‘Nuclear Family Month’ is so funny as a concept. I have never seen a nuclear family worth celebrating.
The problem with the concept of the ‘nuclear family’ and further, the glorification of it by the American right and their feeble attempt at launching Nuclear Family Month, is that it is a concept built on the Christian patriarchal family structure. A man should be the leader of the house, parents should have ownership over their children, children having more than two parental figures or aunts, uncles and grandparents living in the home challenges this. It’s not that a straight couple and their children can’t form a healthy family structure, it is that the glorification of the ‘nuclear family’ as the gold standard of family situations pushes individualism, stigmatizes divorce and multigenerational households and continues to push the 1950s-esque ‘Children need a mommy and a daddy, no matter how fucking evil the mommy or daddy is.’ bullshit. There are so many children that did not grow up in ‘broken’ homes and suffered for it. Stop staying together for the kids. The support and involvement of the extended family in childrearing isn’t inherently trashy or lazy. Families come in so many different shapes and sizes and prioritizing and romanticizing the nuclear family continues to harm everyone.
