The Nuclear Family Won’t Save Us
By Marie Lindberg
I was raised to believe that the only ideal family was the nuclear family – one husband, one wife, 2.5 kids, and the white picket fence. It was promoted explicitly in the churches I attended with my friends and the judgment I heard of single mothers and gay parents. It was promoted implicitly by the structure of my family and the families around me. I don’t remember these messages coming from my parents, but society carried them to me still. To be happy, I would marry a man, have a career, and have children that we would raise in our own home.
It wasn’t until after college that I developed deep relationships with my peers who were also parents; while most of them were part of a nuclear family, they were not okay. My colleague who was having a baby with her husband of many years had a traumatic birthing experience and was not fully healed mentally or physically when she returned to work after she ran out of her FMLA protections and vacation time. A friend who could afford to take more time off work after giving birth developed postpartum depression and had so deeply isolated herself from her friends and family that it took months for anyone to realize the severity of what she was experiencing. After another friend’s husband passed unexpectedly, she had to move to a smaller home with her two children in a different school district, upending their lives even more. A friend who works part-time to accommodate her three kids’ schedules texted me begging me to pick up her kids from school because her and her husband were both stuck at work, and then she cried for fear of failing them when she came to get them at my house. Another friend has made it clear that if her husband wants children, he will need to find a new partner, because she doesn’t trust him to perform equitable caretaking responsibilities and has no other support. And these stories are just from within my small (and privileged) social circle.
I now believe that part of my happiness at age 34 is because I have sidestepped many of the expectations that were impressed upon me as a child. I am marrying a woman, so I do not have to therapize toxic misogyny in my partner. I have had three careers in 10 years and I have let go of the pressure of “making it” in a career. I do not own my home, so I spend less time on upkeep and am more able to follow my passions. And I am not having children. I do not have to navigate the daily financial and logistical burdens of taking care of children and have more time to care for myself and those I love. I know my friends are glad for their families, but they are struggling.
Plus, a nuclear family is not even the reality for most American households – 82.2 percent depart from the traditional nuclear family structure. One in four millennials were living with their parents in December 2022, according to one recent survey. From 2013 to 2018, ICE deported more than 231,000 people who reported having at least one U.S.-citizen child, leaving children without both or one of their parents. The nuclear family assumes that an individual family unit can and should sustain itself without support, but 65 percent of married couples with children were both employed outside the home, requiring additional child care at astronomical rates. The sandwich generation is growing and feeling the financial, logistical, and emotional pinch of attempting to care for their elderly parents at the same time as their own children and even grandchildren.
The actual reality is our country’s parents need help. The nuclear family won’t save it. It enforces the individualist value that we are to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and inflicts shame on those who ask for help. Valuing nuclear families over all others has developed the foundation for policy structures that disincentivize a community-based approach to care that works. The nuclear family has left parents burned out, anxious, lonely, and very often, alone.
We have so many models for how to do it better. The frequency of multigenerational family homes in the U.S. has been steadily growing since the 1970s, led by foreign-born, Asian, Black and Hispanic Americans. This structure allows for more sharing of income, chores, elder care, and child-rearing responsibilities. Chosen families – a term coined by anthropologist Kath Weston’s “Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship,” published at the height of the AIDS crisis – puts the responsibilities and benefits of family over the burden of blood or legal relation. Gay marriage only became a right protected by the Supreme Court eight years ago, and, to this day, 40 percent of the 4.2 million youth experiencing homelessness identify as LGBTQIA+ – often because they were ostracized from their own biological families. Chosen families have always existed but the term arose in popularity as queer communities, communities of color, and immigrants developed their own structures for caring for each other when the nuclear family was literally not an option.
We already rely on each other to survive and we shouldn’t be ashamed of that. Instead, we can show our children what it looks like to break toxic patterns, learn from folks who are different from us, and try something new. We can practice real community care by offering and accepting help from our neighbors, friends, and extended family. We can acknowledge that caregiving reaches far beyond keeping a child safe while a parent is at work, and includes the fiscal, physical, and mental health of all the folks we love, and even people we don’t know.
And we don’t have to continue the toxic pattern by expecting individuals and families to figure it all out. We can pass policies like the Family And Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act, which would expand the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to provide paid leave for families, so they can actually afford to take time off work to care for a new child, or a family member or themselves who is seriously ill or experiencing sexual or domestic violence. It would also expand the definition of family beyond a nuclear family to include other relatives to whom the worker has a similarly close relationship. The FAMILY Act, which was reintroduced in Congress this May, would also cover all working people regardless of their location, job type, or employer size, so that younger, part-time, lower-wage, and self-employed workers are not left to bear the burden of caregiving without protections and support.
The nuclear family is unattainable for many, and leaves families vulnerable. It is time to think differently about families and care. We can’t afford not to.
