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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
In a more general sense, people benefit from social and economic bonds. People who they can rely on emotionally, and who can buffer them from material hardship. It can be siblings, extended family, church, a tightly-knit village - some protection from social and economic isolation.
The problem is that in most of those societies where marriage is breaking down, the other social networks have already declined. Community declined, extended family declined, church attendance declined. There's nothing to fill the deficit of social capital. So when the nuclear family goes, what's left is atomization and isolation.
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Assuming you're exaggerating somewhat to make a point, I largely agree.
I would however claim that the nuclear family was in itself a somewhat unhealthy response to other much more important social networks declining. (The nuclear family a rather late development, historically speaking.)
My guess is also that the new generations of natural born urbanites will find new ways to build new social structrues to eventually fix what I believe to be a mostly temporary problem created by the changing surroundings of the urbanized and industrialized world we now live in.
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This is where Westerners can learn something from immigrants. If you go to a public picnic site like Sandy Beach or North Glenmore Park, you'll notice that at least three-quarters of the sites are being used by visible minorities, typically in groups of 15+. Parents, grandparents, children, cousins, neighbours getting together and sharing their day. Their Western counterparts, presumably, are at home alone watching Netflix of playing Call of Duty. Who do you think will be better able to deal with the loss of a job, a failure to meet mortgage payments, a shortfall in education savings, or the ailing health of a senior? A Canadian living in a closely-knit kinship group of 20 relatives who he has built up tremendous social capital with, or a Canadian with a temporary girlfriend, a sibling halfway across the country they see once every two years, and divorced parents who they spend awkward Christmases with?
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I agree with this mostly, except that I think the same de-socialization will happen to those immigrants with time, and they too will have to find new ways to build a social network.
One of the problems of modern city life is that most opportunities to socialize have been commercialized. Which means socializing now costs money, which is a problem especially since people tend to need social support the most when they are otherwise down in their luck.
When you add extreme income inequality to the mix, you get a situation where a disproportionate amount of socializing space will eventually end up being reserved for those who can pay premium for it. More exclusive restaurants, nightclubs, cafes, upper-class malls, and yes, hockey rinks so expensive that the average Joe can't afford to regurarly go to a game to meet his buddies.