7of7: There's no such thing as a traditional family. All of the conservative religious types are yearning for a time that neveronly existed in the media.

FTFY. Yep you read right, the supposedly "liberal media."

Y'see, 'longabout 1950, the media, specifically TV, became the model for all good Americans to guide their real lives. After a decade or two for that lesson to sink in, the conservatives began to sus out un-Americans pretty easily based on whether or not their homes, families, etc., looked like what you saw on TV. If they didn't, it was a pretty good bet that those folks were foreigners, eggheads, hippies, preverts, welfare royalty, or just didn't watch enough TV.

Now how do I know that this report is full of shiat?

Bagelox-99: 7of7: There's no such thing as a traditional family. All of the conservative religious types are yearning for a time that neveronly existed in the media.

FTFY. Yep you read right, the supposedly "liberal media."

Y'see, 'longabout 1950, the media, specifically TV, became the model for all good Americans to guide their real lives. After a decade or two for that lesson to sink in, the conservatives began to sus out un-Americans pretty easily based on whether or not their homes, families, etc., looked like what you saw on TV. If they didn't, it was a pretty good bet that those folks were foreigners, eggheads, hippies, preverts, welfare royalty, or just didn't watch enough TV.

Really? I thought man/woman/children was pretty much the norm for all of human history. Silly me.

If you want to do it another way, go nuts, but you don't help yourself lying.

Since when does "traditional" mean "not enjoying anal sex"? And the "traditional family" is a bullshiat term anyway. Women were property and children were slave labor, "traditionally".

What a traditional conservative family looks like:

Ah, yes...

When I think "defender of traditional family values", I think The Daily Female Celebrity Stalker.

Yeah why can't we have traditional families anymore?

You know girls being married when they hit puberty?


Or the kind like the bible says where when the husband dies the wife is then forced to marry the deceased brother.

The problem is that while a traditional family doesn't exist, the tax laws assume it does.

You know traditional families, like when a husband died the wife would have to marry his brother. Now those are values!

I live alone. Traditional or not?

This should say Traditional Family* - when you restrict your definition of what a traditional family is, it turns out there aren't that many.

* As denoted by 2 married parents and 2 children

But Professor Cary Cooper of Lancaster University, one of the centre's panel, acknowledged that the findings on numbers of traditional families have been influenced by the research methods used.

'The 16 per cent is connected to the way they phrased it,' he said.

'We did not assume that 16 per cent of people were married with kids. I would be stunned if that were the case. They are doing it on the basis of 2.4 kids.'

I got 4 cows and a whole bunch of chickens in exchange for taking my wife off of her father's hands. My sons have all worked in coal mines since they were 9, and I sent my daughter to a convent so I wouldn't have to pony up a pony for a dowry. I only beat my wife when she deserves it or I'm drunk, and only one of my mistresses has been killed to make room for a younger, prettier replacement.

My family is farking off-the-chart traditional!

Anecdotal, sure, but here's where I view life.

My parents, married 54 years with four kids, are happy.
In-laws, married 46 years with four kids, are happy.
I'm married for 20 years, with two kids, and am happy.


I figure if both people can at least muster up a commitment to a standard life, then all's good.

/The statement does not apply if one of the two in the marriage gives up. The other one, who may be a perfectly nice person, can't do anything about that--and that really sucks for them.

Isn't the Nuclear family untraditional? I thought that for the last however many thousand years, the norm has been an extended family, and that the nuclear family is something that is recent in and of itself.

That said, the definition of a traditional family with two parents and "two children" is a bit f-d up on the side of the researchers. An only child does not make a family??

JackieRabbit: Now how do I know that this report is full of shiat?

I think the Daily Fail icon to the left of the Fark headline is a good indicator.

/DRTFA

hubiestubert: It truly is a tragedy that the traditional family is breaking up. Perhaps we should stop trying to tear down the support structures that allowed folks to stay together...

You want strong families? Jobs. Education. Societal stability. Not a war on poor folks and jailing as many as you can to fuel a prison industry, or taking young folks to fight in foreign wars. Just a thought.

Taking the bait, but only out of genuine curiosity.

Why is a traditional family important? I know why a loving, conscientious family that is able to support itself is important, but why does that traditional family have to include Mom and Dad and at least two kids in the same household? Why not a gay couple with a stay-at-home parent and a parent who works outside the home? Why not a self-sufficient mom and a self-sufficient dad who work together to raise a child, but do so in two different households? (hi, that would be me) Why not a single parent who can pay the bills and raise a child?

Really, which would be worse: A nuclear family on welfare, or a nontraditional family getting by just fine?

I'm not saying all nontraditional families are havens of peace and love. They aren't, and neither are all nuclear families. Why does family structure, the cast of characters in a family, matter so much? Does it matter more to have a mom and a dad in the same household, or to have a family that doesn't do farked up things to each other?

IgG4: As someone who is sodomizing a turtle right now, I'm getting a kick out of these replies.

You leave Senator McConnell's butthole alone, mister.

A Leaf in Fall: Isn't the Nuclear family untraditional? I thought that for the last however many thousand years, the norm has been an extended family, and that the nuclear family is something that is recent in and of itself.

That said, the definition of a traditional family with two parents and "two children" is a bit f-d up on the side of the researchers. An only child does not make a family??

It depends on the culture. Extended families might be pretty common throughout the world. In Europe, it was the norm for people not to marry until they could afford it.

In the South, it is the norm for people to go to college to find future husbands and wives.

quoinguy: Anecdotal, sure, but here's where I view life.

My parents, married 54 years with four kids, are happy.
In-laws, married 46 years with four kids, are happy.
I'm married for 20 years, with two kids, and am happy.


I figure if both people can at least muster up a commitment to a standard life, then all's good.

/The statement does not apply if one of the two in the marriage gives up. The other one, who may be a perfectly nice person, can't do anything about that--and that really sucks for them.

"standard life"?

definition please

The only thing that a group of people needs to be a family is that they love each other and take care of each other. Nothing else matters.

Corvus: [www.legendsofamerica.com image 500x312]

You know traditional families, like when a husband died the wife would have to marry his brother. Now those are values!

If you think about it, it made sense at the time. A woman's only chance for survival (particuarly if she had young children) hinged on the men in her life. If her husband died, it was the brother's duty to take care of the widow since she often was too old to marry again.

Notice that if the widow has already had a son, the Bible states that she need not marry again. The reason being is that the son could plausibly take care of her.

Obviously, it was a different world that the Bible was written in. But that rule in particular was to save the widow, not to oppress her (although let's be honest, this was not a woman-friendly world back then).

A Leaf in Fall: Isn't the Nuclear family untraditional? I thought that for the last however many thousand years, the norm has been an extended family, and that the nuclear family is something that is recent in and of itself.

That said, the definition of a traditional family with two parents and "two children" is a bit f-d up on the side of the researchers. An only child does not make a family??

Yes. The "Traditional (Nuclear) Family" in the sense of the fabled 20th century model is pretty new.

At least in the West, it's pretty interesting how few people know exactly how life was for the common folks pre-industrialization. To some extent this is because relatively few common people published books about their lives (diaries are a good source, though), or were important enough that records of their lives were preserved.

Mostly, though, the impression that folks have of "the good old days" is often at quite a bit of variance from what actually was going on.

"Traditional family" is like "traditional values": a bullshiat phrase. It's worse than meaningless, it's simply a vessel to tell other people how to live their lives.

People using that phrase want to live in Pleasantville. Guess what? Pleasantville sucks.

The "traditional nuclear family" is a fictional ideal that basically didn't exist before the 1940s.

Actually destruction of the "traditional family" is a prerequisite for developing a well functioning state.

In places like India and China they have large extended families ( 2nd cousins. 3rd cousins etc) which in even larger forms make clans and tribes. Most political actors are more concerned about benefiting their family than the country as a whole.

The US has much less organization in terms of extended families. Only in rural areas does one find say 25 relatives living within 3 miles of each other.

My pregnant wife cooked dinner barefoot yesterday while I worked on a Lego panda bear with my son.

True story.

/usually she wears sneakers

Lollipop165: Obviously, it was a different world that the Bible was written in. But that rule in particular was to save the widow, not to oppress her (although let's be honest, this was not a woman human-friendly world back then).

FTFY

Life before the 20th century and the advent of modern science, engineering and effective modern medicine frequently sucked for pretty much everyone except nobility and their peers.

Please do us a favor, and

Ah, yes. The "traditional" family. The one that could afford to live off the wages of a single working parent. Once women decided they wanted to work, the powers-that-be fixed it where the women had to work, didn't they?

IgG4: As someone who is sodomizing a turtle right now, I'm getting a kick out of these replies.

You know who else sodomized a turtle?



Jiger, that's who.