The Nuclear Family Was A MistakeBrooks argues for the extended family and for the non-biological extended ‘chosen family’ as better alternatives. They had and have their virtues, no question. They also tie people down geographically and don’t work with mobility-required career paths, like the military or the ministry or indeed corporate management.
We know kids from intact nuclear families do better, but it’s often argued that is because nuclear families have more economic resources than single-parent families..
On average, children of single parents or unmarried cohabiting parents tend to have worse health outcomes, worse mental-health outcomes, less academic success, more behavioral problems, and higher truancy rates than do children living with their two married biological parents.Brooks quotes one study I find intriguing because it compares the nuclear family with the single parent family, while controlling for income level.
According to work by Richard V. Reeves, a co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, if you are born into poverty and raised by your married parents, you have an 80 percent chance of climbing out of it. If you are born into poverty and raised by an unmarried mother, you have a 50 percent chance of remaining stuck.Translation: For every 10 kids “born into poverty,” 8 of those from intact families grow up to make it out of poverty, while 5 of those from broken families do likewise. That difference isn’t trivial, it’s the difference between a coin flip and an almost sure thing.
For me, this tends to undermine the Brooks argument.
