Are people who romanticize the extended family dynamic actually prepared for what it means?

Gravel_Roads · 2024-03-26T03:00:53+00:00

I have never heard someone who prefers extended family involvement claim a nuclear family “doesn’t work”. They just prefer a more extensive network of people involved in their own child rearing.

It’s okay they you’re not familiar with these things, but when it’s more community-based instead of parents-only, it’s not about other people “getting a say” in how you raise your child, it’s that your child is simply exposed to other people’s lives and belief, which helps the child learn about how other people live and what their options are in terms of what they want to do, themselves.

Ie, I grew up in a hippy town where all of my neighbors were also my classmates, every kid our age was invited to everyone else’s birthday parties, entire classes stayed at each other’s houses in slumber parties and I knew most adults around me by their first name. No one was “getting a say” in what mom did as a mother; they just contributed extra adult presence to compliment what my parents were also doing.

It works out great for ME, but frankly… my parents weren’t great! They weren’t abusive, just clueless and damaged, and struggled with even their own lives. But I barely noticed as a kid because I experienced no neglect, my neighbors were trusting and my aunt was around a lot, too. Because of this, I don’t have anywhere near the scarring many kids would have going through my childhood, and I am far less resentful of them because while they failed themselves, they at least raised me in an environment where I wouldn’t fail even if they did.

EulenWatcher · 2024-03-26T02:24:08+00:00

I think most people who haven't grown up or who don't live with their relatives at the moment are not prepared for huge multigenerational living. It's not that only your parents or in-laws have a say, your aunts, your grandparents and your spouse's older relatives all have some say in your matter. Sure, you get lots of help and it's easier to raise a kid when you have a village, but it also means you're expected to help everyone. Your niece from your second cousin or your great great aunt. It's an exchange of resources, time and help and as a young(ish) family member you can be just drained because you have a lot of elders and youngsters to take care of.

We also assume that it's a functional, somewhat healthy family, but lots of people's families are dysfunctional to their core and exposing their kids to them on a regular basis is just being neglectful or borderline abusive. Sometimes cutting relatives off is a necessary although drastic measure for your own and your children's safety and well-being. But your older relatives might disagree with this decision and it gets tricky when you live all together.

I'm saying it as a person from an Asian background who lived and lives with relatives. Currently we're living with my in-laws and it's hard. I know that if we have a kid, his mother and I will have arguments about it and there's no way I could reason with her - she's from an older generation and she just believes that she knows better.

Safinated · 2024-03-26T04:16:34+00:00

Extended family is great if it’s members are great

If they’re not, it sucks ass

Im happy we can now cut off shitty family as well as friends and partners

Solondthewookiee · 2024-03-26T03:10:20+00:00

I have noticed that a lot of westerners romanticize the extended family dynamic and say the nuclear family is an anomaly and doesn't work.

Who is saying the nuclear family doesn't work? I've definitely heard that the nuclear family is not the only type of family that can work, but can't say I've heard many people say it doesn't work at all.

However, are westerners actually prepared to have their mom and dad and their in-laws have a direct say over how their kid is raised?

This is actually a question I've often wondered about passport bros.

relish5k · 2024-03-26T03:47:56+00:00

Pick your poison - overburdened by the responsibilities of childcare, or loss of autonomy due to the presence of helping hands who all get a say. There's not perfect path, there's no free lunches.

That said, I would totally not mind if my mom lived with us to help with the kids. We are lucky because she lives nearby and comes a few days a week and sleeps over a couple of times a month. It's great whenever she can help but it's especially great to be able to shower in peace in the morning after 6am. To me, that's worth casting a blind eye to some of her slightly more questionable choices around my kids.

SupposedlySapiens · 2024-03-26T03:20:36+00:00

Well given that humans lived that way for literally 99% of our history, it’s probably a good idea. Sharing burdens makes them much easier to handle.

Good_Result2787 · 2024-03-26T02:25:08+00:00

Some people know this and think it might be a good idea; others probably view it as more that the extended family just helps out as needed but doesn't live with them.

The extended family will definitely tell you how to raise your kids even if they don't live with you, though.

MistyMaisel · 2024-03-26T02:40:45+00:00

I've thought about it, and if it's necessary for legit health reasons for family, provided they've done their best to take care of themselves and be decent humans, then I'm cool with them living with us. And with the understanding it's not limited authority, it's total unequivocal authority.

But otherwise, not interested.

Legitimate_Type_1324 · 2024-03-26T02:35:13+00:00

My in-laws are fucking awesome

Dr_Click_Click_Boom · 2024-03-26T03:06:30+00:00

Nuclear families and extended families aren't mutually exclusive. I grew up in a nuclear family consisting of my father, mother and siblings. Within a ten mile radius was an abundance of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins....extended family.

Makuta_Servaela · 2024-03-26T03:49:55+00:00

Those aren't the only two options. The other option is also a community network, which is actually what we already have in the west and pretend not to: from birth to like 2, the SAHP generally watches the kid with the help of occasional nanny/babysitter/friend, then you've got daycare watches them 8 hours a day, then preschool 8 hours a day, then public school 8 hours a day, sports coaches 1-4 hours a week, youth-group leaders 1-2 hours a week, occasional weekend at grandmas or at the friends' house, etc.

Or you've got a more personal one: you have a kid and your close friend has a kid, so you guys trade off weekends where you watch both kids or your friend watches both kids, etc.

My neighbour has a kid, and I am the emergency transportation to and from her daycare if need be. If I had a kid of my own and knew how to do childcare, I wouldn't mind watching their kid either. I just happen to not have that knowledge yet.

So they have a direct say over how the household operates too?

This is also not mandatory. Those cultures have a very big "never correct authority" thing, which is inherently harmful. No one should be above correction. We can simply push for a culture of respect among individuals. I wouldn't mind my parents living with me if they respect the fact that the house is shared and that their assistance and guidance is requested, not required.

Besides, two people shouldn't be allowed to decide every aspect of a child's guidance just because they fucked. That's a whole ass human being. Knowing how to have sex and knowing how to raise a child are not the same thing. Any parents should have some kind of network correcting and monitoring their childrearing, whether that parent be the direct parents or the grand parents.

chalkandapples · 2024-03-26T06:04:27+00:00

I'm someone that depend heavily on my extended family and my parents also raised me and my brother with the help of our extended family. I'm also someone that's spoken out against the nuclear family and didn't think it's enough.

I'm very comfortable with my parents and in-laws all up in our business including living with us, because they are respectful people and don't cross lines and boundaries. My own sense of boundaries are also less rigid when it comes to advice from family members. No matter what, I tend to always hear them out. If we disagree, I would tell them I disagree and usually we'll have a conversation. Parents and in-laws might push for it, or insist heavily, but they usually give us the final say. I respect both my parent's and in-law's judgement, if they disagree THAT much with me and insist that hard, I would very seriously reconsider my point of view.

Probably key to this is that I didn't marry into a family that's super different from mine, or "crazy" from my point of view. We share similar values, and any disagreements tend to be on minor details rather than major principles.

Different_Cress7369 · 2024-03-26T06:07:58+00:00

I’m not sure about romanticise, but I know that if mum got stuck in traffic and dad was working late, Mr and Mrs Next Door would feed us or Mrs Old Lady Up the Road would bring us inside to watch tv if it was cold outside. Communities are great, you just have to take a bit of rough (everyone having an opinion on your parenting) with the smooth (help).

SwimmingTheme3736 · 2024-03-26T07:53:40+00:00

For me I have something in between. I have a large village that helps out, and we help them out. We babysit each other children, I help my parents out they help me out same as my sister. We tend to go in big family holidays in the summer so the children have lots of other children to play with the adults also then get a break.

WilliamWyattD · 2024-03-26T09:53:12+00:00

The complicating factor here is that a culture is a holistic, interconnected thing. When the extended family trumped the nuclear, many other conditions were different. And as a result, people's psychologies were different. One can argue that perhaps changes in general conditions led to the rise of the nuclear family in the first place.

So I guess the point is that imagining life right now, as it is, but with strong extended families can only take you so far. A lot of other things would likely have to change to restore the extended family, and then doing so would change many other conditions in turn.

uglysaladisugly · 2024-03-26T10:02:52+00:00

Criticizing the nuclear family unit doesn't necessarily mean we want to replace it with the extended family model. The latter is still very lineal view of children and generally of units, all of this very closely linked to our idea of land owning and heritability.

Personally, I'm more inclined to group parenting in bigger units of 6 to 20 people or maybe more depending on the overall organisation of the household.

BKLD12 · 2024-03-26T11:53:14+00:00

Why not? It's like the proverb, it takes a village to raise a child. Personally, I think that's the ideal situation. We don't live in an ideal world, so it's not always possible. I get that. Still, I think that children benefit from families and communities that look out for one another in that way.

My dad's side of the family is huge and relatively tight knit. We didn't have a multigenerational household most of the time (although there was a period where we were living with my older sister, her husband, and her two boys). Still, family was always within a 20-minute drive, and those that didn't live close would often travel.

It may be more of an adjustment for Americans who are not used to that way of living, sure. Hell, my dad's family is an adjustment for most people who marry into it, and as I said we don't all live together or in some compound together. I also understand that not everyone is fortunate to come from family that are mostly not assholes. My mom's side of the family...not so ideal. I've never even met one aunt or my maternal grandparents, because apparently my aunt is nuts (although my mom's other sister is an antivaxxer who is one step away from Qanon and I've met her, so...) and my grandpa was abusive. If your family is like that, I can understand not wanting them to give their two cents in raising your kids.

apresonly · 2024-03-26T14:10:52+00:00

why would we have to accept extended family as dictators just because we want a closer relationship with them?

gntlbastard · 2024-03-26T14:50:50+00:00

You mean the people who raised you might have something to contribute to the raising of their grandkids?

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Handsome_Goose · 2024-03-26T02:41:41+00:00

Yeah, this shit can be extremely toxic.

An acquiaintance of mine moved to another city to live closer to her jewish extended family. It was all fun and games when she was cooking for their celebrations and had a lot of other like-minded women to talk to.

But then her son got hernia and needed an expensive surgery, so she asked said extended family for help. Their first reaction? Asking for his school diary to see his grades.

eli_ashe · 2024-03-26T03:46:18+00:00

'romanticize', how bout 'talk about' or 'discuss the notion of'

Raising of kids. Grandparent have always had some say in how the grandkids are raised. Even in the families of the bastards of the west. It sounds like OP has something of a romanticized vision of what 'westerners' actually think and live like.

As for the specifics of the running of a household with multiple generations, typically in the west when this happens, the grandparent become relegated to a room, the 'mother-in-law' apartment is a classic americana cultural bit. Though it is tru that the actual mechanics of how all the works out varies, the 'classic' western model of this is definitely that the family raising the kids atm has the most sway over the house. The elders, insofar as they are present, are not 'in charge'.

Tho all of the details of that do vary a great deal.

The pragmatics of extended family dynamics persist in the libidinal and individualist west, and have maybe adapted from whatever old timey notions of extended familial relations you are referring.

The questions of how to handle that extended family are far more what's on the table for discussion. In the current there are a few specific notions that seem to be in the discourse:

1) ought they actually live together, or just near each other? One of the aspects of living in more recent times is that folks have tended to leave their home towns. Hence, what is sometimes meant by 'extended family living' is a bit more towards the notion of folks not chasing jobs around the country, and instead staying within a single community, building it up, putting down real roots, etc...

This is a real problem in the 'wild wild west' with the individualists. The notion not only that a nuclear unit might go out on their own, but that they would also leave the immediate community or even region is a real problem.

Here I think OP is expressing a more literal 'living together' which I think at least somewhat misses the point of the problems in the 'west'.

2) How deeply interconnected and in what ways ought extended family be? Again, this doesn't have to be literal living together, though that is on the table, but also such things as having grandparents be involved in grandchildrens lives, how to care for elders as they age, how to arrange visiting times, how to maintain family gatherings. These are all things that have diminished and changed in the past few generations, largely with the aforementioned moving around chasing after jobs.

3) If extended family actually does live together, what exactly might that really look like? OP mentions modes of this from the past or from other countries as if we have to follow those models. This of course just isn't the case. We broke those models already, we needn't redo them. There are also the aforementioned americana classic modes, those harken back almost a hundred years ago tho. I think folks are in the current more discussing what those kinds of arrangements could or should look like in a modern society.

Rather than, for instance, clamoring for every individual to have their own personal apartment to live in, how would housing look like and function with multigenerational living, multiple incomes, etc...

So like, are they prepared? Not for what OP suggests is multigenerational living. But we in the 21st century, times and circumstances have actually changed.

Devilishz3 · 2024-03-26T04:36:50+00:00

I agree with Eulen in that it entirely depends. Also Asian grew up abroad so most didn't do the live in in-laws however just having that extra community is such a great thing and helpful. For reasons, that isn't the case anymore. None of the younger kids will really know their relatives, cousins, no sense of community and celebrations. I used to babysit and live for weeks as a young teen with my aunt and uncle and I was like their son before their son. I saw how stressed they were.

It just depends on the individuals involved because my family lets me do what I want even if they make suggestions or help out.

If I was forced to pick between strictly nuclear or extended, I'm going extended every time.

2024-03-26T05:48:33+00:00

Yeah personally I don’t really have an interest in being involved in the raising of other people’s kids or cleaning up after people other than my future husband. That was never something I was interested in.

Edit: Also the lack of privacy is a big one.

CasseroleTruck · 2024-03-26T06:36:57+00:00

Didn't the extended family dynamic already exist with earlier generations of established American groups (eg most white people as well as black people)? The rugged individualism and smaller family unit didn't really set in until the past 100 years or so. Stronger reliance on extended family structures and close-knit surrounding community is more of an immigrant thing when you have not settled in for that long relatively speaking and need the social support and network.

GhettoJamesBond · 2024-03-26T06:49:53+00:00

But imagine how much easier life would be if you have all this adult family helping to pay household expenses. Most of the videos on Tik Tok of people complaining about the economy can solve all their problems by simply going back home. Live in your moms basement and save up money. Fuck what everyone else says.

abaxeron · 2024-03-26T08:35:09+00:00

Extended families built on mutual trust and respect exist. While there are obviously tensions and conflicts when you have so many adults in the room deciding everything, the alternative is children being raised by perverted institutions, and household affairs being decided by the corrupt state. If institutions were not perverted, and the state was not corrupt, of course nuclear family would have been quite ideal in terms of life satisfaction, but we don't live in a perfect world.

John_Oakman · 2024-03-26T09:53:09+00:00

Continued existence is justification in and of itself, but not a moral justification. What most of them are pointing out that those cultures with extended networks are still having a replacement rate compared to their more independent counterparts.

The socially middle class in the Euro-Atlantic democracies are paying an unsustainable independence tax and most don't even realized it.

Paliant · 2024-03-27T10:10:12+00:00

As someone who is an ONLY GRANDCHILD, I would welcome the nosiness that comes with that extra support.

HighestTierMaslow · 2024-03-27T22:48:48+00:00

Go to /r/beyondthebump and I'd say no. I'm all for limiting harmful energy to your kids that come from extended family, but the line between harmful and just simply not getting your way and accepting others do things differently is very blurred. It's very weird to me the amount of overly critical women there who lament about having "no village." Like 75% of people overall/the potential "village" don't meet their standards anyway why are you complaining so much about your village 🙄

Friedrich_Friedson · 2024-03-26T09:55:40+00:00

However, are westerners actually prepared to have their mom and dad and their in-laws have a direct say over how their kid is raised?

Having your extended family help doesn't mean they have a direct say on how the kids are raised lmao. Sure they can voice their opinion or whatever,(which can be done even if they just regularly see you lol)but the final decision is still yours lol.

Considering that westerners are raised to be highly individualist I don't think they would stand that.

Anglosphere ≠ "Westerners"

Also, did you know that in many cases the couple literally lives in the same house as the grandparents? So they have a direct say over how the household operates too?

You litterallly don't have to lol,just have the grandparents leave close enough so that they can help watch the kid if need arises.

I swear y'all hear "family helping with kids" and you think,i dunno,rural southeast Asia or something, while stuff like that is still very common in many European countries (eg Greece, Italy, Portugal etc).

Title	Are people who romanticize the extended family dynamic actually prepared for what it means?
Author	Novel-Tip-7570
Upvotes	27
Comments	80
Date	March 26, 2024 2:04 AM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1bnw7cl/are_people_who_romanticize_the_extended_family/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/are-people-who-romanticize-the-extended-family.1513076 https://theredarchive.com/post/1513076

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