Posted on 11/22/2025 9:09:31 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
David Brooks is one of the best-known public intellectuals in America… I have found him gracious and humble in person and have followed his writing with appreciation over the years.
However, I was more than surprised by the headline of his latest Atlantic essay: “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.”
He notes that in the year 1800, three-quarters of American workers were farmers with large families living together. Until 1850, roughly three-quarters of Americans older than sixty-five lived with their kids and grandkids. Nuclear families (a husband and wife living with their children) were surrounded by extended or corporate families.
Extended families…provide resilience when facing hardship and help raise children together. But when factories opened in big US cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “young men and women left their extended families to chase the American dream.”
Here’s the foundational part of the essay: “When hyper-individualism kicked into gear in the 1960s, people experimented with new ways of living that embraced individualistic values. Today we are crawling out from the wreckage of that hyper-individualism—which left many families detached and unsupported…
Brooks asserts: “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.” He believes that “Americans are hungering to live in extended and forged families, in ways that are new and ancient at the same time.”
Let’s close with some good news…
Family trends may be changing. Economic pressures following the 2008 recession have pushed Americans toward greater reliance on family. Today, 20 percent of Americans live in multigenerational homes, up from 12 percent in 1980. More young adults are moving back home, as are seniors. Communal living…is also growing in popularity.
(Excerpt) Read more at denisonforum.org ...
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What? No he isn’t. He’s a hack on the globalist payroll. Some species of pseudo-intellectual at best, low frequency individual. Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them. This is one of them. Perhaps he doesn’t believe it either, but it pays the bills. Stop elevating these clowns with praise, even if only to balance out criticisms.
Without things like extended family ties, the State takes over.
In the 1930s and back, old folks homes were not a thing. Grandma and grandpa lived at home with their children’s families.
“David Brooks is one of the best-known public intellectuals in America”
Stopped reading!
In the 1930s and back, old folks homes were not a thing. Grandma and grandpa lived at home with their children’s families.
“Goodnight, John Boy!”
Without things like extended family ties, the State takes over.
Lord knows our “McMansions” today are big enough to handle it.
Just look at the title. “A Mistake” is there to get your attention. You gotta say something outrageous to the point of being offensive to get people to ‘take’ notice.
David Brooks was the one time ‘conservative’ on those panel shows I do believe. In our culture the way to make money is to get people to give you their undivided attention. Could be a street musician, a doctor or even a stripper. The trick is to find what sells. If times get dull one can always make things up. 24 hour news is a perfect example. Our friends at Fox do Special Report and the rest is regurgitated commentary hour after hour. At least Bill Mahre confines his schtick to one hour a week. Gutfeld needs to stop with the poop jokes-too much time to fill just like these TWO articles.
Do we owe it to them to read both to give our INFORMED opinions? Ohio State is on the tube now. I’ll pass.
Unless I am mis-understanding this article, I have to agree, it is preferable to have multi-generations near each other, even if you don’t all live under the same roof, it is nice if you are all within a reasonable driving distance of each other
Yes that is the point. 🙂 Drama abounds in extended families — but even the conflict-resolution building and socialization from that can be healthy. There’s just something to be said for the social ills we’re experiencing and fragmentation that prompted them.
How many families have Brooks or Denison moved into their homes?
This is why people who came to this country from Asia have been successful. The families pooled their resources to start businesses.
“Our culture’s hunger for authentic family is an invitation to the family of God. Your church and mine should be a loving community into which anyone is welcome and which offers the resilience and shared values extended families once provided.”
Any employee of the New York Homosexual Times is a degenerate sniveling scumbag of the lowest order. The building should be nuked from orbit, just to be sure. /spit
I’ll give you props for the Hopper pics.
If it was such a mistake, why were the communists so intent on destroying it?
I grew up with multi-generations within a short distance from us. My parents and my maternal grandparents came from large families, and most of descendants were less than 30 minutes from my great-grandparents’ home in Western Pennsylvania. There were large get-togethers with extended families on a regular basis.
Then the collapse of the steel industry and other plant closures forced my generation and younger to look for opportunities elsewhere.
Despite meaningful differences, one bridge is that in both communism and capitalism: everyone started working working for *the man.* (It’s just “the man” had different faces in both. In the former, it’s the state. In the latter, a corporation.)
So the author is a dumbass.
Brooks has always been dumb, but this is pants on head stupid
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