Seriously, this lady has obviously never read any of the many available texts on Roman family life, and she hasn't read the Latin authors, because you can glean a lot of this from just what Cicero and Tacitus and the rest of them let drop in passing. I thought everybody knew that a Roman of good family (senators and knights and any wealthy freedmen or merchants who could aspire) lived in an extended household where the father, wife and children simply formed the core.
This is no big deal anyhow. An awful lot of southern families have had widowed granny and a housekeeper and/or nanny living in - we certainly did.
This was true for aproximately the first 400 years of the empire. You can systematically document the decline and fall of the Pagan Roman Empire through (1) introduction of "new age" eastern religions, specifically the Isis - goddess cults, replacing the traditional roman religion of the "state" (2) feminisation of the society at large and (3) acceptance of "alternative lifestyles," including pedophillia. "Gay Marrige" is NOT a new concept. In fact by the third century AD so many people were enjoying their "alternative lifestyles" that birth rates had dropped off by as much as 30-50% throughout the empire.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
"Historians" have been making a profession of misinterpreting the role of family structure for the past 30 or so years. Ditto your observation on the Southern family. Actually, the similarity to middle and planter class antebellum Southern families is striking.