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Health & Fitness

The American Family – Back to the Future

I think, that anyone who has taken a serious look at social programs will come to a similar conclusion that I have. Most, if not all, are artificial substitutes for function and services that used to be provided by the Extended Family Unit.

Until the advent of the Industrial Revolution and Age, coupled with the mechanization of agriculture; the extended family model was the norm and the preferred structure of human organization. This has been the case since hominids organized into species social structures, which extends back some two or three million years. Hunter-gatherer societies are a prime example of this social structure. The extended family provided all the essential support functions from birth to death. Each age cohort within an extended family provided some kind of functional service to the group, with little or no duplication and everyone remained productive throughout their lives.

The emergence of the Nuclear Family Model was a clear departure of what we had experienced since the emergence as a species. It has only been around for a relative short period of time, beginning about 350 years ago in industrialized nations. The advent of European colonialism also contributed to the antecedent conditions that led to the emergence of the smaller more versatile nuclear family. So many early settlers came to the ‘New World’ as single individuals or small nuclear families. Indentured people and slaves represented the two biggest groups of single individuals.

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 In the North American colonies, what started as nuclear families soon took on the more familiar structure of extended families.  This also marked a period when extended families would break apart to pursue new opportunities such as land acquisition and settlement, but as soon as practicable they would reform into extended family units. This remained the norm well into the late 19th century when nearly 90% of the American population was engaged in agricultural production. In the middle of the 19th century, the War Between the States disrupted the family structure and again there were a large number of people adrift without the benefit of close family connections for support. As long as there was land to be settled and resources to be exploited, the family structure and social processes remained fairly stable. Extended families would break apart only to reform again in a different location.

The 20th century marked the period of the most rapid transition from extended families to nuclear families. The speed at which industrialization was occurring, the mechanization of agriculture and waves of European immigrants accelerated the pace of restructuring. Functions and roles previously performed by extended family members became externalized and were performed largely within the ethnic communities. The traumas of the First World War, the Great Depression and the Second World War, finally overcame extended family dominance as a social structure. From the end of WW II until the present the nuclear family has been the primary model in the United States and other industrialized societies.

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Even though people lived in small nuclear families, the functional services once provided by the extended family had to be found and in most cases it became purchased from outside sources. The nuclear family model was possible only as long as one person took on the role of income earner and the other took on the role of homemaker. As soon as both partners began working outside the home, the nuclear family became more dysfunctional as a satisfying social structure. As more and more services need to be purchased, the greater the cost to the individual nuclear family, in both monetary expense and social expense.

The U.S. has followed a different policy model to support the nuclear family structure from the rest of the industrialized world, primarily the European nations. Whereas we have maintained a private purchase for services, the European policy model has stepped into socialism to provide a large number of services. I contend that both systems will eventually fail. The U.S. system will fail because the individual family will have reached a point where it can no longer be supported by private purchase. The European model will fail for much of the same reason, with taxes exceeding the ability for the populations to maintain. I do think that the European system will long outlast the U.S. system and the United States will probably adopt many of the European systems in order to stave off the inevitable. It is interesting to note, that many Asian groups have maintained the traditional extended family model and have benefitted from it even while living in nuclear family cultures.

The primary survival tool of our species is our ability to adapt our social structure to meet the demands of the environments in which we live. Our species will eventually adapt to a different social structure until the environmental forces change again. My thesis is that the industrialized societies are being forced back into extended family structures, to not only survive, but to thrive.

This change will not occur overnight, but during a long period of change. Some changes will occur faster than others, but change they will. I predict that a century from now, only 20% of industrialized society will still be living in nuclear family units, primarily the most wealthy of any given population. The new extended family will be different from past extended family structures; since the new system will still purchase outside services that the family can’t provide themselves. This will include specialized medical services, but the primary care for the young and elderly will be performed by the family members themselves. Those family members who are able bodied and have employment skills will work and their incomes will be pooled to support the entire family. In this manner, lower wages, brought about by globalization forces will have a lesser impact. Stay at home family members will step into the breach and provide childcare and fill other domestic responsibilities that are currently purchased.

This change will have dramatic impacts on everything from tax policies to education policies. Business will have to adapt to the new structure and I foresee a resurgence of larger homes capable of holding larger family groups or the building of family compounds. Consumerism will adjust to the new spending habits. Financial investment will change to support the structure along with transference of wealth and possessions from one generation to another.

We are already seeing experimentation with people who are unrelated forming ad hoc extended families. But by and large the extended families of the future will still be made up of closely related individuals. However, there will be some downsides to the new family structure.

I fear that the innovation that our society is so well known for will suffer with the emphasis on family and less emphasis on individual accomplishment. I really can’t predict at this point how much innovation will be impacted. Families will become less mobile and remain more settled. It will be difficult for individuals to be able to be self supportive, anchoring more permanently to the family. There will be significant psychological and sociological impacts on individuals. Most of all; the mythology of individualism, that many of us have come to believe, will lose its meaning only to be replaced by a new mythology supporting the new social structure.

The transition from one family structure to another will be a rocky road that we transverse. I have faith in our specie’s ability to accommodate the new system and eventually make a full transition.

 




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