Post by High Priestess on Nov 28, 2016 17:59:55 GMT
SEe this interesting article, which reflects a point of view I've been arguing about for some time -- how modern "zoning codes" are often heavily biased towards the nuclear family...something that I feel is overtly "discriminatory" and unfair (biased towards nuclear families and against those who choose different living arrangements, or whose "families" are communities of friends)
Belonging to a relatively small household has become the norm even though it can make daily life more difficult in many ways...... It wasn’t always like this. Living arrangements have been changing for thousands of years, and the concept of the nuclear family only originated relatively recently. Even as the economy has moved away from the sort of agricultural labor that would encourage large households, people still have just as much of a need for the support of friends, family, and neighbors. Perhaps that is why so many people today—from young coders to lonely septuagenarians to families—are experimenting with communal living, a way of life that, whether they know it or not, echoes how things worked for most of human history. This sort of experimentation is all too appropriate at a time when, for the typical American child, having two married parents is on the decline, and there is no longer a single dominant family structure as there was a half-century ago or more.
Humans have never lived the same way for very long, and many people are finding today’s urban and suburban neighborhoods, which are based on an idealized version of home that is by now hundreds of years old, to be lacking.