Post-Nuclear Family
Post-Nuclear Family:
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Quotes on this page:
overview
· internal characteristics
· adulthood
· emotional aspects
· reproduction
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Summary
➤ The post-nuclear family is a system of collective parenting where between 9 and 18 children are raised in a single household by a group of cooperating adults who do not live there. The children are evenly spaced in age with a baby born into the family every one to two years. This wide spectrum of ages means that older children can care for younger ones and teach them basic skills, which relieves the adults of many routine tasks.The household is supported financially by a system of family taxes levied on adult members, similar to a church tithe where members give 10% of their income. Children who age out of the main household can live however they choose and are free to move elsewhere, so long as these family taxes are paid. Their incentive for paying them is the promise of ongoing family support and eventual care in old age. [Ep53]
➤ I don't propose outlawing the nuclear family. If the traditional family works for you, you have my blessings. It's just a very scary proposition: to launch into parenthood without any experience, realizing how costly it's going to be and how huge the risks are. If you choose parenthood in today's world, it can monopolize the rest of your life, especially if something goes wrong, like some sort of birth defect. The post-nuclear family is intended reduce the stakes for each parent by distributing the costs and risks. It could make the parenting project palatable to more people, especially the best-equipped ones, while improving the final outcome. [objections]
The Final Product
➤ What is the final outcome? Well-socialized, well-educated, responsible children who will carry on your core values and continue to support the family itself. [objections]What Will It Look Like?
➤ If you were to visit the post-nuclear family of the future, it would probably look a lot like a nuclear family of today, just an unusually big one. It's also more decentralized, with more responsibility expected of the kids. Everything doesn't have to revolve around Mom and Dad. There can be multiple Moms and Dads, rotating into the household on a schedule.... If you step into a nuclear family, it might seem like pandemonium at first. With nine kids, there are a lot of things happening. Lots of energy, lots of little dramas taking place. But behind it all, there's plenty of structure, more so than most families today. [objections]Preserving Ones Culture
➤ The post-nuclear family is intended to preserve and perpetuate your culture, whatever you consider that to be. For a culture to survive beyond a single lifetime, it needs new members, ideally raised within that system from their earliest days. The post-nuclear family, like traditional families, is a vehicle for acculturation and character formation, as well as a safety net when members get in trouble.To entertain such a plan, you would have to see your culture as valuable and worth preserving beyond your own lifetime. You would have to be willing to make a substantial lifelong investment in this project, but it shouldn't be as costly in time or money as a traditional nuclear family. Its costs and risks would be distributed across multiple adults so no individual or couple is bearing an excess of burdens. [Ep53]
Government Involvement
➤ This [post-nuclear] plan is not presented as a solution to the demographic woes of a whole nation, and it does not require government sanction or support. It is instead an independent plan for raising children by any small group of adults who choose to form an alliance. [Ep53]How It Starts
➤ The post-nuclear family can be started as a simple parenting collective. For example, three or more couples, producing children in the traditional way, could choose to raise their children in a single shared household. The founding adults would not live in the shared home but would take turns as on-duty parents on a scheduled basis. [Ep53]➤ It can be started quite simply by three or more couples producing babies in the traditional way but choosing to raise them together in a single household, thereby cutting down on expenses. There are a lot of other ways a post-nuclear family could get started but this seems the least radical, in that it ought to be fairly easy to implement without violating too many norms. You've got parents creating kids just as they normally do. They're just choosing to raise them in a different way. Instead of two adults raising between one and three kids, I propose six or more adults raising at least nine and maybe as many as 18 kids in a single dwelling. [Ep50]
Age Spacing
➤ I actually think that the optimal spacing for any family—nuclear or post-nuclear—is a child every two years, or 9 kids under the age of 18. The only reason you would want to make the spacing narrower is if your were planning to split the family at a later date. [Ep46]➤ Children are evenly spaced in age, born every 1 to 2 years. This spacing is intended to reduce direct competition between kids and to create a natural hierarchy among them. [Ep53]
This staggering of ages allows learning to flow from child to child and not just from adult to child. In other words, once a child learns something, they can pass it on to a younger child, which can only happen if you have this distribution of ages. It wouldn't work if you had all your children the same age because they're all learning at the same rate, but if you have this distributed system, there's more opportunity for the children to participate in their own upbringing. [Ep50] ➤ Why do I choose that family size: 9 to 18 kids? I choose it because it allows for optimal age spacing between children. It maximizes efficiency while giving each child his or her own special place in the family. If you are 8 years old, and your next oldest sibling is 10 years old and your next younger sibling is 6 years old, you have a unique position in the family where no one is directly competing with you. There is also a clear hierarchy. Your 10-year-old sibling has more authority and responsibility than you do, because their skills and maturity are generally more advanced. It is okay if older kids get more privileges owing to their age, because you know you'll get the same privileges yourself someday. [Ep46]
Benefits of a Large Family
A large family allows economies of scale and systems of mutual care that aren't possible in smaller families. It also discourages any sense of entitlement, because no child is a prince or princess in a large family. They all have to cooperate to get what they want. If nothing else, a large family means lower childcare costs, because one on duty adult can manage all nine kids. [Ep53]Responsibilities of Children
➤ Children are expected to perform all of the routine tasks of the household that are within their ability, like preparing meals, cleaning house, changing diapers and teaching younger kids basic skills. The children are evenly distributed in age, from 0 to 18, which allows older children to care for younger ones. [Ep53]➤ In my view, nearly all repetitive, time-consuming household tasks should be performed by children, not adults. This includes the changing of diapers and other routine care of infants. When it comes to the laborious task of teaching a child language, older children can do the job just as well as any adult with a PhD, so let's put this labor force to work. The older children gain skills almost as much as the young children do, and the adult with a PhD can use their own skills for something more valuable. [Ep54]
Permanent Childrearing
➤ To preserve its cumulative wisdom and culture, the post-nuclear family is intended to be a permanent institution, continuously raising children in perpetuity. [Ep53]➤ [The post-nuclear] family never dies. Decade after decade, it will always have the same number of children: 9 to 18. As one child ages out of the core household, another baby is born into it.
In the traditional nuclear family, childrearing ends when the one mother loses her fertility, usually in her 40s. Although there may be 9 children at some point in the family's history, that's only a peak, not a sustained number. Children eventually age out of the family and are not replaced. The household dwindles to zero again as the parents retire and eventually die. The problem with this system that their parenting experience is lost. After you've raised 9 kids, you've probably learned a thing or two about how to do it well, but then you quit, and that experience goes to the grave with you. The families of today are fleeting, which means they have little in the way of institutional memory.
The aim in keeping the family going is to preserve its internal culture. By "culture" I mean the software that the family runs on—that is, all of its procedures, policies and mythologies. If you have a system that gets a large number of children to work together smoothly, that's a great accomplishment, and you don't want to lose it.... That's why I see the post-nuclear family as a permanent institution that goes on forever: always 9 to 18 kids for as long as the Earth remains habitable. [Ep46]
Education
➤ Most basic knowledge, culture and training is passed from older children to younger ones. For example, language is taught primarily by older children to younger ones. Adults step in only to fine-tune these basic skills, teach advanced skills and provide a system of formal education. [Ep53]➤ One implied feature is that children are homeschooled under the supervision of a paid professional teacher. If you're going to go to all the trouble to establish this system, you're not going to turn its most important function over to a public school. You're going to do it yourself. You're going to establish a curriculum, and the contents of this curriculum is going to be a matter of a lot of debate and negotiation among the adults, because it's so important. [Ep53]
➤ The teacher is really more of an educational manager than a teacher, per se, because they assign educational resources more than they actually teach. They will directly teach students only when other educational resources don't work. The educational resources they have available might be online learning, kids teaching other kids, textbook learning, standard exercises and any new options that technology might bring about. Formal education is going to be a on a fixed schedule during the day just like school today. During certain hours during the day, you are at school, you're doing your job of learning. [Ep53]
Parentification
➤ If you have any experience in child welfare, “parentification” is a bad word. The typical situation is that Child Protective Services comes into the home and finds a 13-year-old in charge. They are serving as the parent to their parent, because their parent is strung out on drugs or alcohol. They may also be serving as the parent to their younger siblings, getting them dressed and fed and off to school because the real parent is somehow absent or disabled. This is usually considered child abuse, and the children may be taken from the home.My plan sounds similar, at least on the surface. I am explicitly saying that older children should care for younger ones. I'm not proposing that they care for their own parents, but I do think it appropriate for them to help care for their elderly relatives. Their "job" as children is caring for others in their family, in whatever capacity they are capable of at their age. I see this not just as a labor-saving device but as an important part of their socialization, instilling in them a culture of service.... The difference between this and what CPS sees is that in my system there's usually a responsible adult present and actively monitoring the family. [Ep54]
Family Culture
➤ Culture applies to everything the family does. You could see it as the family's most valuable asset. That's what you're trying to do when you raise children: You're trying to instill a culture into them, which consists of values, language and a way of doing things. It's a culture of morality, a culture of cooperation. And the best way to teach this culture is through practical lessons from the child's earliest years. Preparing meals and caring for your younger siblings aren't just chores; they are essential exercises in socialization. [Ep46]Benign Poverty
➤ Regardless of the family's wealth, children should be raised in conditions of what I call “benign poverty”, where resources and privileges are relatively rare and have to be negotiated for. Toys, for example are going to be very well used, and most clothes are going to be hand-me-downs. This is another reason why adults should not reside in the house itself. Their accumulated wealth can corrupt the children. The sort of resources children get is a subject of negotiation and control, and it's something you want to be very conscious about. [Ep53]Making Dinner
➤ What is important about dinner is the process, not the product.... It's a socialization exercise. The skills of preparing dinner and cleaning up afterwards are exactly the skills we should be trying to instill in our youth. If anything, I'd want to make it more complicated by supplying food to the household in its most primitive form. I'd give them potatoes, not frozen french fries, and they'd have to cut the french fries themselves. In the post-nuclear family, the process is just as important as the product. [objections]➤ Adults do not prepare meals. Kid's do. Adults provide the kitchen. They provide the raw ingredients, but kids put it all together and make it happen. Adults may "help" with dinner, just like a kid would, but they don't plan it or manage it. There's a teenager who's responsible for dinner, and the adults are expected to follow their instructions. [Ep54]
Laundry Day
➤ If this is Laundry Day, the adult may be participate in the sorting and folding of clothes, but they aren't directing the operation. Laundry Day has been going on since the beginning of time, so the kids ought know what to do. Sometimes, they even tell the adult what to do. If everything is running fine, the adult is just one of the kids, but if a complex issues arises, the adult can step up and take responsibility. Maybe the washing machine breaks down. This is something the teens probably can't handle on their own, so an adult has to take over. [Ep54]Private Property
Most resources within the core household are shared. That includes food, clothing and toys and other equipment. A family naturally is a communistic system. You can't get around that, but children would also be allowed to own their own property. The way this would work is that your property has to fit into a defined space. I think it should be a footlocker that's at the end of your bed. Everything that's inside your footlocker is yours. For example, you go to the beach, and you collect some shells. Those are your shells, and you can keep them as long as they fit in your in your footlocker. That's a nice way to regulate private property. It all has to fit in this defined space. [Ep53]Pets
Individual kids cannot own pets, and the rationale here is that a pet isn't going to fit in your footlocker. Individuals can't own a dog, but the whole household can own a dog, and it's shared by everybody. [Ep53]
Role of Adults
➤ Parentification aside, a family does need adults. It needs adults because if children are left to their own devices they're going to eat pizza every night. You need adults to guide the operation and to veto any lamebrain schemes, but the general goal is instill in kids the ability to make sound judgments on their own, and they need to be given the space to practice that. [Ep54]➤ Adults provide supervision, education, mentoring, financial support, logistical support and long-term planning. They supply the physical dwelling and protection from outside threats—all the complex things that teenagers can't reasonably do. They also define and enforce the policies the kids and adults are expected to follow. [main]
➤ Instead of being caregivers in the traditional sense, adults are more like supervisors making sure that things get done but not actually doing the work. Adults still provide protection, financial support and an educational plan, but they are not the cooks and bottle washers. Instead of being parents in our current sense, you might see them more like grandparents or the aunts and uncles of today. [Ep50]
Founding Parents
Admission to the initial group of founding adults is highly selective. Before they form the collective, these adults have to have high confidence in each other and have to be in general agreement on all the basic principles of parenting. [Ep53]Scheduling of Parental Duties
➤ I want to keep the adults at a distance, because don't want too many chefs in the kitchen. Each parent is officially on duty in the household for a certain scheduled period. This helps avoid conflicts between parents and keeps them from stepping on each other's toes. [Ep46]➤ Instead of parenthood being a seven day a week job, it could conceivably be a one day a week job. I'm not proposing that this be a strict schedule. Parents can come and go with some flexibility, but they should also have a schedule that they can rely on. They should be able to know that five days a week, [they] can focus entirely on work knowing that the household is being taken care of. There's always an adult on duty or nearly always, and there's probably a full-time teacher employed to manage education, but I foresee children performing most of the routine tasks of the household like preparing meals and cleaning house. I propose that adults never prepare a meal, vacuum a rug or change a diaper, except to show how it's done. [Ep50]
➤ These roles could be emphasized by calling adults “aunts” and “uncles” rather than parents. For example, you could refer to one person as Aunt Mary and someone else is Uncle James when they come in to care for you—unless, of course, you know who your biological mother and father are. In that case, you can call them Mom and Dad, but your primary bond is going to be with this older sibling who cares for you. [Ep53]
Family Taxes
➤ That's another thing: family taxes. Every adult is expected to pay them in one way or another, in accordance with some kind of formula. Perhaps it is a percent of your income, as shown on your government tax return. Perhaps you pay your dues through your labor on behalf of the family, such as bearing children for them, but when you are out in the world making a living, you are expected to pay a portion of your income to the family. This is the main way that the family supports itself financially. Family taxes apply both to the founding parents and to the children who graduate from the family. Family taxes are voluntary, in the sense that no one can force you to pay, but if you don't pay you risk losing family services and the respect of the people you grew up with. [Ep46]Lifelong Membership
No one gets to choose their family, but once you're a member, you are a member forever. Now, people are certainly free to leave their families, and they do it today, but that's not human nature. Human nature under normal circumstances is that you remain connected with your family and your parents for life. Members can be excommunicated from a family, but they have to really do something bad. It's highly unusual in both today's families and in families of the future. [Ep53]Family As A Support System
➤ The family isn't just a system for raising children. It's a lifelong support structure. When you get in trouble, you know your family will help. In adulthood, a family is a kind of mutual aid society. I can own things and my sibling isn't entitled to them, but when someone gets in trouble, the walls come down and you help however you can.The walls also come down when family member is old or sick and can't care for themselves. This is an important service, because everyone gets sick. Sooner or later, everyone is going to be an invalid. I've learned that myself in the past couple of years, fighting cancer. It's a scary position to be in if you don't have a family backing you up. [objections]
➤ A family is not merely a childrearing system. It is a lifelong support structure. It is a mutual aid society. If you get in trouble, you know your family will help, usually without payment. This is especially true when you enter the final phase of your life when your physical systems start failing. No one ever truly "retires" in the post-nuclear family. If you stop working in a conventional job, you are expected to continue your "grandparent" role of caring for other family members. When your own faculties fade, you know that you yourself will be cared for if necessary—so long as you have been loyal to the family all of your life and have paid your family taxes. [Ep46]
➤ If you get in trouble as an adult, you know your family will do what they can to help you, usually without pay. Pride and mutual respect keep you from taking advantage of this system, but if you do get in trouble, you have your family to call on. [Ep53]
Community Service
➤ Once a teen reaches the age of adulthood—whatever that's deemed to be—they enter a period of family service or community service for several years, which is similar to military service of some societies today. This labor can be used for a variety of purposes for the family or the community. It can also be used for child bearing, if that is deemed to be the policy. In other words women between the ages of 18 and 22 may bear babies for the family.Freedoms of Adulthood
➤ After a young adult has completed their community service, they can conduct their lives any way they want. They can travel. They can live anywhere in the world. They can form any romantic relationship. They can pursue any career. There are no restrictions on people who graduate from the family, except that you have to pay your family taxes. [Ep53]➤ The family is generally indifferent to the sexual relations of its adult members. You can marry. You can divorce. You can have a boyfriend, a girlfriend. You can do anything you want in adulthood, and it's not going to faze the family. The family really isn't interested because this all takes place outside of the main household. You can associate yourself with other people any way you want—as long as you're still paying your family taxes, as long as you're still attentive to your family obligations.
The family is only going to draw the line at childbearing. If you go off and have a tryst and produce a baby with someone else, there's not an automatic guarantee that your family will take that baby into its system, because this is something that has to be controlled. This is something that's a subject of negotiation. It's not a a matter of whim. When you produce a baby, it's produced on a plan, so the family is going to be very sensitive about you going off and having a baby without their permission. [Ep53]
Total Family Size
If family members are spaced every two years and average longevity is 80 years, the total size of the family—that's kids and adults—will eventually stabilize at about 40 members. This is consistent with a large extended family today. [Ep53]-
Many of the adult family members could be living far away, as they do today.
but 40 is the number you might see at a family
gathering.
Parental Bonds
➤ I agree that a secure parental bond is essential, especially for the youngest kids, but the definition of "parental" is somewhat flexible. Frankly, kids don't care much about how they came into existence. They don't remember being born and don't care where their egg and sperm came from. What they do know is who is caring for them, talking to them and comforting them. Those are the people who they naturally bond with and need to have regular access to. [objections]➤ The primary parental bond between a young child and their parent is not going to be between a young child and an adult. It's going to be between that child and the person who cares for them most of the time, which is probably a teenager. So, yes, young children will have a firm parental bond, or maybe several of them, but it will be with their older siblings, probably not with the adults, because the adults only come in one day a week.
I don't want to predetermine who bonds with whom, or who a child runs to for comfort, but generally speaking, a young child bonds with the person who is caring for them, who is there every day, who's talking to them. that's who they run to for comfort, and that's who they look to as a reference point as they're exploring the world. [Ep53]
Sibling Bonds
➤ The post-nuclear family is designed to foster strong bonds among the siblings, especially those who spend their formative years in the same household. These are the people, in adulthood, who you turn to for advice, or for help in times of trouble. The bonds with ones siblings are going to wax and wane in adulthood, but you're probably always going to be drawn back to your brothers and sisters. You'll go off into the outside world and do things, but when you eventually become old and weak, you'll probably want to come back to the household of your youth and reconnect with the siblings who are still part of your nervous system. Even today, a lot of elderly adults are like that. They want to return to their roots, and the post-nuclear family gives them that option. [Ep54]➤ The post-nuclear family is designed to build the bonds of family loyalty from an early age, perhaps even more so than families of the past. If children spend 18 years not just in close proximity with their siblings but actively caring for them, you're going to have some powerful lifelong bonds. Sure, in adulthood, you're free to go anywhere and do anything, but most people in a well-bonded family are probably going to stay pretty close to home. They may travel, and you want them to, but there may be more of a sense of "What can I find out there that I can bring back to my family?" [Ep54]
Special Role For Biological Parents
Every child has a biological parent, at least a biological mother, and if that mother is known, you are allowed to have a special bond with your mother. They will always be your Mom, presumably because they nursed you and brought you into the world and breastfed you and have a special bond with you. I don't want to deny that to anyone. But these biological parents should not be allowed to give their child any kind of material benefit that other children don't get. They can have a special relationship with them, but they shouldn't be giving them special gifts that other children don't get. [Ep53]<
Family Expansion by Mitosis
➤ The post-nuclear family divides in a process I call mitosis—like the splitting of a single-celled organism. This is a way to expand the number of families while still retaining the family's hard-won internal culture. During mitosis, you split the family down the middle like a zipper. Half of the kids stay in the original household and half move into another house not far away. Your next older and next younger siblings turn into your cousins, who you may still be close to but you're not directly living with them anymore.Mitosis may sound traumatic at first, but the reward for it is all the extra space you get. Instead of one family of 18 kids, there are now two families of 9 kids, each of whom now gets more space, freedom and specialness within their new household. [Ep46]
➤ One household can be split into two through a system of mitosis, which is making two households from one while preserving the family's culture and institutional memory.
So what happens here is a new dwelling is prepared a short distance from the original home, and children of alternating ages are moved into the new household. It's kind of like the undoing of a zipper. This increases the number of households from one to two and grows the community while preserving the family's internal systems—their cumulative wisdom.
In preparation for this division, the original family would be increased from 9 to 18 kids over the preceding 18 years—that is, a baby would be added every year instead of every two years. After the families are split, there would be two families of nine kids, each spaced every two years. The adults connected to the original family will also split, with half of them being assigned to the new family.[Ep53]
➤ This change need not be traumatic for the children, since they would have known about it for years. The new household could initially be located close to the old one to allow continued daily communication. You wouldn't lose contact with the people you've considered your siblings. It's just that they become cousins now. After a period of adjustment—maybe two years—the new household could be moved further away, as it becomes appropriate. [Ep53]
➤ This whole process of mitosis takes about 20 years, from the time the original family starts producing children every year to the time of division 18 years later, and then another two years for the system to stabilize. [Ep53]
Where The Babies Come From
➤ Where the babies come from is a policy decision, and it's not part of the core definition of the post-nuclear family. Whatever method you choose for making babies, there's going to be a lot of controversy. There's a lot of politics. There's a lot of negotiation. That's the way humans make babies. That's always been true, and it's going to continue to be true. What sperm is going to be united with what egg? That's always been a fraught topic, and it will continue to be. [Ep53]The First Two Decades
➤ In the first two decades of the family, the source of the babies is no great mystery. If we have three heterosexual couples joining forces to raise children, the babies could be conceived in the usual way, which is sex between romantically committed partners. The only unusual thing for those first two decades is that they coordinate their births, so a child is born every two years among them. Assuming there are no existing children at the time the consortium is formed, it would take about 18 years to assemble a full family of nine kids. At that point my vision for a large family is realized and hopefully by then we will have proven that this family system works. [Ep50]➤ If the system is founded by three or more heterosexual couples, the original mothers would bring a new baby into the family every one to two years. The system becomes more complex when the fertility of those original mothers runs out, some 10 to 20 years after the collective is formed. To preserve its cumulative wisdom and culture, the post-nuclear family is intended to be a permanent institution, continuously raising children in perpetuity. If the system is to continue beyond the fertility of the founding mothers, decisions would eventually have to be made about where the next generation of babies come from, but initially they come from the traditional means of a loving couple making babies in the usual way. [Ep53]
Eugenics vs. Diversity
➤ Children of the family are genetically diverse. That means they come from a lot of different biological parents. I'm not declaring in advance where the babies come from, but it makes sense to have genetic diversity, because this allows a lot of talents to emerge and it encourages overall resilience in the population. [Ep53]➤ Genetic diversity is a lot easier to achieve than some sort of genetic plan, which might be known as eugenics, where you're trying to breed a certain kind of person. Eugenics is a political minefield and ultimately, it's impractical. I think it doesn't work. The problem with trying to breed humans is their lifespan is so long, and it's so difficult to identify and isolate the traits that you want. How, for example, do you breed for intelligence? It's not just one gene that you can select for. [Ep53]
➤ Dogs can be bred only because their time to reproductive maturity is short—that is, maybe two years—and the traits we expect from dogs are very simple. With humans, it's much more complicated. So rather than get into the whole eugenics thing, it's a lot easier just to seek out diversity—that is, a lot of different gametes from a lot of different parents. [Ep53]
Gender Balance
Another implied feature is that the family should be evenly balanced between girls and boys, with roughly the same of each, ideally alternating. So in a 9-child household, the ideal sequence -would be boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl. If you have an 18-child household, intending to split it, the ideal sequence would be boy-boy-girl-girl-boy-boy-girl-girl. That way, when you divide the family, you get the traditional sequence of boy-girl-boy-girl. [Ep53]Are Males Necessary?
In theory, you don't need males at all. As a male, I'm allowed to say that. I mean, what good are males after all? you just collect a little bit of sperm, and that sperm goes a long way. So an all-female society is theoretically possible, but I just have the feeling it would be dangerous. I think it’s probably not a good idea unless you really know what you're doing. Nature has this 50-50 ratio, and I think you probably should stick with it. [Ep53]Westermarck Effect
➤ Due to something called the “Westermarck Effect”, sexual relations within the family are unlikely, because people naturally are not sexually attracted to their siblings. That's part of evolutionary psychology that was first discovered in the Kibbutz's of Israel. In the Kibbutz's of Israel, where you have a lot of children raised together from different parents, they very rarely married with each other. They always sought partners outside of the family. [Ep53]
Using the Elderly
➤ Elderly people can be a great resource for the family. They've got plenty of time and, theoretically, they've got a lot of hard-won wisdom to share. I think they would make great on-duty parents, while young and middle-aged adults can be focused more on their careers. [Ep54]➤ When a graduate of the family eventually reaches retirement age at 65 or 70, it's generally expected that they will come back home. They will return to the family and serve as active parents and live out their final days with their birth family. This isn't a requirement it's only an expectation, but I think it's normal for most people even today. Retired people tend to have a strong desire to return home in their final years. [Ep53]
Is It Communism?
➤ This isn't a communistic system, at least among the adults. I'm not expecting them to share their resources with other adults, any more than you would share your bank account with your adult sibling... The best analogy is a community church. Parishioners contribute their time and money to the church and its upkeep without giving up their property rights. Unlike hippie communes, churches have survived for hundreds of years supported solely by their parishioners. Both rich and poor can go to the same church, and in the Christian tradition, a plate is passed during every service where people deposit their donations. Naturally, the rich are expected to contribute more than the poor. [objections]➤ This system is not a commune or a kibbutz or a group marriage. Apart from clearly defined responsibilities in support of the household, adults of the family can live any way they choose and retain all of their own assets. Like members of a church, they live away from the main household but close enough to it to perform their duties. They remain free to accumulate their own wealth and aren't expected to share it with other family members, except at their death. While alive, their only obligations to the family are taxes based on income and the sharing of parenting tasks according to a predefined schedule. [Ep53]
➤ This isn't some kind of commune, where all adults share everything, or a kinky group marriage. Adult members of the family are permitted to live their own independent lives, conduct their own relationships, pursuing their own interests and careers, not much different than how they would live without the family. The only restriction is that they have to live close enough to the main household to perform their parental duties, which are usually scheduled well in advance. [Ep46]
Individuality vs. Family Loyalty
➤ In the society that I'm in right now, the pendulum has swung far too much in the direction of individuality. In today's society, every child is expected to be a rock star, and they're crushed when it turns out they can't be. Loyalty to their family and contributing to the family's future are very low on their current priority list. It's quite normal for today's young adults to head out into the world and see their parents only once a year. Their families are dissolved once they leave the nest, and this makes for a lot of very unhappy and rootless people.In my system, I want to bring the focus back to the family. Now, I'm no traditionalist. I'm no Christian, but I think there's merit in the position that society has lost its family anchor and needs to get back to it. [Ep54]
➤ While ever individual can have goals and dreams and need their own property and identity, the family should probably still be the core of their existence. No one can truly go it alone. You have to have this core source of strength and structure that the family provides. Maybe you go off and become a rock star, but it's not for your own glory. If the prizes you win are to mean anything, you have to bring them home to your family. [Ep54]
Risk of Defection
➤ If you want your children to pick up where you left off, your belief system has to make rational sense to them. It has to be meaningful, compassionate and internally consistent. If childhood is unpleasant and the lessons harsh, there's a risk of defection. Once they're adults, your children could abandon the path you've laid out for them if it doesn't make sense in their own lives. [objections]Failed Utopias
➤ History is filled with failed utopias, and I don't want my idea to end up in that trash heap, so I've got to work out the problems in advance. I admit that I might never live to see this plan in operation, but I can still publish a blueprint that others can work with. It's just like designing a bridge. I can make calculations based on my knowledge of the materials—that is, my understanding of human nature—but it is up to others to implement the plan and to modify it for the real world. [Ep46]Selling the Plan
➤ I'm not trying to actively sell this idea to anyone. I'm offering it as a potential solution if you happen to be in the market for solutions. Given the demographic challenges the world is facing—the lack of babies and high cost of parenting—I think it's the only realistic option, but I'm not a salesman. I'm really terrible at that. I'm just presenting an idea as clearly as I can and letting others decide whether they want to use it. [objections]Electronic Media Policy
children must obey an “Electronic Media Policy”, with the policy being determined by the adults. Electronic media could be television. It could be computers or video games. All of that stuff is so addictive and potentially destructive that it has to be very closely controlled. Since technology is rapidly evolving and its effects may not be fully known right away, this policy is always changing. It's always evolving. Books, I would imagine, are generally exempt. You can read any book you want at any time, but watching a movie, that’s a matter of negotiation. It's not automatic that you would watch any movie you want any time you want. And the same would apply to any other electronics. Once a child reaches adulthood they have access to everything, but up until that point, there's a gradation. There's a system for deciding what media you have access to. [Ep53]
Nine Elements of the Post-Nuclear Family
➤ I have introduced nine elements of the post-nuclear family system, which are these:- The family has between 9 and 18 kids raised under the same roof by a consortium of adults.
- Children are evenly spaced in age, from infancy to adulthood.
- Most of the routine internal labor of the household is provided by the children themselves.
- The number of children is held constant over time. As one child ages out of the family, a new child is born into it.
- The adults who manage the household do not live there themselves. They live as they choose in their own separate lodging.
- Most adult parental duties are scheduled in advance. The rest of the time, each adult can live as they wish.
- Elderly, sick or disabled members of the family are cared for in a location close to the children.
- Every adult family member must pay their family taxes throughout their working life.
- The number of families can be increased through a system of mitosis, which divides one family of 18 kids into two families of 9 while preserving the family's culture.
Issues Addressed
➤ The post-nuclear family addresses five main issues:- How does my community or culture produce enough children to sustain itself.
- How do we raise our children economically so we can afford to do it.
- How do we raise them intelligently and consistently so that they can achieve their potential.
- Who will care for me when I get old or sick and can't care for myself.
- Who will support me emotionally and be there for me when I get in trouble.
Population Explosion Is A Lie
➤ You may have been taught in school that there's a population explosion on Earth, but that's a lie. It may have been true 60 years ago but not today. Today, only the poorest countries in Africa are still exploding in population. Nearly all the others are facing the prospect of a population implosion. Sure, the population of the planet is still growing, but that's a lagging effect, and the growth has slowed down dramatically. It will soon top out at something like 9 billion souls, from the 7.8 billion we have today. At that point, the world population is going to start heading down, and that decline has already started for dozens of countries. [Ep46]Demographic-Economic Paradox
➤ Due to a phenomenon called the “demographic-economic paradox”, fertility tends to be inversely related to wealth. Rich people have fewer babies than poor people. There is also a “demographic-education paradox”, where the adults with the most education also have the fewest babies. The net effect is that the least qualified and most stressed members of society are doing most of the heavy work of producing the next generation. This has to have an effect on the quality of your citizenry over time. [Ep46]
| ⇦ Post-Nuclear Objections | Post-Nuclear Main Main ⇧ | Demographic Doom Main ⇧ |
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