The American Family Structure Changes
- Don Harrold
- Feb 24
- 5 min read
...there are serious structural changes to the economy that will necessarily flow into so many other facets of our lives - food and cooking, housing, education, medicine, child-rearing.
As a young man, before settling down, I would sometimes channel surf to a religious program which described the nuclear family - two married parents with children - as being under threat. It was then threatened by a variety of now well-worn bogeymen such as musical lyrics, permissiveness, drugs, and homosexuality. But it was frank misdirection as the sponsors pursued a strategy to divert attention from the real threat of economic and political policies that were beginning to strip the middle class of its assets, which would lead to the creation of a wealth gap so immense that the beneficiaries now lead a life styled as "The New Gilded Age."
The American Family has suffered for it and in its suffering, has begun transforming itself from the nuclear structure to a multi-generational format.
Per the US Census Bureau, there's a definition for a Multi-generational Family: it is three or more generations living together in a single household, under one roof. There's a significant racial/ethnic component to it as many are immigrant or poorer Hispanic and African American families. The largest concentrations of these households are in the Southwest and the South.
If you're a white American, the only memorable touchstone for this model is the classic television series, The Waltons. It portrayed the lives of a poor white multi-generational family in rural Virginia during the Great Depression and then the Second World War. At its peak, it was remembered with nostalgic fondness by a society whose recollections of the hardships endemic to the period were softened into a sepia tint by the passage of time and repressed memory.
Here's the issue however. Even if the large majority of family households are not multi-generational by Census Bureau definition, the economic damage being wrought upon the surviving middle class is quietly forcing the generations back together in support of one another. The generations, over the past sixty plus years, were formerly loose knit and independent of one another; but they are now re-knitting the physical, financial and logistical sinews even if they aren't sharing the same roof.
There are already two aspects of this re-knitting which we've begun to witness, regardless of ethnicity and/or race. The first is the number of young adults who have been forced to remain under the parents' roof because of a combination of debt, low wages, and a cost-of-living structure badly skewed from what their parents and grandparents encountered. By 2022, according to USA Today, more than half of all men and women in the 18-24 age range lived with their parents. The second is tragic: children who have been taken in to be raised by grandparents, usually because of drug-related or economic issues. That number of households doubled between 1970 and 2010.
Recent changes in political – and hence economic, since they go together like ham on rye – administration will accelerate the damage to the family structure. At this moment, nebulous plans about cuts to Medicaid will endanger healthcare to underserved Americans and elders. Regulatory agencies are being marginalized and, in some cases, gutted wholesale. The President contends that he wants full control of the Federal Reserve and if he gets it – particularly the capacity to control monetary policy – then we can look to a permanently accommodative zero-bound interest rate regimen that will formally wreck rational financial decision-making. It might sound dry and intellectual on a macro-scale, but this is the shit that defines the world in which we must live.
There’s always been some informal “soft” generational interaction. Youngsters swing by the elders’ place to take care of physical tasks that are more difficult, and elders watch the grandkids from time to time, but it’s always been an ad hoc and unspoken affair. I didn’t learn until I was an adult that for years, my parents sent my paternal grandmother a monthly stipend of $100, which helped to explain the vast mountain of costume jewelry that she left behind when she died.
Instead of offering plans to support working parents and families though, the informal position of the GOP is that these informal arrangements become the norm. In September 2024, Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance stated in an interview that if there are childcare needs, perhaps grandparents could step in and take some of the load. Which sounds like something quite heart-warming. But here’s the background on Vance’s situation: his wife is of Indian descent and upon the birth of at least one of his children, his Indian mother-in-law came and lived them for a period to help her daughter and grandchild. This is also a real – and honestly lovely – custom among that culture. I have a young friend, now a professor, who married an Indian woman and upon the birth of their child, his Mother-in-law came to the US and stayed with them for months as his wife recovered. It is part and parcel of that culture, but not one familiar to this one, let alone supported.
The situation breaks down, however, in the significant assumption that there’s a family situation that is both (1) nearby, and (2) that the grandparents have the time and finances to assist. As the Great Reversion in living standards accelerates and the Wealth Gap continues to grow, the elders themselves will be working longer to survive as are their adult offspring. The only option available to provide coverage for the little ones will be for the generations to overtly bind themselves, which is fatal to the economic strength of the nuclear family – its historic mobility. They might not live together, but they will find a way to stay close enough to provide cover.
The math simply will not work and I believe that the shift away from the nuclear family will only accelerate as a rational response to irrational policies.
Why should I have any insight into this?
Because as my own family has expanded, we have actively worked within this new reality to expand and strengthen those bonds. Four generations now actively provide cover for one another to assure that children can be watched and that wages still earned, members can be decently housed, and that logistical support is both available and rendered as need arises. I anticipate that as the young adults find their own careers come fully online, some aspects will fade but will be replaced by newer needs from both the aging and rising generations.
Such is the familial incarnation of the ancient epitaph:
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, you will surely be
Prepare thyself to follow me
The oldest cycles of generational life will be rebuilt from the nuclear model that served capitalism so well. But if capitalism will not see fit to allow the conditions that serve a healthy nuclear family, then I am comfortable with this evolving model.
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