I hear that. But my wife and I regularly debate about the role of family. I don’t know if it’s more American culture to view family as more “disposable”, e.g. they can be cut-off if toxic, etc. Being originally an (eastern) European, my mentality is that family (or blood-bonds to be dramatic) are always more serious than friends. To that end, I always thought having a large villa with multiple wings for multi-generational housing would be more appealing. My mother and wife (stereotype much?) don’t get along, so maybe a challenging proposition…
The idea of the family is so pernicious when it is used to justify abuse and avoiding responsibility and consequences of bad behavior. Cutting people off when they’re consistently being harmful assholes shouldn’t be contigent upon blood relation or any other kind of personal or group association and all the people selling “family is forever” or “traditional family values” are doing it because they themselves are the abusive asshole that doesn’t want to be cut out
American culture is changing. It used to be that family bonds were the tightest, and we had generational housing, but that started going away during the great depression when a lot of family farms shut down and people lost the house they’d been in for generations. We also don’t like to talk about the amount of generational trauma that came from both the world wars, and that was another nail in the coffin of family life. The most recent blow has been the economy, where both parents need to work and don’t have the time to build the bonds with their children that are needed for a tight-knit family unit.
I hear that. But my wife and I regularly debate about the role of family. I don’t know if it’s more American culture to view family as more “disposable”, e.g. they can be cut-off if toxic, etc. Being originally an (eastern) European, my mentality is that family (or blood-bonds to be dramatic) are always more serious than friends. To that end, I always thought having a large villa with multiple wings for multi-generational housing would be more appealing. My mother and wife (stereotype much?) don’t get along, so maybe a challenging proposition…
The idea of the family is so pernicious when it is used to justify abuse and avoiding responsibility and consequences of bad behavior. Cutting people off when they’re consistently being harmful assholes shouldn’t be contigent upon blood relation or any other kind of personal or group association and all the people selling “family is forever” or “traditional family values” are doing it because they themselves are the abusive asshole that doesn’t want to be cut out
I see people being increasingly willing to cut off abusive family to be a very important change in society to end cycles of abuse
American culture is changing. It used to be that family bonds were the tightest, and we had generational housing, but that started going away during the great depression when a lot of family farms shut down and people lost the house they’d been in for generations. We also don’t like to talk about the amount of generational trauma that came from both the world wars, and that was another nail in the coffin of family life. The most recent blow has been the economy, where both parents need to work and don’t have the time to build the bonds with their children that are needed for a tight-knit family unit.