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[serene]

So on a list I'm on with lots of great people, some of whom are boneheaded, someone called for the return of "traditional" families -- you know, where the husband works and the wife stays home with the kids, stuff like that.

I said it was shortsighted and ignored millennia of other traditions to call the nuclear family "traditional" and another woman said that Adam and Eve sure looked plenty traditional to her, minus a closet full of clothes. My response:

Wow. Really? Let's see...

1) They raised a murderer
2) Their kids all practiced incest
3) Neither of them worked, either in or outside of the home

(Not to mention, and this is one you can skip if you want, THEY'RE
FICTIONAL!)

Comments

[wimsey70.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, Eve was wearing pearls and laboring away in the kitchen for her loving hubby while he was out working at the bank.

Dear god.

[kiya]

That response has a lot of win in it. A lot.

Not to mention the whole 'modelling of responsible behaviour' thing. "It's not my fault! It's her fault!" "It's not my fault! The talking snake did it!" "Yer a looney."

[redandfiery.livejournal.com]

You tell 'em, darlin'!

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Fantastic answer. :-)

[ailbhe]

That is a totally brilliant answer. Personally, I find the idea of normalising the nuclear family really fucking scary, because it's the single least supported or supportive model I can imagine. It makes people mad, it creates dysfuncionality in otherwise perfectly normal people, and it only works for people who actually have an extended network of family or friends to draw on ANYWAY. Ugh.

And then we can get on to the oppressive nature of its roles for women, after that.

[ucancallmeal.livejournal.com]

:D

[custardfairy.livejournal.com]

Oh! This made me feel squishiness for you! :) What a great answer.

[gramina.livejournal.com]

Plus, however much Adam and Eve may seem to resemble the modern nuclear family, that story seems to have led directly to the traditional one-man, many-women household model, which is certainly very traditional, when viewed world-wide; one can also find traditions of serial monogamy, polyandry (especially with brothers), and so forth.

Oddly enough, the one-husband-one-wife-and-their-children household model is not only strongly western, it's strongly modern. It's only recently that it was even possible for a family to manage without the assistance of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors -- we were strongly interdependent, and everyone worked, and worked wherever the work was most needed. It's only with the industrial revolution that you can have a really *clear* division of "home-related work" and "non-home-related work." (Even in the case of merchants, pre-industrial-revolution, the tasks seem to have been shared afaict, more often than not.)

Not that you don't already know all that -- it just came out anyway ;)

[ptor.livejournal.com]

Damn. Good answers!

Oh, and at least according to the myth, they pissed off Mr. God so badly that all 7 billion of us grandkids are still cursed with original sin!

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Are you also the person who posted this post to Usenet? What exactly are you up to? I'm dying of curiosity.

[ptor.livejournal.com]

Who? Me or Anonymous person?

I haven't done any posting on Usenet in a decade.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Anonymous person.