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.
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.
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.
If you have voluntary association, you will have both the "poor" and the "billionnaire". People whom nobody wants to associate with, and it has severe negative consequences for their living conditions. AND people who refuse to associate with others to some degree, but do so well for themselves they are the envy of others.
Voluntary collectivist living exists and is no problem and requires no change at all to our current system.
The whole point of the collectivism being advocated here is to avoid both groups. And, of course, only forced marriages will ever do that.
It's a bit of a trap, though, isn't it? To steer one's one ship, you need a ship. Ship's expensive. So, the general approach is to finance one's self-agency with debt... which makes one beholden to an entity that trades personal concern for your circumstances (for better or worse) to cold-but-concrete, "Can you pay me back?".
I genuinely don't know what the answer is. Maybe it's not even a single solution, but instead an ebb and flow of the collectivist/individualist tide as social, personal, economic, civilizational circumstances demand.
This is all just treating the abstraction as if it is the problem itself. People have houses when those houses are built. Built using debt. Built Amish-style, collectivist style.
To use your metaphor: you first need a ship. AFTER that we can discuss steering.
The problem in Soviet housing (and today in China housing) is that the entire population sabotages society, and builds very bad quality housing, and not nearly enough of it. Collective living can't compensate for that. In fact it doesn't matter what you use to compensate for the sabotage by society, because that just delays the breaking point by a bit, but the sabotage goes further and further until the sum total of all compensations you utilize aren't enough anymore to even keep people alive. That can take decades, but if Stalin couldn't stop the sabotaging going further and further by killing hundreds of millions, exactly what measure are you hoping will stop it? (not implying communal living is exactly the same as communism, but it is one example)
When collective housing means a floor of a tall building for each generation, with mostly independent rooms and perhaps a single collective living room on the ground floor, it is quite comfortable and you have the advantages and none of the costs.
When collective housing means 3 generations living on <50m2 apartments where the warm water supply is mostly a theoretical thing (Soviet, China living), frankly, even having the entire apartment to yourself wouldn't make it particularly comfortable ...
I'm not sure what this comment has to do with my previous one. It sounds like you have a bone to pick. However, I don't disagree with what may be a generous read of your point, which I gather is that right-sizing collectivist aspects to the general human capacity to maintain effective community, vis a vis population size, is the most effective way to house a ton of people without leading to dystopian social alienation on a wide scale (and all the horrors that come with it).
Re: built using debt: I also think there needs to be a social appetite for quashing greed in the process of delivering a vital social need. This is where the Security Council Compadres (including US) all fail.
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.
It's kind of funny that someone from a country like the US where the opinions which were mainstream 20 years ago are now hate crimes can say something like:
>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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
"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).
> For some people, walking out their front door to be with nature might be their preference.
I... agree? But then I would also completely discredit any complaints about living alone especially as they are related to the OP. It's like when people complain about things being 30 miles away and gas being expensive. You make those trade-offs.
> 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).
I was responding to the specific persona mentioned in the OP (wealthy, with a pool) and my experience of that persona in my own personal life which tends to be a lot of buying stuff and not really using it because it's a hassle to go to that person's house because you have to drive, pack up the kids, etc. and people refuse to (rightly so) walk in the suburban areas where those homes exist. Spontaneous gatherings, again in my own experience, are much more of a challenge.
>Spontaneous gatherings, again in my own experience, are much more of a challenge.
Interesting, My experience is the exact opposite. Suburban life is what enables people to gather. Having the space to BBQ, room for kids to play, hang out in the garden, ect.
Maybe it is simply a matter of space, interest, and attitude.
Same confusion with respect to walking or driving in suburbia. Seems far more pleasant and comfortable. Easier to pack up kids and gear for a quick drive than pack it all on municipal transport.
You have space to do all of those things in the city too. I have a pellet smoker and a big garden. There's also a large park nearby with a playground and things like that. A pool is an option too but I don't think we'd use it.
I do think you have a point about space/interest/attitude and I find that (and I bet we could actually prove this with survey data if it exists) people tend to not want to have their neighbors over in suburbia. People sometimes walk their dogs and say hi (when I was in the suburbs) but it wasn't an actual interaction. Usually people just wanted to get back to their house as fast as possible and not have a conversation. Or maybe I'm just a scary looking person. Though we've had lots of neighbors over at our current house and have all of their phone numbers. That was hard to do in the suburbs too.
> Easier to pack up kids and gear for a quick drive than pack it all on municipal transport.
Idk. I have gear and I just walk out to my detached garage and throw it in the car too. I guess maybe it was easier when the garage was attached to the house? But then you have to suffer the bad house design so that's not great. I'm not sure why you would think living in the city would require putting things in municipal transport. Think less about NYC and more about walkable neighborhoods.
It sounds like we just have pretty different experiences, both in the city and suburb. Maybe are differences are embedded in the definitions.
When I think of urban, I think of apartment complexes and townhouses near mass transit. When I think of suburban, I think of detached single family homes with wide tree lined streets.
When I lived in the city I didn't know my neighbors. People basically left their apartments in a rush to go somewhere else. I had very limited personal space. BBQing meant spending time on a small cold concrete slab serval stories from my unit, or hauling BBQ Supplies to some central park.
When I moved to a suburban area, I was greeted by flyers for pot-luck block-parties. My Neighbors are friendly and we have dinner and go for walks. One gives me fresh produce, and another gives me fresh eggs. I can walk/bike quiet streets, and am still within 1/4 mile of a strip with groceries, and a couple restaurants. It is suburban AND walkable. I have a quarter acre lot for the price of at 1200 sqft apartment and a 200 sqft yard.
My hypothesis is that because costs are lower further from the urban center, home-ownership is higher, people are more invested in their neighborhood, and more interested in cultivating positive relationships with those in it.
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."
The suburbs I've lived in have been both age-diverse and culturally diverse, but they tend to not be income or "status" diverse. You don't have a lot of poor artists in your neighborhood, for example.
The main problem is the design, not the people.
The design makes it much, much more difficult to have spontaneous interactions with those in your neighborhood because you aren't walking around in your neighborhood because there's nothing to look at and aimless walking isn't very popular and so you just drive a car to the grocery store where you maintain anonymity and you can't even get to know the workers there because they're transient (many good/bad reasons for this).
Additionally there is a cultural stigma around what amounts to being too friendly with your neighbors and that general pervades the suburban landscape. Obviously not everyone is like that, nor are all suburban neighborhoods the same, but as someone who has family members like this and has grown up around it and now lives in a walkable neighborhood it's striking how clear and obvious it is to me.
I live in Columbus. My brother says "can't do it there are too many people on the streets and sidewalks". That's the lived experience for many Americans who reside in the suburbs and it is specifically chosen to live that way to avoid other people and instead stay inside most of the time. That's why the houses are so large and why there are pools and things. The point is to not go outside of your house or engage in a risky exchange with your neighbor.
> “…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.
"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.
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.
>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.
> 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?
> 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.
I don’t totally know what to make of this article. The author seems to have a very difficult relationship with his mother. Generalizing that to all multigenerational homes is an overreach, isn’t it?
Like, I know plenty of parents who have difficult children. Their families alternately give them purpose and stress. Is that an indictment of living with your teenage kids (versus, say, boarding schools)? Or is it merely a feature of humans?
I also know people who don’t live in the same house as their aging parents, but are nonetheless constantly stressed, frustrated, and annoyed by them.
Living together might amplify issues, but I don’t think it is the author’s real problem.
Multi generational living isn't all good, and it isn't all bad. We are culturally trained, in the West, to value our privacy and independence and autonomy, which creates challenges for sharing living space with both your parents and your own children in middle age.
But some of the anecdotes show some of the real benefits, too. Like grandparents picking up children from school and cooking for the family. Like the built in socialization and connections that can get lost when living far apart.
I think this article just shows the good and the bad. In the end, I suspect multigenerational living is something like exercise or flossing or eating healthy. Something that can be annoying in the short term. But has benefits that pay off down the line.
This. My father has been living with me, my partner, and my son since last year, following my mother's death. It's a similar situation to the one described here, where he helped with the downpayment and we pay the mortgage, taxes, and bills.
And, sure, there was some friction and growing pains as we all (re-)learned to live with each other. But it's been fine and good, and it lets me support him in a way I couldn't otherwise. It's definitely a different dynamic to if we lived in separate places, but it's not a bad dynamic at all.
Very similar situation here (except both my husband's father and mother live with us). Yes, there's occasional friction, but we make it work. My father-in-law makes dinner, gets the kid on and off the bus, runs the errands, etc. At this point, doing the nuclear family thing seems quite intimidating.
A big part of it is remembering at all times all the balances.
It's quite easy to forget something like "paid the down payment" or "helps with dinner" when you're dealing with the frustrating side of things, but those can be major.
And the kids get a closer experience with grandparents, which has a value all its own.
I'm the fulltime caregiver for an 80+ year old parent with NPD and dementia after a stroke. She had to move in with me after essentially becoming destitute.
It's been extremely trying and I wouldn't wish my situation on anyone. There is no upside, other than knowing that I live by my values. Many, many days it feels like that's not good enough for what I have to endure.
And I'd argue that multigenerational homes makes problematic relationships much more likely. Annoyances that are easily tolerable when you meet up occasionally are massively amplified when you encounter them all the time.
I have a lot of friends that I love, but very few I would tolerate living for months with... And you can choose your friends, you can't choose your parents/kids.
You will see arguments from both sides in this thread. “I couldn’t wait to live on my own” and “I appreciate the fact that my folks are allowing me to live with them. This enables me to cut my expenses and to save faster.” There is no right or wrong opinion. Everyone’s situation is different. Both sides are right.
That said, I have a bone to pick when people are inconsistent with themselves, using daycare as an example when people have cheaper alternatives, and then have the gall to complain.
“Why is daycare so expensive???”
“You could ask grandma to move in with you”
“Absolutely not, we enjoy our independence”
“Would you pay higher taxes to allow the government to set up a network of publicly funded childcares?”
“No”
“If you refuse all solutions, stop complaining”
Or…
“I will never be able to save for a home at this rate”
“You’re living on your own on a single income and you’re still young. You could move back with your parents, whom you get along well with, for a few years.”
“Absolutely not. I enjoy my independence.”
Unfortunately, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too. You will pay a price, one way or another. With respect to multigenerational living, that price will either be the living costs of assuming the burdens of a household as a single individual, daycare costs, or a measure of independence. If you don’t have family nearby that’s understandable. A lot of people don’t have a choice and their grievances are legitimate, but many do have reasonable alternatives they’re unwilling to take advantage of for flimsy reasons and then complain about the consequences of their actions.
Adults assume the consequences of their choices. When they have such a choice, of course.
> I have a bone to pick when people are inconsistent with themselves, using daycare as an example when people have cheaper alternatives, and then have the gall to complain.
Those aren't inconsistencies. You're just asking clarifying questions and getting more information about their preferences.
"Man, it's hard making ends meet [in their head: without living with my parents or without working at the local coal mine or working overtime or doing all sorts of things I don't prefer]".
"You know, you could work at the local coal mine [or work overtime or do all sorts of things you can insert here]."
"But I don't want to."
"Heh, gotcha. So you don't care about ends not meeting very much!"
You just don't share their preferences and think you have a bone to pick with them over it. Because you prefer something, you might be assigning zero cost to it where others don't.
What do you do when the elders don't want to be involved and want to live solo independent lives in their golden years? One of my parents is dead, the other lives with us because of poor financial choices; out of three grandparents my kids have, they are all living their own lives and don't want to be involved.
And before we had children, we asked. Everyone was very enthusiastic about participating and helping until the kids showed up, and then we were on our own. Bamboozled!
Then you don’t have a choice and your complaints are legitimate, because you didn’t cause this situation. It’s not your fault. I’m not saying people never have good reasons to complain.
You're not wrong! There's just nothing that be done accounting for free will and a loose societal contract. If help is there, it might not be offered when you need it. If the help isn't there, you're gonna have a bad time. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."
Discussing how things "should be" is one thing, and how to support people who have made the irrevocable choices they've made is a different conversation.
The simplest way to get around that is to make it very clear that if you're not involved with raising the children you will not be involved with the children at all.
If you want to live in as an individual, more power to you, now fuck off and don't expect videos.
>“Would you pay higher taxes to allow the government to set up a network of publicly funded childcares?”
This is a pretty good example of the scaling problem with with transferring voluntary personal work to socialized and financialized government work.
Some activities benefit from economies of scale and others do not.
It is more efficient to hire dedicated garbage man for a curbside trash pickup then if everyone took their trash to the dump. However, it would be terribly inefficient to have garbage men following people around picking up their trash.
Half of the population would always have to be on shift following the other half, and 100% of the population would have to work as garbage men.
Is there a economic term for this phenomenon of inverse economies of scale?
Very glad this topic is coming up more. It was the default living arrangement for the majority of human history, and still is for much of the world. Here in America, and for much of the industrialized west, the ideal of the nuclear family (non-coincidentally invented during the rise of industrialism) is quite frankly too narrow. With their deep protestant roots, Americans would do well to look at how families were organized in the Bible and see that the ideal of rugged individualism and nuclear family 2 1/2 kid white picket fence households clash with that greatly.
Critiques of the article:
Multigenerational is too narrow in this sense. It doesn't have to be explicitly in the same house. It could be the same household. It could be a commune, or a clan. I think its best if you pursue this you still have separate living quarters, but have dedicated common areas. Of course it may be the case that its not be feasible (space limitations), but it goes on to my next point, this article is trying to frame multigenerational housing as a solution to a problem, not to view it from a standpoint of the problems we are facing are because we moved away from multigenerational housing/local communities.
Secondly, must everything have to be viewed in such a utilitarian context? It's exhausting, quite frankly. Not everything has to be viewed as some scale of benefits, and if the scales are too unbalanced then it's somehow "unjust". Perhaps taking care of your mother is a noble thing to do, and yes, it will exhaust you, and yes you might not get out of it the measure of benefit as she is, at least materially.
Pretty much every variation of "live with more people in the housing unit" makes financial, societal and ecological sense. The problem is always that then you have to live with those people, for various values of "those people". Insert Huis Clos quote here.
As someone who lives in eastern Europe, where "multigenerational living" is the norm, what the hell is this author talking about?
His issues with his mother are not a generalised problem with multigenerational living, nor the majority of people living in these arrangements experience it.
The aggregated knowledge of all the members of a household is invaluable, and much of this article reads like "I am not used to having family around me, so I will write about how terrible and anguishing this makes me feel."
We even have a saying in our country, which goes along the lines "It takes an entire village to raise a child", and it holds.
It might be the norm, but that doesn't mean it always works or is the right way to live. Some people have terrible parents or difficult children. You may think it's great, but I was raised in that environment and I did not like it. Ditto for community life that you allude to.
The bit that you don't mention is the pressure to conform or 'go along to get along' that environment breeds. Give me the anonymity and personal freedom in large city any day. Here's another saying: "Hell is other people."
Even in Eastern Europe you should be aware of the concept of "not everyone's experience is the same". Yes, even here in Eastern Europe there's plenty of people stuck in really toxic and problematic relationships when they live together with parents, many of them leading to divorce.
Don't overgeneralize your small bubble. For anything.
> Despite being so on trend, I don’t feel especially cool living with my mom. And even an hour from sunrise, I’m already exhausted.
That's not because you're living with your mom, it's because you're your mom's full-time caretaker - in addition to that of your children.
But to echo someone else, this author sure does complain a lot about things like "took over school pick-ups" - your responsibility as a parent - while living in a home their mother spent north of a million bucks on. I mean, it's fine, everyone has the right to complain about things that are bothering them, and it's good that he's complaining outwards [0], but I'm betting a lot of people here are in more difficult situations than he is.
You cant fix internal problems with external solutions, but not all problems are internal. Most are a combination of the two, a miss-match of internal and external conditions.
I think there is a lot to be said in favor of stoicism and introspection, but it is not the solution to every problem.
I think like there's a massive difference between having been independent for years and then moving back with your parents for economic reasons, and never moving out from your childhood home.
The best part of moving out for me was becoming an independent adult - making decisions for how I wanted to live, cooking my own food, buying my own art/furniture etc. Inviting (girl)friends over without worrying about anything. In short, being the master of my own place and life.
I feel like gaining that independence is massively more difficult for people who continue living with their parents into adulthood.
Family structure may be the factor determining entire political systems ,(according to emmanuel todd). The nuclear family may have been an abberation in human history, leading to the highly technocratic individualized societies of western europe+usa. I wonder if immigration and a certain regression to the norm will lead to political change
I've never understood the implied assertion that there's a sufficient continuity between vastly different stages of physical development from a parent's perspective; which is the only one we grant an exception as in all other cases the law, at least in America, clearly denies that continuity.
At any rate, the reverse is usually not true: I don't want to see my parents walking around in their underwear.
Multigenerational living is a historical norm until societies reach a certain level of economic output and then people tend to switch to paid childcare. It also only works well when people have kids at a certain age across generations so that health active years & need years align.
I saw this with my dads family that came over from the old country and had a wide range of ages. The oldest had live-in grandma help raise not only their own kids, but because of modern American medicine and old world early marriage/kids.. she helped raise her own great grand children. So in a total boomer move, that aunt got free childcare and never stopped working, even as she used her own mother to take care of her grandchildren so that her kids could also have free childcare with no cost to her. And in the end when the benefits no longer accrued to her, she put grandma in a home..
My father however was a decade older than that sister and had kids at a more American age. So me & my siblings experience with that same grandmother was mostly of her last decade of ill health and dementia. Had she lived with us it would have mostly been my mother taking care of her mother in law, begrudgingly.
> One 2016 study indicated that about 10 percent of non-institutionalized elders in Kingston, Ontario, and Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, reported a family member being violent toward them—defined in the study as “[being] screamed at, insulted, threatened, cursed, talked down to or physically hurt”—in the preceding six months.
I feel like we need a new word for physical violence.
When I see "violent", that's what I assume it means, and 10 percent of elders being physically attacked is a crisis.
But raising your voice one time in an argument with a parent, who might also be yelling at you, while not good, I don't see in the same category. That can still be an arrangement that's good for everyone involved to continue, if everyone can apologize and agree to do better.
I don't see physical violence in the same way. Once that line is crossed, it's probably better for the living arrangement to change.
"insulted"
The Mom in this story calls everyone "stupid" at some point or another. Doesn't mean that the relationship with every family member she calls "stupid" at some point needs to be cut off. Although she should try to stop using that word so much.
I tend to agree. There’s too much room for subjectivity in this definition for it to be a useful statistic. Physical violence is relatively unambiguous and severe, but these emotional/verbal boundaries have no clear definition. My mother got insulted the other day when I added mayo to a sandwich she made for me because she finds it distasteful.
While verbal and emotional abuse are absolutely real, there are many parts of aging that inherently feel undignified. Are they really being talked down to or insulted in all these cases, or are they just being made to hear something they don’t want to hear? Like, grandpa, we love you but it’s best for everyone if you stop driving now. Mom, stay out of my bedroom (I’m an adult now and this is my house).
It's true that this distinction is often lost now, where we recognise that words can hurt.
As someone who was rarely touched in a good or bad way in my home, yet ended up thoroughly traumatised and damaged by childhood trauma, I'm the first one to point out how insidious non-violent abuse can be, difficult to prove, and often impossible to escape.
But yes, it would still be useful and helpful to draw distinctions between hands-on, physical violence against persons, and other types. In fact it is commonplace to label vandalism and property damage as violence; sure you may take a sledgehammer and violently attack a statue in the town square, and that's plenty symbolic, but it's not assault and battery.
The idea that physical abuse is the only abuse we need to take seriously needs to die absolutely immediately
Emotional abuse is persistent, real and insidious in ways that physical abuse cannot be because it does not have directly causally induced external symptoms.
I can see when someone’s being physically abused and intervene via established processes. Knowing that somebody is being emotionally abused, however, is so much harder because it requires all of the parties to acknowledge that abuse is happening. Unlike physical abuse, an emotional abuser can totally destroy your life and make you think that it’s your fault and you’re the problem.
As somebody who has dealt with both physical and emotional abuse from family, I feel like long term emotional abuse is way more harmful over the longer term and for society as a whole than physical abuse (which thankfully is almost unheard of because we made such a big deal about it over the last few decades).
>The idea that physical abuse is the only abuse we need to take seriously needs to die absolutely immediately
So does categorial groupings intended to trigger reactions by association.
On the facts, I wholeheartedly agree that emotional abuse can be worse than violence. Calling it violence obfuscates the real differences in execution, mechanism, and impact.
Abuse is bad, both emotional abuse and violent abuse.
On the other hand, yelling or insulting someone is not automatically emotional/psychological abuse, so the GP's point stands. Not every bit of somewhat violent behavior is even problematic - human interaction is much more complex than that.
Above all else, I hope that you are in a better place now and you continue to heal.
I'm curious about the context of this reply, though. It didn't seem like they were claiming that "physical abuse is the only abuse we need to take seriously?"
It is also what you get when language evolution makes was for language revolution - or revolutionary language - where language modification is used as a tool to achieve a means to achieve an ideological goal. When 'language is violence' but actual violence is 'mostly peaceful' or 'context-dependent' language loses its purpose.
Good call. Let me say what I really mean: What’s missing from the content of the article is just how unobtainable housing is, broadly speaking, and how this is impacting the choices families make. A multigenerational house that can actually accommodate multiple generations of people is both rare and prohibitively expensive. Developing new housing for this purpose is usually illegal where most “nuclear families” live. As difficult as it can be to live with your parents in a society where this is unusual, it’s simply not possible for the people who would benefit from it the most. I thought that might be relevant.
> Given a choice, why would anyone choose to reinhabit their childhood trauma just for cheaper rent?
According to the APA, trauma is "an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster". I really, really dislike it when that word is being thrown around for everything and, subsequently, nothing.
I’ve spoken to my therapist about the definition of trauma and what makes trauma legitimate. At the time she’s responded that trauma isn’t about the event but the emotional response to the event. So for example, there are people with ptsd just from seeing 9/11 on the tv from across the country with no personal loss or knowing anyone personally affected. And there are people who were raped as children but don’t have lingering trauma over it. (Edited to add: this was in context in that as a child I was treated in objectively horrifying manners but I don’t have flashbacks, nightmares, or other signs of trauma about the worst parts of it— actually everything wrong with me stems from shit that is objectively not as bad!)
I think a lot of people (bad therapists included!) like to identify trauma, and use it as an excuse for "how I be the way I am" instead of identifying it, working through it and changing self to overcome it.
And once you get to "self-diagnosed trauma" the rates of this skyrocket. And why you see so many dismissive "get over it" responses.
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.