From Riches To Rags In Three Generations

As long as we have the bare necessities of life, I'm sure most people would agree that what we really need is love. We need to be surrounded by people who need us and whom we need, who we value and who value us. When we think of materially wealthy countries such as South Korea and Japan and we see the isolation, the millions of people living alone with nothing to nurture except for 'my life' they seem to be desperately poor in human terms, in the things that really matter. And we are heading down the road to nihilism ourselves, here in merry old England.
Less than a hundred years ago most people lived near their relations. Children were brought up not just by their parents but by aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents and whoever else was around. The extended family, the village, the semi-autonomous community swaddled us all in a coat of comfort. We were born as part of a community, and of course, that coat of comfort restricted our self-indulgence.
In the mid twentieth century large amounts of people moved area to further their careers. The extended family was left behind, regarded as archaic and restrictive, and the romantic couple of bourgeois love became the foundation of society, the perfect nuclear family. The sick, the old, the education of the young - the Welfare/Warfare State would care for them. The family was stripped bare and the nuclear family was born, - mum, dad, and 2.4 kids!
The coat of comfort that had swaddled us throughout our lives was replaced by a thin sheet. Uncles, aunties, grandparents, familiar faces and familiar places were replaced by this small gathering, huddled round the television set, backs to the world, doors locked on the unfamiliar hostile winds.
And now, forty years after quickie divorces were introduced marriage has little meaning. The nuclear family has melted down. Now the family means a tired, overworked woman, liberated, yes, from all ties, except perhaps a resented child. She is a woman liberated to cheap labour and consumption. There may be a man, but his status can only be temporary.No longer does he earn a 'man's wage.' The woman has to earn her woman's wage, topped up by government tax credits.
After all, we only work for ourselves in this atomised world, don't we?