[jp57]

Many of the problems this article talks about are relatively new, historically, and I can't help but wonder if the problem isn't really other trends like high-intensity helicopter parenting, rather than "atomic" families.

I grew up in a fairly typical American suburb, in the 70s, and lived in a single-family, single-generation household. But, there were 35+ kids on my one-block street! The neighborhood consisted entirely of families with children and retirees, and among the families, the median number of kids was three. There were a couple of families with two, but multiple with four; there were also families with 5, 6, and 7. We were constantly in and out of each other's houses. I regularly would walk out my door, through my neighbor's front yard, and into my best friend's house without knocking. A lot of the time we were outside, and unsupervised by adults. Overall I think the burden on parents (per kid) was much lower than today.

I think the large number of kids made this kind of arrangement both necessary and possible. Nobody could have the energy to supervise so many kids the way kids are supervised today, but also we all looked out for each other. There were lots of siblings. Older sibs were responsible for younger, and by extension, their younger friends as well. If someone got hurt, some friends would help while others would run to get a parent, and not necessarily the parent of the kid who got hurt.

Even this situation, I can't imagine wanting to actually share a household with any of my friends' families. In fact, when I slept over, I was always struck with how weird other families' closed-door customs seemed. It's the same now: when we get an occasional glimpse into the behind-closed-doors dynamics of our friends' marriages and families, my wife and I are always like, hm... weird. I think it's like that for everyone.

Getting married and having a family is a very personal thing. I love my friends, but I wouldn't want to marry any of them.

[chneu]

Basically every aspect of modern life is new. It's weird how people yearn for "the old ways" yet they don't even know what they're yearning for.

There is p much nothing in our life that wasn't an invention of the industrial revolution or later. Every aspect of our life was invented within the last 2-3 generations.

But yet people talk like these weird, mostly white Christian ideals, are how life has always been throughout history. People believe what they want to feel good about their extreme overconsumption in todays modern world.

[drewcoo]

The nuclear family is also relatively new.

It probably just seemed normal to you if you grew up in it.

It was almost certainly not how families worked when your parents or grandparents were kids.

[jp57]

My dad was born in 1925. He lived with his parents and sisters and didn't share a household with grandparents aunts or uncles. My mom was born in a small town in Italy on the eve of WWII and orphaned when she was ten. Again, there were no grandparents aunts or uncles, or friends or neighbors living in the same household, and none were in the picture to care for her. She was went to boarding schools until she could emigrate to America, where her uncles lived. During school breaks she lived with neighbors in her home town.

I don't know enough about my grandparents to be able to answer, but I think it's likely that small three-generation households were common somewhat common, i.e. a grandparent and one of their children, that child's spouse and that set of grand children. But I think multi-family households and intentional household relationships not bound by marriage or parent/child bonds were rare in their day as well, at least in the US and western Europe.