Opinion: The coronavirus might break the nuclear family. That wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Family members greet one another during a through-the-door visit at Brookdale Arlington Senior Living in Arlington. Human Network InitiativeGrandparents across the United States are locked away in retirement homes, far from children and grandchildren, some facing the prospect of a solitary death. Their adult children, meanwhile, are at wits’ end because they cannot simultaneously work and meet all the demands of caring for their children.
This is a tragic waste of human potential. Many of those grandparents could be lavishing love and support on their grandchildren and freeing up working-age people to do their jobs in an ailing economy, instead of passing their final days alone. And while these scenes are especially front and center under
lockdown, they’ve been playing out for years. They are the predictable fallout of the arrangement we call the nuclear family.The nuclear family — a home populated by parents and children alone — is often considered the default human norm. But historically and across cultures, the extended family — multiple generations living together and sharing the burdens, pains and joys of domestic life — has been the true default.
In this initial iteration, husbands’ incomes could support an entire household, which wives, for the first time, were left to manage full time, entirely alone. But this division of labor is hardly the norm today, when a dual-breadwinner model is often required for household solvency. Children and the old still need to be cared for, of course — that didn’t go away simply because the realities of work have changed.
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