So many of the observations in the article rang true to me–the distancing forces of higher education, the mobility of Americans, the lure of age peers. But so also did some of the antidotes–the necessity of place, be it land or house or neighborhood, the importance of working together to create something beyond ourselves, the importance of making a real home.

I also concur with the author’s contention that homeschooling can lead to closer families. Some of the best educated and simultaneously closest families I know homeschooled. Alas, homeschooling was not an option when I was raising my children though I did the next best thing by being a mostly stay-at-home and engaged mother in a wonderful house in a charming, small town. One begins to wonder, do we shoot ourselves in the foot by sending our precious children away to university and even abroad?

The allure of big cities seems far greater than the slower, less culturally interesting small city in spite of the fact that the small city is less expensive and more family friendly. The option, again it seems, is to get married late, have one or two children or not get married at all in order to stay in the urban nexis. Extended family is a nice idea, I think many agree, but ultimately it requires real decisions and sacrifices in time, money, or ambition–sometimes great sacrifices. If the decisions and the sacrifices are not made regarding extended family, the question becomes, as the author also asks, what is the cost? Speaking for myself, the cost is great.

Thank you for an excellent, highly thought-provoking article.

I think Dr. Mitchell is spot on in his observations, but I share his uncertainties about if/how a restoration of these critical institutions is possible in the face of so many practical and perceived challenges.

The extended family is now more difficult then ever to try and establish for some of us. How can I be with both families if they are from different parts of the country, lets say from Idaho and North Carolina. I can be close to one but not the other. The phone helps keep communication going but most communication is in person.

I am lucky that I still live in the neighborhood I grew up in and I have a brother that is a 10 minute walk away (our old house is in the middle of where we now live). I almost caused my mother a heart attack the other day as I saw her at Costco and walked up behind her and put my finger in her back and asked for her purse (which led to the biggest hug I have gotten in awhile from her but I think it was mostly relief that I was not really robbing her). But the advantage I have of being close with my family is that my wife is not close to her family and suffers from it. If I lived in the middle ground neither of us would see our parents. If we lived near her parent I would probably give up some of my economic security and surely personal security. How do you keep extended families when people now tend to marry people from a different location? What is going to happen when your children marry at college and move closer to where their spouse parents are?

I think the thought is wonderful of the extended family but is realistic in a society that is so mobile. I think it only works while the children are young or are single (or re-singled and move into your basement). Marriage to foriegners (people outside the community that you grew up in) has changed America forever.

And to Mr. Bass I am sorry that your sense of belonging to a community has been ripped from you while you were so young, unfortunately I know you are not alone.

Just the other day, I met a young fellow and business owner who is hiring his father away from IBM.

With our supplication to the vaunted Service Economy of Corporate Feudalism, home and family business are in a twighlight zone. But, with a more local emphasis, there are many venues, professional, service, trades… that could contribute to family business if one is so inclined. Interestingly enough, until we decided to export our industrial capacity , the Auto Makers were “family” businesses of a sort…from the ownership down to the line. Generations were proud to be part of the tradition of American Auto Manufacturing but then the tragedy of the global commons kicked in with corporate globalism and all bets were off in a zero sum game of racing to the bottom.

One of my own kids has embarked upon the old man’s trade and while I’ve told him to get out and make his own way for a while, I have told him he has the opportunity to come back in and buy me out when he’s thirty and bring his knowledge with him. This is the same kid who furnished all manner of sporting entertainment , particularly when he and I were in a brawl one fine evening in the Kitchen with the wife screaming and the dog joining the fray. I believe it was over his morning musical line-up which seemed, as best as I can tell, a live recording of the Tate Murder Scene, several car wrecks and the crazed rutting of Barking Apes while someone used a bass guitar to bludgeon a drum set to death. Cheerfully, he gave as good as he got and this was a wistful moment of pride . However, whence presenting this concept to Junior at a restaurant one evening, The Concept, always ready to protect the fledglings chimed in “whaddya mean he has to Buy you out”. After I recovered from the crushing shock that I, the pagan married the world’s only non-capitalist jew… I retorted “fine, you can have the business Junior…including your mother”. Needless to say, it’s still in committee.

Thanks too to Mr. Sabin for the rock pile idea. I respond to cries of boredom with chores, but the Alabama Penal Code solution has a poetic and Sisyphean justice to it that I like much better. And goodness knows we grow plenty of rocks around here.

As to boredom….it is important to instill in the young fidgeteers the knowledge that boredom is self- inflicted. To be bored is to surrender the intellect and digits to the incomplete and insufficient direction of others. It is the wailing refrain of the piteous amateur and deserves nothing so much as a swift kick in the seat of boredom: the over-used arse. There are all kinds of ways to impress the lesson but my parents employed The Alabama Penal Code as a standard for inducing self-actualized entertainment. This consisted of a charming little device we referred to as “Rock Pile”. As soon as one of us were to squawk “I’m Bored”, two words would thunder down from on high and it would chill us to the bone: “ROCK PILE”. This was a low-tech arrangement down next to the dog run and at the outskirts of the homemade track and field venue where every rock collected in the various tasks of the property would be piled on one side of the approach walk. So ordered, we would move the rock pile from the starboard to port side for a period certain…generally calibrated on the basis of how pathetic the originally offending claim was rendered. Obviously, this did not have to happen often because piling rock in the Great Basin sunshine aint for the un-stout. Still, it was amazing how many times that pile moved from north to south but what was even more amazing is all the things we managed to concoct to occupy ourselves once we realized the the recidivist activity of boredom had a proper penalty. More importantly, the rewards of a life free of boredom far outshone the punishments we endured before we discovered that boredom is a figment of self infliction.