The March 18, 2018 Ionia Sentinel-Standard ran an opinion piece which had a comparison of the USA today and the impending doom of the Roman Empire, way back when.
The writer noted that another writer had commented on the “Breakdown of the nuclear family…. [which had provided] a common set of norms and values and in turn drives the moral compass of a nation.”
The problem isn’t that parallels are not visible. The problem is that the Romans did not have a nuclear family structure, which could have broken down.
The Romans, like most ancient peoples, had other family arrangements, more extended than nuclear. And women and the young had little or no rights. Maybe it’s a good thing the Roman family structure broke down, and maybe ours will eventually get some needed improvements in this same manner.
