Designer Families

 

The role of the family in shaping individuals' ability and inclination to make use of the means of cultivation that capitalism offers is hard to overstate. The household is not only a site of consumption and of biological reproduction. It is also the main setting in which children are socialized, civilized, and educated, in which habits are developed that influence their subsequent fates as people and as market actors. To use the language of contemporary economics, the family is a workshop in which human capital is produced.

 

There's a direct correlation being made here between family, home and where youth spend their time (acquiring socialization). 

 

Kids spend a lot less time with their parents today than they did in the past - teachers are among those assuming many of the duties that were once the sole purview of parents.

 

Homes aren't the hubs they once were.  Where are those hubs being found today?

 

How can we better design our social institutions and programs to suit emerging behaviour patterns but lead to socially beneficial results?

 

If you fear social engineering, you're gonna hate this emerging trend but consider - justice is a form of social engineering, too.  Imprisonment costs a lot yet produces no social value.