i’ve read what she proposes… essentially she suggests the abolishment of the traditional family model in favor of “shared mothering”, which basically aims to take down the traditional role of mother and make the “task” of giving birth voluntary, with no nuclear family to revolve around and everyone just giving everyone the love and support they need, without the constraints of familial roles. the idea here is that all of our needs are met in a free and communally supportive environment.
this is the broad strokes explanation, and it works, in theory, but really only in small groups and communities.
the kind of groups and communities that can be found in, say, a nuclear family…? and whatever emotional needs aren’t met by them, can be met by… friends? aka the “family” we choose?
also, there’s the biological component of mothering that she is completely ignoring, that the child literally depends on the mother for sustenance (formula notwithstanding), and the mother is compelled to care for the child as a matter of near instinct.
maybe i missed something, but reading the article it kind of felt like she was advocating for a family with more steps that tries to break the mold of what is traditionally understood as a “family” for reasons i can’t understand, because it kind of seems that every emotional need and role that she was trying to describe was already met and filled by the traditional family.
it's a similar issue to teaching life skills in public school. Not everyone is going to get those from home. Not everyone is going to have parents that can or want to teach them the life skills they need. The same is true for what she's talking about. Not every nuclear family is going to give the love and care that is needed. A system that requires people get X need met by their family is a system that punishes innocent people, people that might have done everything in their power correctly, for being born to the wrong family.
Personally, my issue with her concepts isnt that she dislikes the concept of a nuclear family. Im 100% on board with the nuclear family becoming less common. My issue is that point of dispersion of it. Extended family should be more involved with each other. Fulling destroying the concept's that make up the nuclear family is a bit too far. Most of these problems could be solved in most cases by just having more of the family involved in the lives of each other.
You'll still have issues with some people just getting absolutely worthless families that do not treat them well for absolutely no fault of their own, but there should be an exception based safety net for that rather than completely deconstructing the concept of a family. It's the whole idea of like, not breaking down the typical instance so the worst is relatively better, rather making the worst individually better by bettering it, making the whole better in the process.
This "style" of thought? I'm not sure what you'd call it is something we're seeing more and more often in today's culture. The premise that if something, anything, ever goes wrong while using any "system" the solution is not to address the issues as they come up but to abolish the entire system and start over. Often, by recreating the same system but with extra steps or one that relies on everyone thinking similarly and coming to same conclusions. The catch is it's their system and therefore it's better. Like was said, in theory, alot of the proposed systems do work but in reality it rarely goes like planned and most of time ends in utter failure. Most of the proposed systems are rather logical. If 9 is the desired outcome you just add the appropriate amount to the given number and voila 9. The problem is that when you add people it's more like you have an orange, a 2, and a rock. If 9 is still the desired amount what do you add now?
this is the broad strokes explanation, and it works, in theory, but really only in small groups and communities.
the kind of groups and communities that can be found in, say, a nuclear family…? and whatever emotional needs aren’t met by them, can be met by… friends? aka the “family” we choose?
maybe i missed something, but reading the article it kind of felt like she was advocating for a family with more steps that tries to break the mold of what is traditionally understood as a “family” for reasons i can’t understand, because it kind of seems that every emotional need and role that she was trying to describe was already met and filled by the traditional family.
Personally, my issue with her concepts isnt that she dislikes the concept of a nuclear family. Im 100% on board with the nuclear family becoming less common. My issue is that point of dispersion of it. Extended family should be more involved with each other. Fulling destroying the concept's that make up the nuclear family is a bit too far. Most of these problems could be solved in most cases by just having more of the family involved in the lives of each other.