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The nuclear family unit

Posted by Dissident on Wednesday, February 09 2022 at 09:17:05AM
In reply to Test of time. posted by Eeyore on Wednesday, February 09 2022 at 06:18:57AM

The nuclear family unit, or earlier variations of it, emerged in specifically class divided societies where a man had to marry a woman and produce heirs to pass down property. Prior to that, family structures were much more communal, since in a world of very difficult productive capacity people lived in often isolated tribes of varying sizes, and everyone had to work hard to take care of an entire tribe and did not yet develop the individualistic attitude that two people alone were solely responsible for only themselves and the children they produced. The nature of communal property also meant there was no personal property to pass down, so no heirs to continue the "family name" were required.

Also, extended families were once popular in many Asian and European nations. Tradition there did not demand that a household be run by just two people, with their progeny being the responsibility of those two alone. The entire family took a hand. And in societies that practiced polygamy, family units were much bigger, with all the wives helping with each others' children.

Now, let us consider what the nuclear family has become this past century, and even more so in the past few decades when the current wave of moral panics started. It's become far more insular, with little community involvement in a couple's (or single parent's) raising of their progeny. In the authoritarian school system, the teachers and other adult staff have full control and basically become replacement parents for the day. Children are allowed outside to play and frolic much less than when I was a kid, so nuclear family households are more restrictive than ever, and outside the "prying" eyes of the wider community. There are plenty of kids in my neighborhood today, but you would never know it unless you happened to see them escorted to and off their school buses by a parent or older sibling during the school year, or rare occasions when families had a big backyard outing during the summer. When I was a kid, you would have seen the neighborhood filled with unsupervised kids, even during some days in the winter months, and would have no doubt that these neighborhoods had many young residents.

This has resulted in these increasingly insular and small family units, mostly cut off from the community at large, to become great potential sources of abuse. The fact that most forms of actual abuse, including sexual abuse that our society is so obsessed with, is willfully overlooked by the antis, including those among our community, because their real goal is to protect the status quo, not the kids. They only want to "protect" the kids from sources of danger external to the family. Even if such sources are far more often imagined rather than real, and often take the form of unauthorized adults having any type of influence on their kids. This has reduced the freedom of youths even more than I remember it when I was a kid, since they get virtually no time away from the adults who control them.

Then this question arises: if the nuclear family unit is to be preserved regardless of how things change in the future, what happens when (I prefer to say when, but I'll say "if" here) society loses the ability to literally force kids to stay in this particular type of family unit, under the control and boot of just the two adults who sired them (or adopted them)? What if kids have the choice to stay in said families, and will do so in large numbers only if said units undergo a democratic reformulation?

In the latter case, then you may have found a democratic way to preserve the nuclear family unit. Nevertheless, if it still doesn't survive as the main "norm" of society even after this, then that means it is ultimately incompatible with higher forms of democracy and freedom, and could only work if forced to remain intact. If such proves to be the case, then I would support a better family form, or set of family forms, to replace the nuclear unit. Maybe a new, democratic form of communal family units. There is no way to tell from our present historical vantage point. I simply opine that if the nuclear family is inherently predisposed to serve society well, then it will survive in some form into the far future by adapting itself to changes. If not, then perhaps it is best that it go the way of the dinosaur.

That is how I see it as both a civil libertarian progressive and a youth liberationist.




Dissident






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