[aruanan]

Though the nuclear family (even extended nuclear family with grandparents living with the family) is not the default mode of family grouping and childrearing in the human race, the family as pictured in The Donna Reed Show, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, The Danny Thomas Show, The Dick van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, and others represents the pinnacle of societal development expressed in the Western world. If society is too bent on dismissing it as simply another valid arrangement among many, it'll do so only to its detriment.

Even though some say these shows make buffoons of the father, compared to childrearing in pre-British Australia, pre-colonial Africa, and New Guinea, and many parts of the Muslim world today, they represent what would be to any of the kids in the latter societies a heaven on earth.

[brytlea]

So, what IS the default mode? I don’t recall studying that in my one semester of sociology, but maybe we did and I slept thru that part! ;)