THE NUCLEAR FAMILY

David Brookes, a columnist for the New York Times wrote this article for Atlantic Magazine (March 2020) titled, ‘The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake’ and subtitled, ‘The family structure we have held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.’ This is an excellent and insightful article and I recommend it highly for thought about our culture. I have only included in the Journal his last and final comments of the article. A quick Internet search will pull up the entire article.

“When we discuss the problems confronting the country, we don’t talk about family enough. It feels too judgmental. Too uncomfortable. Maybe even too religious. But the blunt fact is that the nuclear family has been crumbling in slow motion for decades, and many of our other problems—with education, mental health, addiction, the quality of the labor force—stem from that crumbling. We’ve left behind the nuclear-family paradigm of 1955. For most people it’s not coming back. Americans are hungering to live in extended and forged families, in ways that are new and ancient at the same time. This is a significant opportunity, a chance to thicken and broaden family relationships, a chance to allow more adults and children to live and grow under the loving gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes, and be caught, when they fall, by a dozen pairs of arms. For decades we have been eating at smaller and smaller tables, with fewer and fewer kin.

It’s time to find ways to bring back the big tables.”
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus