The predominant fact of modern sexual history is not patriarchy but the collapse of the old extended family into the nuclear family, an isolated unit that, in its present form, is claustrophobic and psychologically unstable.  The nuclear family can work only in a pioneer situation, where the punishing physicality of farmwork keeps everyone occupied and spent from dawn to dusk.  The middle-class nuclear family, where the parents are white-collar professionals who do brainwork, is seething with frustrations and tensions.   Words are charged and real authority lies elsewhere, in bosses on the job.  Marooned in the suburbs or in barricaded urban apartments, upwardly mobile families are frantically over-scheduled and geographically transient, with few ties to neighbors and little sustained contact with relatives.   Two parents alone cannot transmit all the wisdom of life to a child.  Clan elders–grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—-performed this function once.

- Camille Paglia