If the Nuclear Family Has Failed, What Comes Next?
In the cover story of The Atlantic’s March issue, David Brooks charts the rise of the nuclear family as the idealized American household unit. He analyzes the shift over the past century from “big, interconnected, and extended families” to “smaller, detached nuclear families,” arguing that the latter has left many Americans lonelier, with fewer role models, and with a weaker support network to help them in times of need.
Brooks explores the question of what family structures might serve people better, proposing that the answer might resemble the extended families and kinship networks that were more common in earlier eras. Many Americans, he notes, are already a part of such expansive households—two examples being multigenerational homes (with children, parents, and/or grandparents) and “co-housing” arrangements (which combine private quarters and communal spaces).
[Read: The nuclear family was a mistake]
For decades, Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist, has been studying these and other conceptualizations of family and community, and what draws people to them. Her, was the product of years of interviews with Americans living in nonnuclear ways, and she has since written .
