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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I’m all for building healthy communities, but I’m talking about housing. That’s where Brooks is going with that even if he won’t admit it. The progressives that tell him what to say, see single family housing as bad for the environment. Don’t fall for it, even while building your own communities, religious or secular.
He’s usually wrong, but on this one he’s right. Families were stronger and more impenetrable by government when 3 generations lived together.
Children seeing their family care for their elderly was the best way.
Hell, now the local school marm thinks she can righteously weigh in on family matters. During covid I personally heard one saying that it was dangerous for the kids to be at home with parents, and to never come to school so the teacher could look them over. She truly believed her job was to monitor the kids to check for signs of abuse...and now the kids were not being watched by government.
The parents were considered dangerous to leave kids alone with.
I’m no Brooks expert, but isn’t there a saying that goes a broken clock can be right twice a day?
This topic has been coming up in Christian circles re: the role of church as family of God.
Exactly.... care went upwards to the elders, advice went downwards towards the young.
If it was such a mistake, why were the communists so intent on destroying it?
Nuclear Family, implies just the immediate family, who have relatively little contact with the rest of the extended family. As society became more mobile, people started moving away from their extended family members.
“David Brooks is one of the best-known public intellectuals in America…”
LoL. Those guys at the bee out did themselves this time.
Although, I hated that show, especially after I found out about the guy who played Grandpa Walton.
“it is preferable to have multi-generations near each other, even if you don’t all live under the same roof,”
Well stated. A close drive away is also very very good. Those Sunday dinners and get togethers. Close by during need, happiness or tragic times.
Not found in the Bible but you do find this.
"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh." James 3:11-12
“Drama abounds in extended families — but even the conflict-resolution building and socialization from that can be healthy”
True. And also, you certainly do not avoid drama by living and socializing only among strangers and coworkers.
+1 on grandpa Walton and the show in general.
Wife and I moved in order to care for her elderly parents and they never saw a day inside an old folks home. Both of the got to live in their home surrounded by their possessions and memories until the days they passed.
Only a highly educated intellectual could come up with such illogical bulls**t.
So the nuclear family has changed. Got it. What about that means it was a mistake?
I cooked dinner the other night, and ate it. The leftovers I put in the fridge and forgot about now have this fuzzy green stuff growing on it and I think it should be thrown out. So does that mean cooking dinner was a mistake?
I mean, his conclusion is just asinine.
No, my suspicion is if you are agreeing with him, you don’t fully understand what he’s really saying. Children should be raised by some sort of collective, and are property of the State. I’m quite certain that’s his world view. If not, then I’m willing to admit I’m wrong. But I doubt it.
Quit reading after “David Brooks”
David Brooks was the one time ‘conservative’ on those panel shows I do believe.
——
Absolutely, but he was installed to be the designated Piñata, he’s not a genuine conservative, his ilk are there to represent a leftist caricature of a conservative is, in order to knock it down. A straw man in the flesh. The “news” has been doing this for decades. It’s a subtle type of mind-fvckery that was pretty effective when they had a monopoly. Republicans were part of the scam, the Rhinos anyhow. Democrats screw things up, Republicans make sure it stays that way. Uniparty.
David Brooks was the one time ‘conservative’ on those panel shows I do believe.
——
Absolutely, but he was installed to be the designated Piñata, he’s not a genuine conservative, his ilk are there to represent a leftist caricature of a conservative is, in order to knock it down. A straw man in the flesh. The “news” has been doing this for decades. It’s a subtle type of mind-fvckery that was pretty effective when they had a monopoly. Republicans were part of the scam, the Rhinos anyhow. Democrats screw things up, Republicans make sure it stays that way. Uniparty.
No one’s business how another family co-exists. Freedom to choose is what matters.
An intellectual is an idiot with a thesaurus.
With Freedom comes Responsibility, and that should extend to your extended Family. And if only more took that approach, we wouldn’t have the behemoth government we have today.
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