BLM is right about families

When conservatives aren't complaining about Black Lives Matter-inspired riots, there is one line in the organization's website they love to focus on, (which appears to have been deleted):

"We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable,".

I actually think they are right and this is mostly being misinterpreted. I agree with those conservatives that a two-parent family, or "Western-prescribed nuclear family" if you want to call it that, is better than a single-parent family. The data supports this; controlling for all variables, the children of married parents have better life outcomes.

I want to focus on the second part of the sentence: "by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another,". The nuclear family is a fairly modern invention and what they are describing here is more in line with how humans behave. It's also lasted longer; very Chesterton's Fence-y.

This article talks about "alloparenting."

If you look around the world, you'll see that in many cultures besides Western culture, and definitely in hunter-gatherer communities, there’s an enormous amount of what’s called “alloparenting.” Allo- is derived from a Greek word meaning “other,” so it just refers to caretakers in a child’s life other than the mom or dad.

These people are deeply involved in the child’s upbringing. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an anthropologist, has done some amazing research where she shows that young children are basically designed to be raised by a group of people, not just two—meaning sometimes a mom or a dad is on their own doing the work of several people. So of course we feel worn down and exhausted."

It seems that Black Lives Matter is imagining something similar to this. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it. Our society is not designed to be conducive to this type of parenting. In fact, I think it will be easier to convert more single-parent homes into nuclear homes than alloparenting homes. But I hope I'm wrong and I hope Black Lives Matter leads the way with this type of forward thinking.