Postmodern Families

From the Belmont Club:

Much of the discussion over the shape of the family model is motivated by a desire to predict what Western society will look like after they all unfold. ...

It may turn out that the traditional nuclear family played a key role in shaping the human unit that was best suited for meeting the demands of an modern society. The triangular family, father, mother and children, like the triangular military structure may have evolved, not by patriarchy or religion, but by practical necessity into its present state. The last years of the 20th century may have seen such a sense of unshakeable security in the permanence of the Western world that its leading intellectuals believed they had the luxury to pursue all kinds of optional extras: from unlimited sexual gratification to the idea that the ethnic groups could be preserved in some kind of ethnographic museum to visited on photographic safari. The future would be one big party in a world that had no need of God. Religion, national defense, traditional morality -- these were all superfluous obstacles to our enjoyment. Dispensable, unnecessary dead weight from a primitive past; excess baggage at the End of History. The family, once our link to both the past and the future may be slowly dying. Good luck to those who would prosper without it.