying the same as they were before cars took off and the streets remaining as lively as ever.
there is no other way to feed an exponential growth population
There is no way to feed it in the long haul, it’s just society eating us to sustain maximum growth until inevitable implosion. We have to live an artificial life because nature is a nightmare of survival, parasitism, and stress worse than any artificial environment short of prison. The artificial life we choose to lead however, is a crazy and unsustainable one led for the benefit of a very few.
My memory on this is a bit hazy, but I seem to remember reading that the nuclear family and tee-totalling were related social developments that were in part motivated by social isolation.
If I remember correctly, the story goes that in Scotland there was a time that strong spirits were cheap and readily available, and that this led to many of the usual social occasions degenerating into widespread drunkenness.
To those wanting to avoid this, the only available option was to withdraw from the now 'toxic' community. These people that abstained from drinking spirits and no longer participated in the usual social occasions became both the tee-totallers and what we now call 'nuclear' families (because all socialising was now only with immediate family - picnics, etc).
edit:
(from The Oxford Companion to Scottish History)
"Temperance was a great radical popular movement in 19th- and early 20th-century Scotland. It affected the lives of millions who organized themselves outwith the accepted structures of a society cemented by the giving and sharing of drink, played a central part in the development of ideologies of self—improvement and of domestic happiness based on the nuclear family..."
Seconded. I hang out with my nuclear family most of the time. It's awesome. Hard work and lot's of responsibility, but rewarding. To be honest, a career seems so much less significant since I've had children.
The article reads like a case greener grass. Perhaps there were other factors which led to the loneliness and unhappiness, rather than the concept itself.
This is really a loaded article giving a false dilemma fallacy, and seems like projection from a lonely person.
A nuclear family doesn't inherently make us miserable, nor does it force us to avoid our extended family.
No one is stopping the author from meeting other moms or other people.
In my town, many moms (of many different races too) meet up at the local coffee shop, they trade tips, setup play dates, and sometimes they even go shopping together.
She could visit her extended family, she could make friends, she could try to be part of her community.
This kind of stuff doesn't magically happen even in the asian communities, where we live in extended families. Plus even in extended families we have different griefs, interfamily conflict is a common.
EDIT:
Another comment now dead mentioned suburban nation.
Its a good but biased book.
It gives some good explanations of how housing subdivisions, shopping centers, office parks, civic institutions, and roadways affect people.
It seems like the author bought in to a specific family structure without considering other alternatives and now, having discovered it's not her cup of tea, wants to blame it for humanity's misery. It's not the reason we're all miserable, but it might be the reason you are.
Many families live with grandparents, many have one or three children, some have a single mom, a single dad, or two dads and they're all getting along fine. Some of these families are even on the West coast!
I am currently acting as a stay at home dad in what would otherwise be a standard American Atomic Family on the West coast of the United States. I am not depressed and suicidal, in fact I am perhaps more content than I have ever been. I don't mind doing "women's work" and when I go to the park near where I live there are almost always other people there. My wife does have to sometimes rush home from work to get our daughter from preschool, but she doesn't have to cook dinner because that's something I enjoy doing.
You can, and should, find the lifestyle and family structure that works for you and your family.
I'm not sure the isolation she mentions is because of a nuclear family unless there is something about her family that prohibits her from doing things with other people. For example, going to the park as you do.
> What if the reason for all of these issues ... have nothing to do with men and women and more to do with the fact that when we left our tribes, villages and communities to pursue the industrial dream, we cut ourselves off from the one thing we need to be happy — each other?
Resolving the modern life vs village life tension might be the biggest cultural challenge of our era. David Chapman writes:
Systematicity was always imposed by elites. Few people wanted it, and most would have rejected it if they could. The majority implicitly mistook material progress as something that just happens, not fully recognizing that medicine and jobs and roads and food and the internet depend on vast chains of “because.” Research by Robert Kegan, a psychologist whose work has heavily influenced my thinking on this topic, suggests that roughly two thirds of Americans are unable to fully cope with the demands of systematic institutions. They are “developmentally traditional people in a modern world.”
The natural human alternative is the communal mode: unstructured, egalitarian, empathic, local, tribal, familiar, and comfortable. This mode—I’ve also called it “choiceless”—feels profoundly right. We evolved to live in such societies; they fit our psychology in a way systematic ones cannot.
The problem is, the communal mode cannot sustain life on a planet of billions of people, much less provide the material benefits, entertainment, and understanding we are used to ... We currently have no workable alternative to systematicity. This makes anti-systematic politics entirely nihilistic ... The systematic mode can, should, must be superseded—not by the communal mode, but by something that combines benefits of both. I think that is possible. [1]
Chapman thinks this synthesis is possible, but he does precious little to actually construct it: so far his work-in-progress book "Meaningness" reads more like a tentative existence proof. On the other hand, that's the exciting thing about it. Successfully synthesizing the modern and village modes of existence is a greenfield project.
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.
I think the argument the article is trying to make (maybe not entirely successfully) is that your "village" concept used to be the default and now the default is strong-self-supporting nuclear family without a stronger community. The argument, as I see it, isn't that you can't put in the work and find a bigger community, it's that in general as a society we don't, by default (in part because it is more work now).
I don't know if it's the family that is the problem but the lack of community and the fact that most couples now both work while the bulk of the child raising falls to the mother.
It's hard to do but many of my friends have only one parent working and have a strong community of other parents around them. It's very odd in today's world but they've chosen to do it and it seems to be working well for them.
"Suddenly, I stopped on the street corner and screamed at the top of my lungs. I paused to look around.
Not a single person so much as peeked out their window to see what was going on.
So I continued to scream until the toddler stood up in the stroller and looked at me, wide eyed. I saw the fear and concern on his face and began to cry."
Family is one of the last meaningful connections. With technology, globalization, people moving faster from place to place, never connecting with anything or anyone anymore.
Everyone is more a alone, young, old, singles, couples, parents, men, woman... Conflating that with having kids or a family is missing the issue.
I am all for more communal society, but also more for family and friends time, less daily work hours, more vacation days, bigger weekends?
More meaningful online games? Better living room group activities/games? Bettrer party activities to promote interaction? Participate in more Meetups for socializing? Don't know...
Staying at home with children is marvellous. Interactions with adult friends are staid and stereotypical by comparison. Plus with the internet one has access to the world's knowledge. Any boredom is therefore one's own problem.
>Yet we long for more than just that one perfect mate — we need to be a part of something bigger to feel happy and alive. We need community and a variety of ages and friends. No one person can be everything to us.
Some equivocation there. Isn't sexual adventure really just another version of 'Valium and liquor'?
The author has a myopic view of actual trends in American society.
If the nuclear family was such a successful idea, why has unwed motherhood been rising steadily since the 1940s, with two big peaks in the 90s and 2010s? Has the nuclear family had an impact on parts of American society that depend on close connections to extended family, such as Chinese, Indian, Latin, etc? Young people are actually waiting longer to get married now, and much fewer people are getting married when they get pregnant while unwed.
"Recently, I was following a thread on Facebook in which several men were debating the reasons for why it seems that men and women are drifting apart. "
politics. politics put a strong divide between white and black in the US. "vote for me, all your problems are because of white people, white privilege" etc. it drove both groups away from eachother like water and oil.
then that shifted between men and women, and I knew immediately what the outcome would be.
every race has experienced hardships, but its comments like that that divide people in group 1: 'i didnt succeed because of my skin color' and the other people from group 2: 'they are complaining they dont have enough because of their skin color, calling me privileged because of my skin color, when I have nothing either'.
you do nothing for the conversation, you only prolong the back and forth. We are in control of our own destinies and comments like yours convince people otherwise.
You should check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me." It's an interesting discussion of the above -- and somewhat more nuanced than would be possible in Hacker News comments.
>you do nothing for the conversation, you only prolong the back and forth
This is an important contribution - the back and forth has to be prolonged, it has to be argued endlessly, to change the status quo. Not everyone has to become a leader. Awareness is also good enough for many.
>We are in control of our own destinies
Yes we are, but the ease of control could be much better for many people than what it is today.
I think maybe this author is overly defining nuclear family in such a way that the issues are all really problems with living in the suburbs. A family living together in a city could have a much stronger community and social outlets for all the family members.
I highly encourage reading Sex at Dawn [1]. It's an amazing paradigm-shifter regarding human sexuality.
In a nutshell, it (convincingly, IMHO) argues that the modern story society tells itself about mating and family is dead wrong, and that we as a species are wired for communal (or rather tribal) mating. It's a deep rabbithole. It's also available in audiobook form, if you prefer.
You can get the gist of the argument from wikipedia [1] and a TED talk one of the authors gave [2].
This is weak theoretical propaganda pushed by biased amateurs. It's about as accurate as a Greek myth.
From a purely anecdotal perspective (which is pretty much what that book is), if you actually take a random sampling of regular humans in pretty much any developed society, they are woefully unequipped to handle non-monogamy, even when they are both in favor of it. It is very difficult to find partners who do not exhibit some form of negative emotions when their partners seek out other partners. These outcomes happen even when both partners are trying hard not to hurt each others' feelings.
It's certainly possible that the growth of agricultural societies changed the dynamics of sexual relationships, but it's doubtful that in 10,000 years our brains were rewired to find any alternative model to be emotionally reprehensible. Even if this were the case, though, it may take another 10,000 years to outgrow these emotional bonds, making non-monogamy akin to emotional masochism!
Regardless of what you think of the book or its theories, none of it will change how humans relate today. It's more important to understand how current societal trends developed in recent history through the use of pressure from social groups (using factors like religion, environment, or government) to suppress alternative lifestyle choices.
> This is weak theoretical propaganda pushed by biased amateurs.
How so? What makes these authors biased. I'm genuinely interested. I haven't read their bio, but what makes these people biased against the current model of sexuality or for the alternative one?
> From a purely anecdotal perspective (which is pretty much what that book is)
It's hard to avoid anecdotes in this subject matter. Yes, the book gathers bits and pieces from different disciplines to look at how developed societies behave sexually, and contrasts that with prehistoric sexuality (which we know little of) and sexuality in some less developed societies and close primates. They show that an alternative narrative of human sexuality fits many of the known facts (and best guesses) better than the standard one. Is anyone sure that either of these narratives is correct? No. Can anyone point to anything but anecdotes to support either one? I think not. That doesn't mean that the idea should be dismissed.
> if you actually take a random sampling of regular humans in pretty much any developed society, they are woefully unequipped to handle non-monogamy, even when they are both in favor of it.
We are unequipped at the societal level. The book claims that we are equipped at the biological one. With divorce, infidelity and depression rates being what they are, I'm not sure anyone can claim that we're any better equipped to handle the current model. Also, there's a difference between being socially unequipped and being biologically unequipped. If tomorrow's society decides to turn veterinarian, a few generations from now will be socially unequipped to eating meat. They won't find meat in the stores, and might even consider eating meat a taboo of sorts. That doesn't mean that they'll be unable to eat meat, or that the smell or taste of meat will stop being appealing.
> Even if this were the case, though, it may take another 10,000 years to outgrow these emotional bonds, making non-monogamy akin to emotional masochism!
That doesn't mean that Sex at Dawn's model is wrong. It just says that you wish it were wrong. That's hardly the same thing.
> Regardless of what you think of the book or its theories, none of it will change how humans relate today.
Agreed. But we're having a discussion, aren't we? No one is saying anything about changing how humans behave.
> It's more important to understand how current societal trends developed in recent history through the use of pressure from social groups (using factors like religion, environment, or government) to suppress alternative lifestyle choices.
Why is that more important? Maybe that's what some people would like to discuss, that doesn't make it more important. Perhaps that whole discussion is moot since it start with an incorrect premise.
The Wikipedia page for the book has a good description of the negative criticism of the book, and the authors are non-monogamists who wanted to form an argument in favor of non-monogamy, and they have stated as much. So it's like a researcher publishing a study specifically to confirm a theory they had rather than test for its accuracy.
The purpose of the discussion is basically to address whether non-monogamy is something people should consider - the idea being "hey, we were born for non-monogamy, so let people give it a try!". But it's modern social structures that have been limiting the engagement in non-monogamy in recent history, not our lack of a pre-historical understanding. So I think that aspect of the discussion is more important, because you can actually defeat modern social structures. You can't defeat evolution.
I would be very happy to find more concrete evidence of the sexual relationships of people 10,000 years ago! But I think it's going to take significant advances in paleoanthropology (if it's even possible) and that is probably a long way off.
> The purpose of the discussion is basically to address whether non-monogamy is something people should consider - the idea being "hey, we were born for non-monogamy, so let people give it a try!".
That's not my understanding of the book. Heck, I remember that at some point in the book the authors explicitly say that they themselves don't know what to do with the consequences of their model. I never got an impression that they were trying to convince readers to have give any "alternative' lifestyle a try.
EDIT:
Here, I found relevant passage from the book:
Our model might strike you as absurd, salacious, insulting,
scandalous, fascinating, depressing, illuminating, or obvious. But whether or not you are comfortable with what we present here, we hope you’ll keep reading. We are not advocating any particular response to the information we’ve put together. Frankly, we’re not sure what to do with it ourselves.
> But it's modern social structures that have been limiting the engagement in non-monogamy in recent history, not our lack of a pre-historical understanding. So I think that aspect of the discussion is more important, because you can actually defeat modern social structures. You can't defeat evolution.
You're right. The fact that you can't beat evolution is key here. BUT we can talk about societal institutions all we want, but if the whole time we assume that monogamy is the natural and only way in which society can function, then the whole discussion is moot since we might be asking the wrong questions. For instance, think about what would happen to any discussion about the institution of marriage if we remove the monogamy assumption. What would happen any discussion of the nuclear family?
Religion being a driving force for a lot of these discussions, it does not matter what is natural, because a book is telling you it is wrong. They follow the book, not science, or logic.
Yeah, I'm always a bit dumbfounded when I hear the communal/polyamory argument. It seems to go against the observed behavior of almost every major society across the world. Exceptions are rare, and the ones I've read about didn't seem to function well at all.
It also seems to me to go against all instinct, and for the lack of a better term, "evolutionary" psychology. Males mammals tend to get aggressive when another male encroaches on their "space" or dominion - homicidal even.
I don't think humans are an exception to this pattern of behavior.
> Males mammals tend to get aggressive when another male encroaches on their "space" or dominion - homicidal even.
While that's probably true about many mammals, that doesn't mean that it's true for humans, at least not at the biological level. It's certainly within the realm of possibility that our men's aggressiveness towards other men that approach upon "their women" is a societal construct, not a biological one. This is supported by the fact that there are human (and close ape) societies in which that is the case.
Sex at dawn pokes quite a lot of holes in the standard narrative of human sexuality; and they propose an alternative one which seems to fit some of the facts better. While their model might not be accurate or, and may even be wrong, I've yet to seen anyone poke serious holes in it or manage to patch the holes they've poked in the standard narrative. I'd appreciate being pointed to such arguments.
I remember coming to US, Chicago specifically, less then 15 yrs ago, coming to suburbs and discovering weird silence and lack of people. It freaked me out so much that I am still in the city /w my wife and 3 kids. Suburbs are weird and can make you crazy.
I don't want to comment on other parts of the post, as I just don't share same concerns.
I never, ever talk to my neighbors and that's what makes me happy. I wonder if they could figure out what gene I have that's responsible for that and then sell it as a CRISPR modification.
Look at the date of the Betty Friedan book mentioned the article, or consider the Stones' song about "Mother's little helper" (valium) or, for that matter, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. All far predated the Internet or even the ARPANET.
I think its exacerbated the issue. Social anxiety ramped up due to social networks, plenty of cheap entertainment over the internet to just barely keep going while sinking ever deeper.
Not long ago your social options were extremely limited. Today you can (roughly) be anywhere an 8000 square mile area within an hour, and talk to almost anybody on the planet within seconds.
Without the Internet (personal cars being a thing not long before), you were stuck with whoever lived within a mile or so, with "instant" communications limited to your neighbors - which was great if you liked them, and sucked massively if you didn't.
I'm oddly reminded of Victorian novels revolving around the notion "I dislike you and you're marginally ugly, but you're the only social option I've got so let's wed."
I'd say the reason why we are miserable is because of the media and the increased consumption of rubbish clickbait from the media. We are miserable because useless journalists have to write something everyday to generate controversy, fear, anxiety, etc in order to get people to click on their links so they can sell their ads.
We could find all kinds of things to blame from television to HVAC systems to larger houses to the Internet. Picking nuclear families as a target seems like quite a stretch. There are plenty of pictures from the time period she mentions that show people outside talking over fences, on their front porches, helping each other, and otherwise interacting with people around them. When we stop doing those types of things, we get lonely. The social unit of nuclear families isn't the reason people feel isolated.