A nuclear family in Poland - is it a new trend in our society?

[moved from]
The tight-knit nuclear family has proven itself through thick and thin and continues to be society's most durable, reliable and valuable building block. The "anything goes" option is a sure road to anarchy and disintegration and must be avoided at all cost.

The nuclear family is actually kind of an anomaly. The tight-knit extended family is the norm and is very reliable and durable (thought it tends to impede innovation).

The nuclear family was created by and for the industrial revolution and tends to be inherently unstable as the relationships are too charged.

I agree. The extended family, three generations living under one roof with the odd aunt, cousin, godparent or uncle thrown in for good measure was a construct that was largely self-sufficient as its members looked out for one another. Of course, rivalries and misunderstandings did occur-- that is part of the human condition. However nowadays it is mainly a choice between the non-extended nuclear family (which may have the odd grandparent living in) and the "anything goes" alternatives: patchwork households, shackers-up, sterile same-sex couples, etc. Any increase in the percentage of the latter group is bad news for society as a whole, despite what all the gung-ho diversity freaks contend.

The nuclear family (parents and offspring) was created by biology. Nobody sat down at a drawing-board and said: "Today I will design the nuclear family!"

Then why isn't it found more often in pre-industrial peoples? If it were so natural you'd think that parents and offspring would be the building blocks of more systems. It isn't. And it carries with it certain problems.

When does an adult's primary nuclear attachment stop being the family in which they are children and start being the nuclear family in which they're parents? This is an interesting point because Polish culture has never definitively answered whether adults should show primary loyalty to their spouses or parents (and one reason why meddling parents-in-law cause so many young marriages to fail).

Are you speaking from experience? My mother-in-law lived with us until her death several years ago and it was an excellent arrangement.
As you know, every human arrangement is fraught with problems and challenges. The point I was trying to make was to compare the biologically normal family with different alternative arrangements usually resulting from an excessively egoistic approach to life. A sense of altruism is a beneficial element, but as you know that is "bad for busienss". Business wants to develop excessive greed, materialism and possessiveness in people, and that is often a blueprint for disaster.

Already in caveman times the nuclear family was the norm. The father would hunt, gather food and fuel and protect his family against intruders and wild animals. The woman would tend the hearth, cook and watch over the children. The extended family was none too widespread largely because of the high mortlaity rate and brief life expectancy, so grandparents usually weren't around too long.

I know you're old, but _that_ old? Check out ethnographies and you find that independent nuclear families are extremely rare across the world (and are polygynous famlies "nuclear" to you?)

Of course not. At first, biology imposed extended family. When people were still apemen, they lived in big groups. Like monkeys today.

Oh you not a believer then.

Why not? Wasn`t it God who created different species of apemen and later advanced hominids?

I'm pretty sure that JP II back in the 1990s declared there was no contradiction between the scientific study of evolution and the Bible (part of a trend in western catholicism of regarding the Bible as revealing truth indirectly though things like metaphor).

The American evangelical idea is that the bible is literally true so God creating the heavens and the earth took place of 144 hours (followed by 24 hours of rest)....

They had no choice, actually. :)