In a conservative society/culture why do people live on their own? Why not in their extended family?
To be fair, being in love with living in nuclear families is a standard feature of Anglo cultures, some even proposed they actually caused them becoming richer than others. There are 13th century records of English villagers moving to other villages to work and then buying land and settling down and hardly ever seeing their relatives again in the old village. I find this mind-boggling.
Still, even in an individualist Anglo culture, I would expect its more conservative subsets would be in favor of blood relatives living under one roof. Which is an excellent idea for people poor and ill.
For example, in Eastern Europe (both poor and conservative) the idea of every adult child gluing another wing to the parents house, big enough to marry and have a child or two, is very popular. It is cheap, no mortgage, just buy materials and DIY with friends. And the generic conservatism of the region supports this, because it puts family and relations and community before the individual.
America actually has this weird cultural thing where living with your parents past 20 is seen as a badge of shame. You might have heard the “nerd in his parent’s basement” stereotype a few times. The conservative families I know do have the “family values” thing, but they also have a huge “independence” thing. Most of them don’t want their kids still in the home after they hit adulthood. They do tend to want to be near family, though. Obviously this is anecdotal evidence and should be taken with a grain of salt.
It’s hard to say; maybe there’s a bit of cultural osmosis involved? Maybe it has to do with the combination of the vast amounts of unused space and the influx of jobs other than family farms (the one branch of my father’s family that almost kept their own little extended clan together is so big on livestock, especially horses, that I honestly have no idea what jobs any of them have had. There was a family farm before I was born, but my father’s oldest brother mismanaged it into oblivion).
My town has a significant manufacture sector, but it’s mostly food products. It has some diversity by virtue of being a college town, though the college’s primary majors are agriculture and business. So it’s a bizarre sort of place that keeps growing, but refuses to stop being the biggest small town around in spite of a population literally 100 times the size of many nearby towns*. I think it’s technically a city, but in practice it’s an amalgamation of rural and suburban.
* I don’t think this town has broken 100k yet. I haven’t heard population numbers on nearby towns in a while, but I was not exaggerating my orders of magnitude, given the populations when last I heard them.
In a conservative society/culture why do people live on their own? Why not in their extended family?
To be fair, being in love with living in nuclear families is a standard feature of Anglo cultures, some even proposed they actually caused them becoming richer than others. There are 13th century records of English villagers moving to other villages to work and then buying land and settling down and hardly ever seeing their relatives again in the old village. I find this mind-boggling.
Still, even in an individualist Anglo culture, I would expect its more conservative subsets would be in favor of blood relatives living under one roof. Which is an excellent idea for people poor and ill.
For example, in Eastern Europe (both poor and conservative) the idea of every adult child gluing another wing to the parents house, big enough to marry and have a child or two, is very popular. It is cheap, no mortgage, just buy materials and DIY with friends. And the generic conservatism of the region supports this, because it puts family and relations and community before the individual.
America actually has this weird cultural thing where living with your parents past 20 is seen as a badge of shame. You might have heard the “nerd in his parent’s basement” stereotype a few times. The conservative families I know do have the “family values” thing, but they also have a huge “independence” thing. Most of them don’t want their kids still in the home after they hit adulthood. They do tend to want to be near family, though. Obviously this is anecdotal evidence and should be taken with a grain of salt.
It’s hard to say; maybe there’s a bit of cultural osmosis involved? Maybe it has to do with the combination of the vast amounts of unused space and the influx of jobs other than family farms (the one branch of my father’s family that almost kept their own little extended clan together is so big on livestock, especially horses, that I honestly have no idea what jobs any of them have had. There was a family farm before I was born, but my father’s oldest brother mismanaged it into oblivion).
My town has a significant manufacture sector, but it’s mostly food products. It has some diversity by virtue of being a college town, though the college’s primary majors are agriculture and business. So it’s a bizarre sort of place that keeps growing, but refuses to stop being the biggest small town around in spite of a population literally 100 times the size of many nearby towns*. I think it’s technically a city, but in practice it’s an amalgamation of rural and suburban.
* I don’t think this town has broken 100k yet. I haven’t heard population numbers on nearby towns in a while, but I was not exaggerating my orders of magnitude, given the populations when last I heard them.