AHC: Eliminate the Nuclear Family in the West

[CandyDragon]

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, would be to butterfly away the development of the nuclear, or elementary, family within Western Europe, with a point of divergence no earlier than the year 1600, as plausibly as conceivably possible.

 

[Deleted member 67076]

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, would be to butterfly away the development of the nuclear, or elementary, family within Western Europe, with a point of divergence no earlier than the year 1600, as plausibly as conceivably possible.

You could just make it so that it simply makes more economic sense to stay with a large family and later that becomes part of the culture. Say that workers are paid less and one of the ways that they save money is for adult children to stay with relatives instead of moving away and pooling together their money.

If you go 1900s, butterfly away the development of suburban housing and again make it more economically incentive to live with large families.

 

[carlton_bach]

THe problem is that by 1600, the concept was already firmly established in urban and much of rural society. It might still well be possible, but I'm at a loss to see how. Roman law is already spreading, and clans don't work very well with early modern economics. Maybe some common law principle of indivisible heritrage, forcing griowing extended fasmilies to cluster into their holdings or professions?

 

[Unconsensual]

Well the simplest method is to destroy modern economy: say a multitude of earth shattering disasters. After all the more an economy develops the more need is there for diversified specialized skills that requires the best/most motivated and not you're so and so's son/daughter. The problem about cultural reasons is that they both affect and reflect societal conditions: the richer a society is the more people can afford to become independent, culture can certainly slow down changes but it can't compete against the more efficient.

On the other hand a Malthusian trap is also possible, keep people so poor that they'd have to rely on family: though eventually some place will have more capital and technological accumulation than pop growth and they will develop economically.