⬇️ This showed up in my Readwise feed today, and it hit me quite hard.

"If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor."

Do you agree/disagree with this thought? What are your thoughts on this?

which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life

Personally, I know of very grim incidents which show otherwise. Some research on the subject: http://www.d2l.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Statistics_2_Perpetrators.pdf

Reminds me of this quote by Nassim Taleb - "With my family, I’m a communist. With my close friends, I’m a socialist. At the state level of politics, I’m a Democrat. At higher levels, I’m a Republican, and at the federal levels, I’m a Libertarian.”

My anecdotal knowledge, overwhelming majority of women who have talked to me on the subject, have been sexually assaulted in various degrees as a child. Almost all of them by a someone in a joint family/extended family. PS: My sample set is pretty small and might not be representative

"familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor "- this is just hyperbolic. The article contains interesting observations otherwise , but re:economics- trying too hard to connect dots that are too far away IMO

very very true