Teacher. Bad grades and behavior problems highly correlated with divorced parents. Divorce tells your kids you love yourself more than them.
A great episode of the old Little House on the Prairie, the community tells a couple they can’t get divorced, because it would wreck the community. Great show to watch as a family.
Also, we take care of an aged family member that we don’t get along with. Moved her in with us. Why? Because she’s family. She drives us crazy. But love demands we care for her. Love isn’t a feeling. It’s work. It’s suffering. Love is a gift to another, not some consumer product you wash down with a bag of Doritos and a trip to Disneyland.
This is great. I love the line "love isn't a feeling, it's work."
I've had conversations with siblings about what might happen to our aging family members. I think it'll probably come down to my wife and I taking them in because no one else will be willing to (which is a challenge because our living situation would be very cramped in such a scenario, but c'est la vie).
My parents had a few pieces of advice that they repeated constantly that helped drive home these ideas:
1. Marry someone who would make a good father.
2. Don't go to college or take a long-term job somewhere that isn't driving distance from home (we live in the Northeast so this might be easier here than in other places).
I did lots of dumb stuff in my young adulthood, but they always emphasized these two rules, and it meant that when it was time to have a family I was relatively set up for success.
That's brilliant. My parents never really made those points. I think they sort of tried to instill the first one, but as far as the second I think they were so focused on individuality that they accepted it as a given that their kids would likely settle far from them.
Super interesting insights. Makes me wonder how the trend toward increased estrangements applies to immediate vs. extended family. Take me, for example. My dad moved me, my siblings, and my mom to Germany before I can remember for a job. I ended up being there for 17 years and didn't leave until I went to college. As a result, I never had much of a relationship with any of my cousins, uncles, aunts, or even grandparents (though my parents did make it a point to go back to the US every other year to visit). I think for my dad, it was like "well, I'm going to do what's best for my family even if it means being far away from extended family," which I guess speaks to your last point about designing your life around work vs. family. I think maybe as familial ties weaken in modern society, the nuclear family is like the last vestige of a traditional family network that many try to hold onto. This reminds me of a quote I recently read: "On the surface, the family is still the cell of society, but in reality, the real cell of society in the United States is the individual" (from a Chinese author analyzing America you can find here: https://angelanagle.substack.com/p/america-against-america). Anyway, great post!
I definitely agree with that quote. And I agree that people are holding onto the Nuclear Family as a sort of final vestige. I have two main concerns with that though. First is that the nuclear family isn't really enough for people. There's the saying that it takes a village, and I think one reason a lot of parents are stressed and burned out is because they're trying to handle the responsibilities that previously were done by a much larger group of people. So, the nuclear family in my opinion is better than nothing, but far from adequate (that's not to say some nuclear families don't do well, but that overall a lot could use more support).
My second quarrel with the nuclear family is that it forces each generation to build a new "village" on their own. Given that you lived overseas (which sounds really cool btw), I suspect you didn't inherit a real life social network from your family as your reached adulthood. I know I didn't, and I didn't live overseas. I couldn't rely on my parents network to find a job, housing, etc etc. As an adult, I can't turn to my parents for a good recommendation for a plumber or electrician. I have to do all that stuff for myself. And then, if I perpetuate the nuclear family paradigm, my kids will once again have to start the cycle over. That's annoying and adds to the general stress of life, but it also puts people at a disadvantage compared people who have a multigenerational mindset. If I graduate from college without an inherited network, I have to spend time and money finding a job, accept lower salaries, etc. But someone who inherits a network will start on third base.
Yeah, I agree that an extended family network is better than only a nuclear one. You make a good point, too, about the generational benefits of extended family networks. The way you describe it, it's like a more efficient system--which is ironic since a lot of what has displaced strong family networks IMO are modern networks like social media, the internet etc. which claim to make our lives more efficient ...
On the first part about getting married not *primarily* because you're in love — My husband recently attended the memorial & burial of a good college friend, a guy in ministry who died of cancer at 30. He left behind his wife and toddler girls. My husband and I were talking recently about how if that were me, he'd want me to get married again ("after an appropriate time of grieving, of course!") We then went on to realize that marriage in that situation... between a widow/widower, for example... is probably going to lean more practical and realistic from the outset. We have 3 kids under 3 at the moment, and are coming to terms with just *how* practical marriage is for family life.... as much as we appreciate the romance and all!
I've had the exact same convo with my wife. And I know people who have actually been in this situation, and then made the practical choice to get married relatively quickly.
Teacher. Bad grades and behavior problems highly correlated with divorced parents. Divorce tells your kids you love yourself more than them.
A great episode of the old Little House on the Prairie, the community tells a couple they can’t get divorced, because it would wreck the community. Great show to watch as a family.
Also, we take care of an aged family member that we don’t get along with. Moved her in with us. Why? Because she’s family. She drives us crazy. But love demands we care for her. Love isn’t a feeling. It’s work. It’s suffering. Love is a gift to another, not some consumer product you wash down with a bag of Doritos and a trip to Disneyland.
This is great. I love the line "love isn't a feeling, it's work."
I've had conversations with siblings about what might happen to our aging family members. I think it'll probably come down to my wife and I taking them in because no one else will be willing to (which is a challenge because our living situation would be very cramped in such a scenario, but c'est la vie).
My parents had a few pieces of advice that they repeated constantly that helped drive home these ideas:
1. Marry someone who would make a good father.
2. Don't go to college or take a long-term job somewhere that isn't driving distance from home (we live in the Northeast so this might be easier here than in other places).
I did lots of dumb stuff in my young adulthood, but they always emphasized these two rules, and it meant that when it was time to have a family I was relatively set up for success.
That's brilliant. My parents never really made those points. I think they sort of tried to instill the first one, but as far as the second I think they were so focused on individuality that they accepted it as a given that their kids would likely settle far from them.
Super interesting insights. Makes me wonder how the trend toward increased estrangements applies to immediate vs. extended family. Take me, for example. My dad moved me, my siblings, and my mom to Germany before I can remember for a job. I ended up being there for 17 years and didn't leave until I went to college. As a result, I never had much of a relationship with any of my cousins, uncles, aunts, or even grandparents (though my parents did make it a point to go back to the US every other year to visit). I think for my dad, it was like "well, I'm going to do what's best for my family even if it means being far away from extended family," which I guess speaks to your last point about designing your life around work vs. family. I think maybe as familial ties weaken in modern society, the nuclear family is like the last vestige of a traditional family network that many try to hold onto. This reminds me of a quote I recently read: "On the surface, the family is still the cell of society, but in reality, the real cell of society in the United States is the individual" (from a Chinese author analyzing America you can find here: https://angelanagle.substack.com/p/america-against-america). Anyway, great post!
I definitely agree with that quote. And I agree that people are holding onto the Nuclear Family as a sort of final vestige. I have two main concerns with that though. First is that the nuclear family isn't really enough for people. There's the saying that it takes a village, and I think one reason a lot of parents are stressed and burned out is because they're trying to handle the responsibilities that previously were done by a much larger group of people. So, the nuclear family in my opinion is better than nothing, but far from adequate (that's not to say some nuclear families don't do well, but that overall a lot could use more support).
My second quarrel with the nuclear family is that it forces each generation to build a new "village" on their own. Given that you lived overseas (which sounds really cool btw), I suspect you didn't inherit a real life social network from your family as your reached adulthood. I know I didn't, and I didn't live overseas. I couldn't rely on my parents network to find a job, housing, etc etc. As an adult, I can't turn to my parents for a good recommendation for a plumber or electrician. I have to do all that stuff for myself. And then, if I perpetuate the nuclear family paradigm, my kids will once again have to start the cycle over. That's annoying and adds to the general stress of life, but it also puts people at a disadvantage compared people who have a multigenerational mindset. If I graduate from college without an inherited network, I have to spend time and money finding a job, accept lower salaries, etc. But someone who inherits a network will start on third base.
Yeah, I agree that an extended family network is better than only a nuclear one. You make a good point, too, about the generational benefits of extended family networks. The way you describe it, it's like a more efficient system--which is ironic since a lot of what has displaced strong family networks IMO are modern networks like social media, the internet etc. which claim to make our lives more efficient ...
On the first part about getting married not *primarily* because you're in love — My husband recently attended the memorial & burial of a good college friend, a guy in ministry who died of cancer at 30. He left behind his wife and toddler girls. My husband and I were talking recently about how if that were me, he'd want me to get married again ("after an appropriate time of grieving, of course!") We then went on to realize that marriage in that situation... between a widow/widower, for example... is probably going to lean more practical and realistic from the outset. We have 3 kids under 3 at the moment, and are coming to terms with just *how* practical marriage is for family life.... as much as we appreciate the romance and all!
I've had the exact same convo with my wife. And I know people who have actually been in this situation, and then made the practical choice to get married relatively quickly.