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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is the nuclear family a Western idea?[/quote]

In many parts of the world nuclear+extended family is the norm.

I don’t know of any part where single parenting is the norm and preferred family type unit. It’s generally looked on as a hardship worldwide.

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Raised by a single mother[/quote]

I think pretty much in all cultures and societies globally [b]the basic family structure is always the two parents[/b] with children. The difference is that more traditional societies also have extended larger families of aunts and uncles and cousins forming an extended support network. This was also much more common in the US till probably the 50s. Actually, it still is among may people. The weakening of the extended family network seems to go hand in hand with rapid industralization and modernization because people become more global and move around much more often. To use as an example, my mother grew up in your standard whitebread American family and through the 1960s she lived in a neighborhood along with her grandparents, several sets of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and their families. Nowadays, everyone is scattered across the country.

I lived in the Middle East for years and was always impressed by the extremely strong extended family network among Middle Easterners (note the emphasis on family, which is not akin to a collection of strangers or complicated partnerships among adults forming a "village" for the children) and I do think many people in the US would benefit from having that kind of extended family network as there's a lot of loneliness in the modern West. But the BLM attack on the nuclear family is clearly meant to try to shift blame away from personal responsibility and to pretend that the high out of wedlock pregnancy rates isn't part of the problem especially for poorer African Americans. While I initially had sympathy for BLM at the onset, it's pretty clear the movement has morphed to blaming all cultural, economic and social problems on everything else to avoid accepting any element of personal responsibility as part of the progress needed. [/quote]

But why? It does not need to be that way. Women often stay with abusive men because the structure supports it. That is not better or healthier for children. Yet, that is what is expected so that is what is done. There needs to be an acceptance that often people need to divorce.

Also, single people should not feel pressured into getting married and marrying the wrong person because having a child on their own is wrong and the cultural structure of the family is betrayed when a woman/man has a child without a spouse. [/quote]

You are posing straw man questions. The old saying that blood is thicker than water is often true enough. Even my own experience with my family, which does not have the strong extended network of cousins and relatives, reminds me of how true this is. I see my neighbor's kids far more often than I see my own blood relatives, but when push comes to shove, family is family.

It is not akin to saying people can't have very good and valued friends who become closer than other family members (which is very common) but without the blood ties of family all other forms of relationships are much more structurally weaker. I have several friends from my "hippy" days in my young 20s who embraced the "open lifestyle" even with children and I've maintained contact over the years and what's telling is how unstable those kinds of arrangements are. Adults and partners are constantly coming and going. It's unquestionably far less permanent and stable in terms of adult figures and relationships than the conventional family unit. And the kids, I must admit, rarely turn out as stable either. [/quote]

Nobody is saying to get rid of your family. But not everybody has a family and most have abusive families. When the norm is to have stronger community bonds, people can get away from abusive home lives.

Also, your example was a terrible one ... educate yourself on what actually goes on in families in other countries... it's not what you imagine.

Also, I'm sorry that you have not formed strong community bonds, that is sad. It's not true for most or even the norm.[/quote]

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