The Nuclear Family: Or, if nuclear's bad for the environment, why is it good for people?

In general, you can assume that whenever society declares some state or institution to be "natural," not only is it completely artificial but harmful as well, both in its assumed universality as well as in the particulars of its implementation. So, for instance: gender is not only not "natural" as currently understood (what is considered masculine in one culture is often considered feminine in another) but the assumption that certain traits are "naturally" masculine or feminine does tremendous damage to whoever does not or cannot meet the mold. You're a girl and you like to study, do math, achieve? We'll attack your fertility and femininity and call you vicious names, maybe rape you. You're a boy and you like to knit or wear tutus? We'll call you a sissy and beat you up.

Of course, if it were actually "natural"--the policing wouldn't be necessary, as no one would transgress the norm. Think about it. Breathing is natural; thus, almost everyone breathes with no reminders or punishments necessary, except for a few unfortunate persons with biological illnesses, on whom reminders and punishments would be utterly ineffective.

Thus, marriage and the nuclear family.

You knew it was coming.

~~~~~

In 2001, there were 8,371,020 families in Canada. Of them, 3,469,700 were families with married parents and children at home. That's approximately forty-one per cent.

One might expect that something natural might be somewhat closer to universal. Like breathing. Canvas your friends, and I'm pretty sure all of them will be breathing at this very moment. And that is without any laws or governance whatsoever. Imagine. There is a distressingly large gap between our society's participation in breathing and its participation in the nuclear family, and that is without any effort whatsoever at encouraging our participation in breathing and extensive, one might say breathless, encouragement to marry and procreate.

Could it be that the marriage and the nuclear family are not natural?

Sadly, anthropology would support that position as, despite the best efforts of legions of (mostly male) anthropologists to define the nuclear family as near-universal among human cultures, one sees time and time again how there is so much more variation than similarity. For instance, in some cultures the role of father is taken by the mother's brother--the person who inseminates the mother has no particular role at all--and in others, while pair-bonding between a man and woman who reproduce takes place, it takes place within an extended family network that is as important as the pair-bond, or the pair-bond is assumed to be temporary.

In order to avoid repeating myself more than is strictly necessary, I did write about marriage before, and here are the links:

Mom & Pop: Sex differences and parenting.

Mom & Pop, Part II: Patriarchy: THE BIG P-WORD and parenting. Mastadon-hunters vs. rabbit-baggers and the role of grandmothers in human evolution.

Mom & Pop, Part III: Isolation: The role of the modern economy in the creation of the nuclear family and the isolation of SAHMs.

My favourite alternative is partible paternity, in which every man who might conceivably have impregnated a woman is considered to be the resulting child's father, the theory apparently being that many inadequate fathers are better than one. Imagine the possibilities. I can't be the only straight woman who finds the concept of a society in which a mature and responsible mother ensures that she has as many sexual partners as possible to be ... well ... interesting?

I did a smidgen of research and found some quotes that I'll, uh, share with you. Because sharing is what friends do and it sounds much nicer than what I am probably doing:

"Nuclear family organization is widespread, but it is not universal. In certain societies, the nuclear family is rare or nonexistent and in other cultures the nuclear family has no special role in social life. In these societies other social groups such as descent groups and extended families assume the functions associated with the nuclear family. Interestingly, groups that rely on the organization of the nuclear family tend to be highly mobile. This includes modern industrial societies and forager societies.* Increasingly, the nuclear family household, which might traditionally include two parents and children, is rare in the Unites States. In 1998, non-nuclear family arrangements outnumbered the "traditional" American household three to one."

And:

"The nuclear family has evolved, according to the Functionalist perspective because it is best suited to an industrial society, its smallness of scale makes for ease of geographical and social mobility, and it provides a haven for its members. It fits the needs of an advanced industrial society, in the same way that larger extended families fitted the needs of an agricultural society.

William J. Goode added to the Functionalist view in a study of family trends throughout the world entitled World Revolution and Family Patterns, 1963. His basic thesis was that there is a worldwide trend towards a monogamous nuclear family structure. In response to claims that there is a diversity of family forms including polygamy, clan and extended families, social rather than biological fatherhood’s. Goode argued that there was a universal trend towards the Western model of the nuclear family because like Parsons, he saw this an integral part of the global expansion of industrialization."

I haven't done a poll, so I can't and won't say how common this perspective is--though the knowledge appears to be widespread not only among anthropologists but also among economists that a modern industrialized economy is antithetical to extended kin networks--but let it stew in your craw a bit.

We have adopted a family form that is restrictive and tremendously costly particularly to the women who now must single-handedly perform what a whole extended family network would have helped us do even a hundred years ago, not because of romantic love, not because it is natural, not because it is good for us and not even because it is good for our kids, but because it is good for the economy.

Does it shift, even a millimetre, the way in which you view the so-called modern dissolution of the family?

~~~~~

Just because something isn't natural doesn't mean it isn't good, of course. My insulin pump is arguably not natural, but it keeps me alive and I like it.

(Though Margaret Sommerville argues in her book The Ethical Imagination both that the nuclear family is natural and that we ought to have a "shared ethical presumption in favour of the natural," which she appears to define as "stuff that I'm used to." And if you're looking for someone to blame for this post, try her.)

If a person (or a group of persons) can happily live within a nuclear family or a facsimile thereof for the duration, then good. In no way would I want any of this construed to mean that those who enjoy that lifestyle should be prevented from doing so. However, the presumption that this is "the" natural family structure does a lot of damage to those who can't or don't live in one.

Unhappily married couples are the first to come to mind, for obvious reasons. I've always found it odd that so many people seem to believe that for two people to endure twenty years of misery in the pursuit of "working things out" and "staying together" in order to achieve five years of happiness at the end is in any way rational. I read the other day a divorce lawyer advising that people who are married for two years ought to stay together another two before divorcing, and people married for four years ought to stay together another four before calling it quits, and so on. I reacted with horror--you're married for two, you give it another two, then you're at four and you have to give it another four, so when does it actually end? Similarly, I find it odd that nearly half of all married people admit to having affairs--mind, that's only the ones who admit to it--and yet monogamy remains a universally shared value. Certainly the reasonable thing to do would be to modify the nuclear family concept to be more ... well, honest?

But let's examine what I think are the real victims of the nuclear family myth: kids.

Every day you hear another study about how kids need two-parent opposite-sex families in order to develop healthfully and appropriately. Every one of them makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs with a knitting needle. Here's why:

1. If nuclear families were absolutely required for healthy human development, they would indeed be 'natural' in the sense of inevitable. All human societies would practice this, or go extinct. That healthy human beings reach adulthood in societies with no nuclear families whatsoever would indicate that nuclear families are not required.

2. The studies from the hypothesis to the conclusions are absolutely riddled with an unexamined bias for the nuclear family.

For instance, a study that compares educational attainment between children living with their mother only vs. children living with both parents, and finds that children of single mothers do slightly less well at school. They will control for the obvious variables (income, time spent with parent, quality of parenting) but have never, to my knowledge, considered the impact of the stigma of being the child of a 'broken home.' (At least, not as the studies are reported in the newspapers, which opens up a whole other kettle of fish re: competent scientific reporting.) Whereas a study about the different educational attainments of, say, boys vs. girls would at least consider the impact of sexism or different expectations on achievement, whenever children of divorce are studied any effects are considered to be entirely the result of the lack of a second parent, even though children of widows or widowers do not experience those negative impacts, and even though the negative impacts of divorce on children are lessening over time--that is, the impacts of divorce have been steadily decreasing since divorce was made more accessible in the 1960s.

Go figure.

So: we have a "natural" institution of nuclear families which are absolutely required for achieving real intimacy for adults and for rearing healthy and well-adjusted children, yet it is inexplicably vulnerable to attacks by malcontents. Although the institution is relatively recent, prior family forms are considered inadequate and unnatural and the concurrent rise of advanced industrial economies and the nuclear family in its current form is merely coincidental, even though industrial economies could never function without small and highly mobile family units with built-in free domestic labour. Although the nuclear family is essential to happiness for both adult men and women, women become angrier with the addition of each child to their family. Despite increasing evidence that the entire work of a nuclear family unit cannot be healthfully performed by a single isolated woman in a suburban house, the party line continues to be that nuclear families are "natural." I suppose, then, that would mean the psychological and physical needs of women are "unnatural." The penultimate evidence of this is the increased mental functioning and happiness of children in two-parent families, despite the contradictory evidence of published research to date, the continued existence of other family forms worldwide, and the tendency of divorce's negative effects on children to be lessened as divorce becomes more common and less stigmatized.

?

Or: Nuclear families and the nuclear family form, while conducive to happiness for a significant number of people, are not "natural," are in fact recent inventions created predominantly to serve the needs of modern industrial economies for a globally mobile workforce, and imprison large numbers of people (not all, not even most, just a lot) both within unsatisfying nuclear family relationships and within the expectations of happiness that these relationships were intended to fulfill. They grind mothers to smithereens by either isolating them within large suburban houses that require constant maintenance along with the childrearing responsibilities that are all theirs without any assistance because the modern industrial economy has isolated them from their extended kin, or by requiring them to both work full-time in the industrial economy while also maintaining the large suburban house and undertaking primary childrearing responsibilities. Because the modern industrial economy requires a flexible, adaptable and creative employee, the related tasks of parenthood have also increased dramatically while the time available to complete them has decreased to almost nothing, requiring parents to hire expensive assistance to develop their children appropriately. The pressure to remain in these relationships is immense, and consists not only of the appearance of either failing or succeeding at being an adult human being (since all adult human beings will naturally wish to be in and will succeed at such a "natural" human relationship) but also of failing or succeeding at being a parent, because healthy children need to grow up in a nuclear family. Thus being a successful parent is dependent on being a successful wife or husband, even though it is quite possibly that very expectation that creates the negative impacts of marriage dissolution on kids in the first place.

All so that Coca Cola can decide next Tuesday to relocate its headquarters to a low-tax environment.

And I wonder, actually, if feminism doesn't get the blame not because it encourages women to consider their own happiness and leave an abusive asshole before he kills her, but because by creating two-earner nuclear families the portability of the unit as a whole has been compromised. The 1950s nuclear family ideal was perfect for industrial economies precisely because the wife's primary loyalty was to her husband, and his primary loyalty was to his employer, and thus the entire family could pick up and move whenever the husband's job did.

Nuclear families serve individual children, women and men very well--much as its alternatives serve other individual children, women and men very well--but the primary beneficiaries of the insitution aren't the children, the women or even the men. The primary beneficiaries are GM and Exxon-Mobil. The aim of the modern nuclear family isn't the happiness of its members; the goal of the tremendous propaganda (Valentine's Day, bridal magazines, sitcoms, movies, fairy-tales, magazines and advice columnists) hasn't a whit to do with our individual happiness. Nuclear families are primarily economic units, producing goods and services, consuming goods and services, and producing future workers and consumers. The loss of those tasty bits of consumer/producer goodness would be excruciating for the economy--and that the desire of each individual company to maximize its own access to those economic units both as producers and consumers directly conflicts with each company's desire not to pay for the creation of those economic units itself (either through adequate salaries and benefits, childcare assistance, flexible family leave, health care, education, taxes or what-have-you) more than it can be forced to is causing the spontaneous combustion of the nuclear family society-wide ... well, it's very interesting.

But somehow, "Stay together for the sake of the shareholders" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

~~~~~

*I hope that it goes without saying that the nuclear family organization--two adults of opposite sex who are involved sexually, with limits on sexual activity defined by the relationship, for both economic production and reproduction--is separate from the particular assumptions and expectations that revolve around the division of labour within those nuclear families; therefore, even when nuclear families exist within another culture, it is a mistake to assume that it would follow the western male breadwinner/female homemaker model. The nuclear family as practiced by some forager societies does not have much in common with the Leave it to Beaver model that pops into most of our heads.

Posted by Andrea at December 17, 2006 6:43 AM under Female Trouble

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