The Extended Family Completes The Nuclear

The nuclear family is a concept termed back in the 1920’s coined from the atomic nucleus as the center. It refers to the parents along with their children within the model, which is inherently a positive proposition, but I will argue that it is incomplete in comparison to the extended family model.

In the extended family, those outside the nucleus are included as well - grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. And outside of the western world, this is usually the norm for humans. So how does America return to this? Can America leave behind the isolated bubbles of convenience and comfort to do so?

Christians gave everything for one another, this is seen most profoundly in the first three centuries of the Church’s persecution. This generosity, and ultimately love, is what converted countless to the faith. Living like Jesus Christ, becoming like Him, and following His commandments is the most powerful evangelizing tool a Christian can do. Yet, too often we are concerned with bludgeoning others over the head with the message of Christ in a purely intellectualized manner. I’m not saying to not tell people about Jesus of course, but to remember to include the early Christian’s example.

By secular standards, a man who cannot provide lavish things for his family (ie. the best house, best car, numerous vacations, etc) is seen as not providing at all. What about spiritual providing? This is the most important of all, don’t get me wrong; man should still provide shelter and food, but love in the spiritual life of helping his wife, children, extended family attain Theosis is by far the most crucial aspect of true provision.

This burden is laid upon men today that they have failed at being a man if they don’t live up to the secular standard of provision. It emasculates men into being more submissive, depressed, and unfulfilled. In the village extended family concept, when a man loses his job, the other men rally around him to help. They aid him in transition to his next job, even the older men offer a job to him, etc. Again, I’m not saying men should rely on this help, but helping should be normalized on both ends of offering by others and accepting by the one in the situation who can sometimes say “I don’t need help.” Everyone needs other people, no one is saved alone. One Christian is no Christian.

The elderly, which often waste away in nursing homes alone in the nuclear family model, should be bestowing their wisdom and information down to others as in the extended family model. This grants life to both, for the elderly they have purpose and community in their older and more lonely ages; and for the younger we are guided in challenges our elders have already faced.

Women can feel overwhelmed in their duties as well, in the village of the Church other women offer to babysit the children for a time, rotating schedules, older women mentoring younger women in motherhood, pregnancy, etc. Younger women helping with tasks for the older women when they are tired and incapable.

Those who remain single or are called by God to a life of celibacy should not be left alone either as if people have no value if they’re not married. St. Paul exhorts both monasticism and marriage in the Bible. Monastics even have this concept in that the brotherhood is their family and village.

The Church is one giant extended family, we are one body after all and we believe this. The Church actualizing life together in community creates strong bonds that the world cannot easily fracture. The point is, we need to be involved with the life of the Church, as the focal point of our extended family villages. We need to foster real community, and if you’re not even going to Church yet, start.

The historical communities had the Church as the center of the town, it was and is the focal point of life. We need to return to tradition and religion, not viewing these as taboo or negatively associated words; but valuable ones. If we live in love with one another, God will live in us.

We have been forced into isolated bubbles of individualism, the concept of sharing with our fellow Christian illicits an initial response of “communism!” Which we should guard against some type of heretical liberation theology (which is just communism dressed as Christian) of course, while not falling backwards onto the other dialectical extreme. This bubble is only slightly enlarged in the concept of the nuclear family which presupposes material wealth for it’s ultimate fulfillment. To truly rid ourselves of the secularist individualism, we must embrace the extended family.

The family is the bedrock of society, which is why there is such an attack on it. St. John Chrysostom says that the love in marriage is the force that welds society together. While the nuclear family is not necessarily a total breakdown of the family, I would argue it by itself is one step towards it. The devil doesn’t take over all at once, he pushes a little at a time.

What is the idolized “american family?” It’s frequently been the nuclear family, husband and wife, with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. This notion ignores the history of society itself before the year 1950. The causes may be economic, cultural, and institutional such as nuclear families only truly succeed because of their wealth to afford the support that extended families provide.

Our material success means nothing while our brothers and sisters struggle, if we are one body in Christ, their struggle is mine; and mine, theirs. Their joy is mine, and mine, theirs. This is what the early Christian mindset was, those who were already persecuted and forced into the underground Church still gave what little they had to others. How will we as Orthodox Christians today respond when the inevitable eventually happens to us too?

How do we return to this? How do we complete the nuclear family with the extended family? I would posit in making our Orthodox Churches the center of our town, as Christ is the center of our lives. Becoming involved, actualizing our faith, rising above the comfort of individualism, realizing the nuclear family is simply only one piece that needs to be built upon the greater framework; the body of Christ.

The solution I theorize is also in finding the balance, while not falling into the dialectical tension of it’s one model vs the other. Indeed we need our nuclear family as man is called to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife as a new family of sorts (Ephesians 5:31), a nuclear family for the sake of the perspective. But to add into this completion with the extended family, the body of Christ. Our neighbors. Love your neighbor as you love yourself (Mark 12:31). Who are our neighbors? The person closest to you at every moment.