I think the mainstream is already comfortable with non-standard structures for households, it's just hard to get most people to say so because it's hard to ask the question without invoking the much more controversial question of non-standard romantic relationship structures.
Yeah. I mean, multi-generation households, employers and live-in servants, rooming houses, "Boston marriages"-- we have lots of traditional models of living situations other than nuclear family. But that conflation you mention is very much extant, in no small part due to people feeling that their values are at risk, and so clinging very hard to a "conservative" way of life which, IMO, has very little real historical precedent. I'm not sure what to do about that.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-09-06 06:44 pm (UTC)Yeah. I mean, multi-generation households, employers and live-in servants, rooming houses, "Boston marriages"-- we have lots of traditional models of living situations other than nuclear family. But that conflation you mention is very much extant, in no small part due to people feeling that their values are at risk, and so clinging very hard to a "conservative" way of life which, IMO, has very little real historical precedent. I'm not sure what to do about that.