We need to take the Nuclear Family off its cultural pedestal. For the majority of civilization, children were a neighborhood project everywhere and familial lines were extended horizontally as well as vertically.
Last year, a couple got divorced every 9 minutes here in Australia. In the US 40% of families are blended with at least one partner having a child from a previous relationship before marriage. Unfortunately, though, these families are twice as likely to fail as second-marriage divorce rates hover around the 60% mark.
Grim reading, but what are these statistics which are clearly not cherry-picked to prove a point tell us?
The story so far
Up until the 1800s no matter where you were in the world, it was common to have a sprawling omni-tentacled family unit that included grandparents, cousins, and even family acquaintances. It was also not uncommon to have upwards of five kids in the family growing up. Family units would tend to corral over a family business such as a farm, and though there was little mobility, everyone knew their role.
As the Industrial Revolution ramped up and gained momentum throughout the 20th century, the young left their rural lives to chase the dream in the Big Smoke. This was a common occurrence across the globe towards the later stages of the 1900s but started in the White West and was culturally exported through colonisation. As more people embraced life in the city and got married they started nuclear families.
With the newly established family unit standard now consisting of two parents and three or four kids, the rise in the nuclear family mirrored the decline in agricultural and rural living. Kids were no longer bought into the world to become a Taylor, Potter, or Fisher as the surnames of yesteryear denoted, but were now respected as adults-to-be and encouraged to embrace their autonomy.
For a while, this actually worked. In the 50s and 60s divorce rates dropped, fertility rates rose and the Boomer generation, well… boomed. Although progress was made when it came to the individuals writing the script of their own lives in comparison to the generations that preceded it, the benefits were largely disproportionate towards men with many women still unable to work if they were married.
The psychedelic revolution, women’s rights movement, and anti-establishment sentiment coalesced in the years that followed, and since the 70s we’ve seen a world that has become at least materially better for adults, but significantly worse for kids. From a spiral dynamics perspective, the pendulum had swung from a collective-based society to an individual-based one.
The loss of community
Fast forward to today; a world in which it is pretty surprising news if your mate’s parents are still together, social isolation is at an all-time high, and relationships are in constant turbulence almost everywhere you look. If we can safely say the majority of our relational habits are learned before the age of five years old, and our present relationships are heavily influenced by our earliest attachments, it is no wonder we are in crisis. As my brother Mikey Matania puts it:
For the majority in Britain, the shaping starts with the nuclear household. i.e. a brick box where two often overburdened and struggling adults attempt to meet the myriad physical and emotional needs of their kids with little to no meaningful community support.
A few generations ago, we could rely on an army of cousins, friends, and grandparents to act as shock absorbers for the perils of growing up and these tightly interconnected groups would expose children to a wide variety of archetypes growing up. Nowadays we are consistently rubbing up against the patterns we have subconsciously acquired as children and replicating them in our adult lives. Unless we make an active attempt to untangle ourselves from these dysfunctional learned behaviors we are destined to keep repeating them.
The lack of exposure to a variety of personality traits and relational idiosyncrasies narrows our window to the accepted norms. And as my good friend Mikey mentioned, the lack of community and social support gives parents little time to form strong attachments with their young. Increasingly demanding work schedules and insufficient maternity/ paternity support leaves less financially mobile parents with little space to instill essential values and ethics in their kids.
And that’s if they manage to remain connected and compassionate within this intense pressure cooker operating within a society that is already detached and distrustful.
A more familial future
As we evolve to embrace diversity, complexity, flexibility, and our innate interconnected nature as social beings, my hope is we dissolve the sense of separation that comes with our rigid cultural formations. In that regard, the power of a family is not “additive” (where one plus one plus one equals two) but exponential. The way in which we have set up almost all aspects of the modern world is slowly suffocating us as well as the planet, and the illusion of separation is where it all begins.
One of the ways this is perpetuated is through the nuclear family unit. I do often fantasize about a world where our concept of kinship expands far greater than the people we grew up in the same house with. A brother is not just someone who you fought with all the time growing up but the love you have for him extends to the love you have for a stranger and revere them both.
My personal belief is a fountain of love exists within each one of us and our well of bottomless benevolence is blocked up by years of trauma and unprocessed grief which has led to division firstly from ourselves and secondly from the world around us.
Undigested trauma becomes personality. When this identity develops en mass it becomes ideology. And if we don’t frequently challenge ideology and push up against what is firmly held as our individual or societal standard we could be missing out on a world of possibilities.
Our individual responsibility then becomes removing each undigested layer that sits atop the previous layer in our pit of suffering, so we can access the immutable force that is yearning to be unleashed.
This piece is not about bagging on a system that has no doubt worked for millions of people all over the world without much more than the natural grievances that arise in any structure. It is about eradicating any notion of otherness regardless of position.
Ultimately it doesn’t really matter what I think. What I think is mostly an effect of my conditioning. And as shown above, in todays world, statistics can be pulled to prove any point. I’m sure it wouldn’t take me too long to find evidence that points towards to contrary of my beliefs. So, in order to build an undeniably accurate barometer of truth, I’m curious - how is your family set up today?
P.s - If you’d rather not share above please get involved with the conversation through the comments below. When we directly engage with social media our happiness levels increase dramatically. Plus it helps me hear your thoughts and helps me improve. Win-win for all!
Good article! I agree, but I had a uniquely shitty experience around nuclear family, so have been more interested than most in alternatives. I found Tamera Healing Biotope in Portugal to have some of the most unique takes and solutions on this conversation. Have you heard of them? Tamera.org
As someone else already shared, alternatives are not received well by those who've already accepted the state default... self appointed guardians of the status quo. Tamera provides an interesting proof of concept that provides an example of what can be, supporting truly meaningful resistance. It's been very challenging, but I cannot give up the fight that there's a better way.
All that said, there's much these conversations, articles, and proofs of concepts can do to help people live what they do have before them more intentionally and meaningfully.
Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts on everything, which feel quite similar to my own.
Be well... Immanuel
Very interesting read, I grew up with alot of cousins and grandparents around me in the church I was raised in. I think it has effected me more now that I don't really have that support system anymore. In a time when I am learning the next phase of my journey without any guidance it seems.