A Prediction for the Future of the Family

For the past century or so, the nuclear family has served as an incubator for a new generation of nuclear families. It has prepared its offspring to go off on their own to form detached, independent families of their own, often far away in different cities or different states or different parts of the world.

I predict this will change and there will be a trend back to the traditional structure of the extended family. Economic necessity will drive this change. The family will become first and foremost a unit of economic security, characterized by both intergenerational and intragenerational resource pooling. Not only will parents sacrifice for their children, but children will sacrifice for their parents, and for their siblings, and probably for their cousins.

There. You see? The changes of our time will not all be apocalyptic.