Nuclear families, where there is a wife/mother, husband/father and children, has been a major part of Western culture for as long as we can remember. It’s often deemed the optimum solution for ensuring a good equilibrium unit for work and child-rearing, and played a part of the British Conservative party election manifesto.
Parenting has changed dramatically in just 60 years. A significantly smaller number of children play in the street or near their home every day, women are having fewer children and at a later age; smacking is less popular; and mothers are spending much more time with their children, despite the increase in female employment.
If we cast our minds back prior to the Industrial Revolution, we can reminisce over a time when families would live with relatives and their own parents to ensure as much support as possible, as was the case particularly in Eastern Europe and across Asian cultures. Some anthropologists believed that this organisation of family life was “universal” – that it filled all biological needs for humans. Yet in the late 1960s that anthropologists considered tribes such as the South Mexican Zinacanteco Indians who lived in “houses” rather than “families” from as little as one to as many as twenty people.
Today it is thought that the trend for nuclear families – or any strict family model for that matter – could be disappearing, with the Family and Parenting Institute declaring that one in four children are now from single parent households, usually brought up solely by mothers. However the father’s role as a more active participant is becoming increasingly important, even if they are not living in the same household. More grandparents are providing the childcare for busy working mothers too, echoing the setup pre-Industrial Revolution.
There have always been trials to break away from the social norm, such as the communes that were inspired by the Women’s Liberation movement and tribal systems in the early 1970s. One such case is that of the Wild family, where children were raised in a non-sexist household in Islington, North London, where, energised by radical feminism, men and women were equals. Al Garthwaite retold her experience in a Guardian article last year, prior to a Channel 4 documentary, Wild Things, which followed the commune founders and their now grown-up children.
“Non-biological parents were as equally important as biological parents”, which result in the children having many mums who were always fresh and able to provide the children with much attention. Some could say this is quite different to the frenzied parenting and childcare battle today.
A unique aspect of these communes was the choice of surname. Rather than the children taking the surname of the father or mother, all children born and raised there were named Wild.
The Wild communes spread to about ten communities across the UK by the mid 70s, before fading out a decade later. Yet the Wild surname legacy remains today.
What do you think about the nuclear family? Is there more to life than the usual approach? What is your slow parenting approach? jorg&olif would like to hear from you.
Image credit: jchatoff
