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Guilt Factory

I recently read Susan Sontag's On Women recently and these words about the nuclear family stuck with me :

“The modern “nuclear” family is a psychological and moral disaster. It is a prison of sexual repression, a playing field of inconsistent moral laxity, a museum of possessiveness, a guilt-producing factory, and a school of selfishness.”

The "museum of possessiveness" and "guilt-producing factory" are the two that feel most relevant to my own experience being a product of a nuclear family - me and my parents. While I had the benefit of being close to and somewhat connected to extended family, J did not even have that. Her nuclear family for the most part was an unit of two with my parents being there in the periphery, a distant source of comfort. 

Possessiveness goes with a territory that small.  It takes a lot of effort to free up from it. Guilt is a by-product of the possessiveness. No matter what you do, it is never quite enough. There is always more to do and no matter how much is done, it is not enough. There is there the complex business of where the obligations of the nuclear family start and end

“Consider a woman, Wendy, who could easily provide a meal to a young child but fails to do so. Has Wendy done anything wrong? It depends on who the child is. If she’s failing to provide a meal to her own child, then absolutely she’s done something wrong! But if Wendy is a restaurant owner and the child is not otherwise starving, then they don’t have a relationship that creates special obligations prompting her to feed the child.”

In the context of the typical nuclear family, Wendy would likely not feel obligated if the child was not her own. Sometimes, the relationship might be only a couple of degrees removed and yet caught between possessiveness and guilt will often produce amoral results.

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