ABSTRACT
Sociologists have approached the normative family chiefly as a popular misconception to be dispelled by confrontation with the facts. It has been commonplace, for the last couple of decades, for sociologists to debunk the ‘myth of the nuclear family’. In the great exertion to prove the uncharacteristic nature of the nuclear family today, the standard approach fails to ask if this narrowly defined ‘nuclear family’ ever comprised a majority of households. Nor has the arrival of ‘multiculturalism’ altered the numerical dominance of the nuclear family household. Contrary to popular opinion, on average only one per cent of families where the reference person was born overseas are multi-family households. A most important characteristic about the ‘myth of the nuclear family’ is that the belief in the desirability of the nuclear family does not perish when exposed to the cold light of contradictory evidence, as shown by the failure of gender equality to emerge in the realm of housework.
