[ismail]

A Typical WEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic) finding. For much of human history children have been raised in multi-generational homes. Just being raised by parents is relatively new. I recall reading in a book [0] that proposes this as one of the reasons we have such an issue with mental health etc. with our children. This also seriously hampers learning as wisdom is not passed down.

[0] free to play

[fleddr]

What is striking in this development is the destruction of our social fabric.

From African village model to the nuclear family is a massive step, made possible by the nation state. Arguably this impoverishes community/extended family life. The most extreme form can regularly be read in the news: somebody found dead in their home, undetected for weeks or months.

But not even that is enough. Even within the scope of the nuclear family are we further individualizing. Each partner in the couple is to be fully economically independent from the other. Note that I'm not suggesting any traditional angle here, I'm purely talking about individualism in general. Even within our very own family, we no longer dare to rely on each other, to be dependent on each other.

If I were to pick a cliche busy urban family, they have very few shared moments. They may not even eat together. They relax on their own individual device, often in separate rooms. And we outsource care for both our young and the old.

We drifted far from our roots.

[seventhtiger]

Individualism over prosperity is similar to entropy over time. It's the breaking down of social order to its most base component.

Technology has enabled governments to grow massively, and law and order and prosperity removed the natural forces that kept communities together. Why put up with any communal norms you don't agree with when the community doesn't provide any additional safety or stability.

The strongest forces that once stood up to governments and markets are no longer relevant, in the West at least. Religion and tribalism are viewed as relics of the past, while the modern individual is naked and unarmed in the face of behemoth governments larger than the largest empires in human history.

I see it in the overreach of law enforcement because they correctly assume they're dealing with isolated individuals. In tribal societies, the tribe itself can stand up to the law. A person in such a society wouldn't be worried about being beaten by police because his family would beat the police.

[jstarfish]

While it has its issues, I'm not altogether convinced that the nuclear family is a bad thing.

We seem to function best at tribal scale. Jokes aside, most family units are functional.

Family scales well. Large-enough families invite dysfunction jokes, but they have a shared genetic interest. You can always coerce or compel family to do things like share resources or settle disputes against their own self-interest.

More than a few families together become a community, and this is where the problems start.

We look to colonizing space as the solution to overpopulation and resource depletion. Space is not a forgiving environment.

When water is running low or other critical challenges arise, a colony bound by blood will figure that shit out quicker than the space equivalent of your HOA.

[whatshisface]

>You can always coerce or compel family to do things like share resources or settle disputes against their own self-interest.

Huh?

[pjc50]

Someone is claiming that coercion and abuse are good aspects of the extended family system rather than bad ones which have led to people choosing to escape it when they have the economic opportunity.

[jstarfish]

Abuse is a malicious application of it and not what I was advocating.

It's more about bypassing the politics normally associated with these sorts of situational negotiations-- a failsafe against one (or more) persons holding the rest of the colony hostage.

It is a paternalistic foil to malingering and selfishness.

[fleddr]

I don't think it's a bad thing either. The African village model is sometimes glorified but it has major downsides too. You depend on the village for everything and it tends to be governed like a tiny dictatorship. You might have very little say in huge aspects of your life.

[hoseja]

I think it's intentional. Strong village weakens the state. Nuclear family has to depend on it.

[xyzzyz]

In fact, Caplan discovered the so-called Hajnal line, and when it was first suggested by Hajnal, being to its south and east was associated with high fertility, not low, like today.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line

There is a lot of evidence that high rates of living with parents south of Hajnal line is largely about sociocultural practices instead of economic conditions, and it goes back centuries, see eg. Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition: Evolutionary Origins, History, and Prospects for the Future, by Kevin MacDonald.

[barry-cotter]

Just W. Northwest Europe has primarily been nuclear families for over 1,000 years. Education, industrialization, wealth and possibly democracy made them more like that but West of the Hajnal line has been like that for a very long time.