The Commons

The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake

The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many, David Brooks wrote in March. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.

I like to call what my extended family lives in a commune. My husband, teenage daughters, and I live in a ramshackle old house. When we bought the place, a law-school student was living in a tiny house in the backyard. Soon she graduated and we bought that house too. My father-in-law was declining into dementia, so he and my mother-in-law moved in there. We helped her with his care, which wasn’t easy, because he had a tendency to wander. (Since then, he’s passed away,