[compiler-guy]

At the very least, you need a whole society of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, and deep friends to truly do any kind of traditional family structure in the traditional way. Otherwise it's just emulating an extremely narrow portion of the trad that didn't exactly exist in the first place.

[mschuster91]

> At the very least, you need a whole society of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, and deep friends to truly do any kind of traditional family structure in the traditional way.

"It takes a village to raise a child" was meant literally. However, the glory of capitalism required people to move to where the jobs were, turning that millennia-old principle upside down ever since industrialization. And car culture was the ultimate fatal blow, when children can't even walk their own neighborhood any more.

[krapp]

I remember when Hillary Clinton said "it takes a village to raise a child" and she was mocked by conservatives and accused of undermining parental rights and wanting governments to control families.

And when BLM made it part of their charter to encourage community support for children beyond the typical nuclear unit they were accused of a radical Marxist agenda to "destroy families."

For some reason the very concept of extended families and community engenders deep anger and hostility from some Americans, and that's odd for a nation of immigrants considering how common the "whole society of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins" is in the rest of the world.

[mchaver]

> For some reason the very concept of extended families and community engenders deep anger and hostility from some Americans

I think because excessive individualism plays into the hands of large companies. There is an individualist culture that has naturally grown over time in the US, but it has also been pushed by big corporations because if you can't depend on your neighbors and extended family, you need to spend money to fill the gaps.

[kelipso]

But when leftists says things like community support, it doesn't bring up images of traditional villages and extended families. It brings up images of communists saying things like abolish the family. Naturally, due to their history.

It's not like leftists are known for their traditional family values now or then, so why should it be taken that way?

[krapp]

Yes, when you intentionally take what leftists say in bad faith and stereotype them negatively, then the bad faith interpretation and negative stereotypes make sense. But normal people don't hear "communism" when leftists say "community support."

Also given how many people espousing "traditional family values" among the right turn out to be abusers, pedophiles, rapists, deadbeats, etc, what you might consider "traditional" values don't actually mapped to the left-right political axis at all.

And I assume you didn't bother reading my comment or this thread very hard and just wanted to dunk on the left, but the American nuclear family isn't "traditional family values" to begin with.