The question of the "family"?

[Bolshevika]

What is there to do with the bourgeois "nuclear family"? How do Marxists and capitalists believe we ought to solve this contradiction ? Is it possible to have a non-individualist, collective family?

[Comrade Zeke]

I dout a family is going to go out their and all live together they may help each other but I dont think knowing that America controll the world right now.......that there going to care about family. America is the most uncaring nation for its people on the plantet,but for some odd reason everyone fallows after America and does everything like them. Im an American citizen but I live in Hawaii....so I like being called a Hawaiin even though im white. And here in Hawaii most families are more "Collectivized" as you would put it. America the continetal America rules the world and intill people start to see that Communism might be their salvations when America goes into a civil wa...well will see if their is such thing as a Collective family we might see it. :unsure:

[kylieII]

The nuclear family is not as dominant as you seem to think, so there is no problem of it to begin with. There is many varying family structures that are prominent in western society, the nuclear, extended, single-parent, and reconstituted.

In the US in 1990 the number of households with two married adults and children was at 26 percent, in the UK it was around 25 percent.

In 1993 married couples with dependent children accounted for only 25 per cent of British households and 41 per cent of the total population (CSQ, 1995). Well over half of these nuclear families have two breadwinners: two out of three married women are employed, as are three-fifths of mothers of dependent children (CSO, 1994). Cohabitation and divorce are both on the increase, and in 1992 around 38 per cent of marriages were remarriages for one or both partners. Growing numbers of women are living alone or rearing children independently; in 1991, 19 per cent of families with children were headed by single parents, most of whom were women. Almost one-third of British children are now being born to unmarried women, although the majority of these result from stable heterosexual relationships, and 24 per cent of children can expect to experience parental divorce before they reach the age of sixteen. In 1991, 23 per cent of children were not living with both of their natural parents and 8 per cent of children lived in households with a step-parent or step-sisters or step-brothers. (CSO, 1995).

For more up to date data there is http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p20-537.pdf
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/the...l_Trends_33.pdf (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/Social_Trends33/Social_Trends_33.pdf) (starting on page 42)

The idea that there is one normal and common type of family - the cereal packet family - is a myth induced by the media.

[redstar2000]

You may find these posts of interest...

Children's Liberation & Communist Society (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/monthlytheoryarchives.php?subaction=showfull&id=1052699491&archive=1054467213&cnshow=archive&start_from=&ucat=&)

Real Communists Don't Hit Their Kids (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1069077563&archive=1070511748&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Penguin Chariot Archer from Hell]

Collectivization of family is of course the solution, as Marx stated in the Manifesto.

[timbaly]

The links that redstar has given are very good and they clearly show why the "nuclear family" can damage a kid. It's the first place where you learn that it's ok to listen to authority for no good reason. Listening to your parents for the simple reason that they are your parents is just like listening to the preist because he claims to a representative of a higher power. Those who listen to their parents because they are their parents ae often people eho listen to their government because it's "their" government. Listening to authority blindly is dangerous when dealing with any situation, political, religious and family.

[Rasta Sapian]

true dat