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I will state that by "Nuclear Family", I mean two parents, associated legally by contract, raising 1-4 kids together. There is typically a stay at home parent and a parent who works a full time job. This may change later in the childrens' life, where the parents will start sharing the burden of education with more specialized professionals, so finding part time jobs and then finally full time jobs to support this will be required. The point of this, I think, is to raise children. That is , while two people being married is an end in itself, I would state that they become a family once they have children. A family model helps organize the efforts required to educate children, which is the job of the parents. The only respoonsibility a child has is to aid his parents in his education, as it is in his own self interest to make sure that the family can educate him. This means helping around this house and paying attention to his parents. If a child makes things difficult for his parents he makes things difficult for himself. If the family can not educate him or help him be successful t hat is a different story, because we are not talking about failed or abusive families. I think it is important to note that this is a very good model. 1) The benefit of raising children with your spouse is that you actually trust your spouse and that your relationship provides an example of how people interact with one another when they care about one another. Teaching children to function in long term relationships is very important. 2) The standard division of labor can be a double edged sword, but it allows a mothers to conentrate on raising a young child while the father can concentrate earning enough money to support the values of the couple and the child. 3) Raising only a few children can ensure that parents aren't over burdened with responsibiliities of raising so many children. I haven' read anything about this, but I have known people with a lot of siblings and the common description is that oldest children end up becoming parents in their own right eventually due to the parents burdens. I am not sure how this affects the education of the eldest children. Variations from this standard include single parents, any group in which there is no "stay-at-home-parent", parents who are not associated by contract but who live together, communes, polygamists, separated parents, people with large groups of children, and networks of stepparents and parents. I would judge these variations as good or bad by asking if they can provide the above benefits (or other new ones) and at how much cost. tl;dr - The point of a family is to raise children, the nuclear family model seems to have good benefits to it. So when evaluating it I would have to ask what are the effects of specific deviations from this model, what are the costs and benefits to them. Some models probably suck in this era (communes, polygamists, giant families) where as other models would be at the very least workable (gays, dual income parents, single parents) .

@FeatherFall & Nicky On second reading, my post was a little premature. It was not a direct response to either of your posts as much as it was an attempt to prevent the direction I thought the thread was taking (and has since taken with Kate's posts and responses to her). My point is that the principled (and only meaningful or relevant) argument against gun control is that it violates rights. Discussing what-ifs and alternatives is fine, but cannot stand as an argument for or against gun control. When gun rights advocates argue at the statistical, anecdotal, or practical level, they concede to gun control advocates that there is no principled reason to protect 2nd amendment rights, and thereby make it an unfortunately typical pragmatic contest of who has the best statistics or the most shocking real-life story. An analog would be arguing about taxation by showing that it negatively impacts the unemployment rate, economic growth, etc. It doesn't matter. Such an investigation is a great way to remind oneself that there is no theory-practice dichotomy, but the principle is that compulsory taxes violate the right to property - 'nough said.