Can I just say baby elephants are so cute that they should be able to stay baby for
a long time?
I'm Angela Duckworth.
I'm Steven Dubner.
And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.
Today on the show, do we really need family?
I cannot come to Thanksgiving this year and I cannot stand you.
Angela, a listener named Aaron writes in to say the following, my relationships with
my parents and siblings have become very strained over the past few years.
It has me thinking a lot about family relationships.
Take a seat now, Angela.
Big provocative question.
Do we need family?
Aaron asks.
What causes us to place so much emphasis on relationships with people we didn't choose
to be with, but happen to know by chance?
Well, by chance and DNA and environment and so on.
Are these relationships worth the work?
I love the times they've had with my family, but the relationships have become so toxic
recently. It has me thinking I should just cut ties and move on.
All right. So, Angela, obviously, this is a tricky question, but let's start with the
data. What does the psychological literature say to Aaron?
Do we, quote, need family?
I think the psychology is relevant, but also evolutionary biology, which is a sister
discipline. I think it's pretty clear that every culture around the world and throughout
recorded history has had some notion of family and there's been variation on that.
And what is a family?
But so you're saying it's old and tired and we should get rid of it.
That's what you're saying.
Well, well, well, well, I think when you find things that are like across time and
culture, you start to wonder whether there was a reason for that functionally and even
maybe, again, from an evolutionary perspective, that somehow survival is promoted by a
family structure, right?
So just to define what family is, and I'm sure scholars debate this, but at least you
can make a distinction between kin and non-kin.
If you are kin, you are genetically related in some way.
And of course, that can be a lot or a little.
You've got fourth cousins, but you also have parents and children.
The argument in, I think, the evolutionary biology circles has been whether we favor our
families because of the selfish gene hypothesis, right?
It's almost like the genes are in charge of the person and the genes just want to
propagate themselves.
So the thing to do is to get the person to be nice to other organisms that happen to
have the same genes.
And also then you get into defending and like sacrificing for your kin that you would
never do for someone else.
Kin selection, it's called, I believe.
Right. By the way, do you know Spoonerisms, you know, where you flip the first sound of
a two word phrase?
No. The best Spoonerism ever, I think, still was spoken by some old dead person in
England who was complaining about members of Parliament or maybe House of Lords who
called the offending speaker a shining wit, which you could imagine if you flip the
first sounds of those.
So kin selection is also a good one.
Sin collection. Kin selection means like I would probably sacrifice my life for someone
who is blood related to me.
And if you murder someone, then that might actually be collecting a sin along the way.
But the biological imperative within family, even long after procreation, is incredibly
powerful.
Like, have you thought about when your kids were little, if someone tried to hurt them, like
what you would do to that person, what you would sacrifice?
The parental instinct in particular, right?
You know, I don't know whether we feel the same way about our fourth cousins.
Definitely not my fourth cousins.
But the point is that we must have some evolutionarily conserved, some kind of like
it's in our DNA desire to be affiliated with and to rely upon those who have blood ties,
those who have now we would say genetic ties.
Now, that said, we all then know people who had adoption like in their life, maybe they
adopted kids or maybe they were adopted.
It's a bond which seems to be as strong as a blood tie.
And then there's like stepchildren and stepmothers don't get, you know, a great role in
most fairy tales and most Disney movies.
But, you know, Jason has a stepbrother and stepsister.
We just had dinner with his stepbrother and wife last night and they do feel like
siblings. So anyway, the point is like families are a thing.
They've been a thing across culture, across history.
There seems to be an evolutionary reason, cultural and economic reasons.
I mean, we know those upsides, but just because we've done something for millennia
doesn't mean it's the right way to do it.
Right. We also did slavery for millennia.
You asked for descriptive first and then normative and prescriptive second.
So descriptively, all cultures have some notion of family.
And I don't think we've even fully explored that.
But before we get to the end of that exploration, I mean, absolutely, that doesn't mean
it's normative as an optimal or prescriptive.
So if we do want to jump ahead a little to Erin's question, like she says, do we need
family? I mean, in a way, I think part of the answer is an obvious yes, like to be born
and raised. Humans aren't very good as babies.
Like babies can't drive.
We have one of the longest childhoods of any creature.
Who else has long ones?
I think there are other animals like whales or something, maybe elephants.
Can I just say baby elephants are so cute that they should be able to stay baby for a
long time. If I could buy a baby elephant that stayed a baby, I would have one.
Well, that's good to know, Stephen.
I think the longer the childhood, the argument has been made by Alison Gopnik and others,
the more it must be a species that its core capabilities learning.
If you're going to kind of like have everything hardwired, you may as well just like go
right to adulthood, right?
Just grow as fast as you can and just be mature.
But we have this prolonged immaturity.
It can be argued for a reason, which is that, you know, we are the curious species.
OK. So you want to jump ahead and say, like, do we really need a family?
I mean, let's expand the notion of family beyond genetics.
But I think we can agree that evolution does care about our genes.
So there has to be some evolutionary pressure to favor our own children, but also our
sisters and brothers and our cousins.
And then again, with diminishing favoritism, those who are related to us, I'm not saying
that we can't have care for other people, but like let's just first establish that the
evolutionary angle on this is, you know, is real.
And do you think that it matters anywhere near as much today as it did 10,000 years ago?
Good question.
I think what evolution has given us is an inclination to have special relationships in
our life that are often like my genetically related sister or brother.
But look, now that we have 23 and me, all kinds of discoveries are coming out, not only
like, oh, my gosh, I didn't know I had a half sister, but in some cases, I didn't know
that the sister that I have is actually not genetically related to me.
There are these discoveries where you are raised in a family together with somebody else
that you've treated like a sister.
You thought they were your sister.
Turns out they were not.
You know, those people don't like then suddenly say like, oh, now you're not my sister.
Like, I don't care about you.
You love your sister.
So I think what we have 10,000 years ago and today is this genetic blueprint to have family
relations, to have ties that are different from friendships and different from
acquaintances. And I think maybe there we can say to Erin, do I think you need to have
relationships in your life that are different from mere friendships or acquaintances?
And there I would say, yes, we need to have family relationships, whether they're the ones
that came with our family tree or our genetics.
I think that, you know, maybe not.
But what I want to say is that like the key difference to me between a family
relationship and a friend relationship is contingency.
Joking aside, when I think about my kids, I can't think of anything they would do where
I would truly ultimately reject them.
Right. Now, you can come up with some bizarre things.
But like there is this non-contingency to our relationship.
And I think everybody needs to have those like, don't worry, I got you no matter what
relationships in their life.
So I appreciate that and see why you would say that.
But I also hear, Erin, like what I hear between the lines of what she's writing is I was
raised in the same house as these people.
They're driving me crazy, not short term, but long term.
I don't like them in a serious way.
Not just like, oh, my God, you're driving me crazy.
Yeah. She said the relationships have become so toxic recently.
So maybe this is a recent development, maybe it'll say, but it has me thinking I should
just cut ties and move on.
So, you know, the data on family estrangement is famously slippery.
People tend to probably not want to talk about it.
There is this research by Carl Pillamer, who is a professor of gerontology and at
he has found that 27 percent of Americans 18 and older had cut off contact with a family
member. So it might be a parent, might be an offspring, might be a sibling.
Twenty seven percent. That is really high.
It seems high, but Pillamer says that this is probably an underestimate since some people
are reluctant to acknowledge the problem.
But if you look at politics, there's a professor of politics and social science at Sarah
Lawrence named Samuel Abrams.
He wrote something recently for the Survey Center on American Life, which is a project
of the American Enterprise Institute.
It's called Polarization in American Family Life is Overblown.
But then when he gives the numbers, I'm not sure I quite agree with the headline, just
over one in 10 or 11 percent of Americans surveyed, I guess, say that they ceased
relations with a family member because of their political ideas.
That's a lot. I thought it was quite a lot because that's just politics.
It also notes it's interesting.
Which side of the political aisle would you say is more likely to stop talking to a family
member because of something that's been said about government and politics?
You know what? I'm going to go with the left being more like I'm walking away.
I can't stand you.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Let's see what the scale is here.
The percentage of each group who say they have stopped talking to a family member because
of something political, very liberal, is 24 percent.
So one in four people out there have in, I guess, recent years walked away somewhat liberal,
11 percent. And then when you get to conservative, it's more like seven and nine percent.
What do you think that's about?
That's so interesting. I was in San Diego recently with a friend who she would identify
herself as moderately conservative.
And she was complaining to me about how her more liberal friends were.
She thought it was kind of ironic, kind of intolerant of her, you know, like moderately
conservative. They didn't want to hear it.
They got really emotional.
So I wasn't surprised when you asked me that question that it was maybe more the far left
members of a family who say, I cannot come to Thanksgiving this year and I cannot stand
you. I'd love to hear from listeners about this.
So to our listeners, I would say if you have a story or an opinion about choosing your
family, whether that's friends or others versus sticking to the genetically assigned family,
let us know. Send us a voice memo.
Just use your smartphone.
Do it in a quiet place.
Tell us your name if you want.
Send it to us at NSQ at Freakonomics.com and maybe we'll play it on a later episode of
this show. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela discuss whether good
friends can ever really replace family.
I think friendsgiving is when you hate your family, but you still want to have a turkey.
Now back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about the significance of family.
You know, somebody that we've talked about, Stephen, briefly in a conversation that you
may or may not recall is a good friend of mine named Austin.
He's the one that had the very bright lights in his kitchen, I recall.
It was so fun with the bright lights.
Yes. I remember I had to have spinal fusion surgery and this is now, oh, my gosh, I think
going back more than two decades.
So I was an adult, but I was going in for scoliosis surgery, something you typically have
when you're a teenager. And, you know, when I thought to myself, who can I ask to come and
basically like wipe my butt for, you know, a week, literally, because, you know, when you
have spinal fusion surgery, they just like put you into a cast.
Like, you can't do anything.
Spinal fusion surgery is invasive.
So I first asked my parents.
They were apparently already booked on a cruise.
So I had pointed out that this was non-refundable.
The moral of this story is if you want to keep your family intact, always buy refundable
tickets. I think that's good advice generally.
But now let's go back again.
I think we're like late 90s and I'm astonished, honestly.
Astonished that your family isn't going to be there for you, you mean?
I'm astonished that my father and my mother were going to go on a cruise instead of coming
out to San Francisco, which is where Jason and I were living and taking care of me.
OK, wait, I need to know a few more things.
First of all, where was the cruise to?
Maybe it was once in a lifetime.
I don't know. I think like you can't really say that about cruises.
They don't really offer once in a lifetime.
Like we're only going to the Caribbean this one time cruises.
But wait, you had a husband, Jason.
Why couldn't he?
I know that is a very good point.
I was thinking that as I was just beginning to relay this anecdote, I'm like, wait, what about
Jason? Now, we had just gotten married.
He had just started this job in San Francisco.
And he had a no butt wiping rider in his contract, you're saying.
Well, you know, I didn't know how long it was going to be that I would need somebody to,
yes, attend to my daily functions.
But also like when you have spinal fusion surgery, like it's not clear how soon you're
going to be able to just, you know, heat up some soup and like feed it to yourself.
Do you think Jason even knows that you had spinal fusion surgery or did Austin just take
care of it?
He did take note of the fact that I was in the hospital and he did come see me, by the
way. And I also want to tell you what actually happened.
And my parents come out, you know, they're sort of exonerated from their initial cruise
reluctance. So I'm sure I got mad at my parents and I'm sure I like to slam the phone down.
And I told Austin about this in our next conversation.
And he said without hesitation, I'll come out there and I'll take care of you.
That is a family kind of thing to say, you know, there's no benefit to me, but there is
this like non-contingent loyalty that I have to you.
Now, that ended up not being necessary because my dad and mom did come out after all.
I don't know whether they got a refund on the cruise or not, but I think the idea that we
have some family relationships that you know that you can call your mom and dad or you know
that you can call your fourth cousin or in this case, Austin, what this says to Aaron is
whether or not that's with your kin in the genetic sense or with somebody else like, yeah,
don't we all need those kind of unconditional relationships?
I hear you and I don't think Aaron or I would argue with you, but you're kind of making her
point for her, which is that, yeah, Austin was not your family and Austin was the one who
came through. Right.
And I guess the bigger question is that of all the functions that families serve and some
of them are purely biological and caring and so on.
Once you're an adult, is there anything to say that friends or others can't serve all
those functions? That's the question.
That's interesting. And as you might have guessed, we don't have random assignment
experiments on this.
I mean, well, no, we don't.
Do we? I was like, wait, what?
You know, there was a very interesting phenomenon in Israel.
Kibbutz.
Yeah. Kibbutz. When people lived on a Kibbutz, their children were housed often collectively.
There was the children's house.
Right. You know, when I first heard it, I thought, oh, my God, they're raised away from
their parents. It wasn't really like that.
In fact, the kids would spend a lot of time with their parents.
But the fact is that the kids lived with kids and went to bed at night with other kids.
It was a sort of enlightened, modern attempt of collectivism.
But it was ultimately considered to be not very successful if I had my memory right.
Is that right? Like they still exist, but in smaller number.
There are still kibbutzim, but I think there are very few, if any, that have a children's
house where the kids live together, then the parents will live in their own house.
A big part of the intent of this experiment was to see what collective education looked
like. I am reading here from there's an Israeli psychologist, Ora Aviezer, who said,
collective education through this lens of the kibbutzim can be regarded as a failure.
The family, as a basic social unit, has not been abolished in kibbutzim.
On the contrary, familistic trends have become stronger than ever.
And Kibbutz parents have reclaimed their rights to care for their own children.
Collective education has not produced a new type of human being and any differences found
between adults raised on and off the kibbutz have been minimal.
So it's not quite the randomized controlled experiment you were talking about, but it's
an interesting wrinkle.
It's relevant. And I think what it says is that maybe we have a family instinct.
I mean, that's the point I want to make.
We have this instinct to develop a small, small group of people that we say, you know,
I want to have this unconditionality.
There's this research by Alan Fisk, the sociologist.
He wants to say that there's different kinds of human relationships, you know, some are
kind of tit for tat, like, you know, when you buy a car and you sign a contract, like, I'll
do this and you do that.
You give me the car, I'll give you the money.
It's a transaction.
Then we also have relationships that are hierarchical, like, I'm the boss.
You're the person I'm employing.
I'm going to tell you what to do.
And then, like, you do what I say.
But he says that a family relationship is different because it's as if you're like part
of the same organism.
You know, when you're in a family, nobody keeps tabs of like who drank the milk and how
much you drank and am I allowed to drink it because, you know, you're higher than me.
It's the milk in the refrigerator.
So I think this family instinct we have to have some small group of people in our lives
who serve that function.
And we feel like.
