THE THIRD WAVE

THE PRO-NUCLEAR CAMPAIGN

If we really want to restore the nuclear family to its former dominance, there are things we could do. Here are a few:

1. Freeze all technology in its Second Wave stage to maintain a factory-based, mass-production society. Begin by smashing the computer. The computer is a greater threat to the Second Wave family than all the abortion laws and gay rights movements and pornography in the world, for the nuclear family needs the mass-production system to retain ite dominance, and the computer is moving us beyond mass production.*
2. Subsidize manufacture and block the rise of the service sector in the economy. White-collar, professional, and technical workers are less traditional, less family-oriented, more intellectually and psychologically mobile than blue-collar Divorce rates have risen along with the rise service occupations.
3. “Solve” the energy crisis by applying nuclear and other highly centralized energy processes. The nuclear family fits better in a centralized than a decentralized society, and energy systems heavily affect the degree of social and political centralization.
   
4. Ban the increasingly de-massified media, beginning with cable television and cassette, but not overlooking local a regional magazines. Nuclear families work best where there is a national consensus on information and values, not in a society based on high diversity. While some critics naively attack the media for allegedly undermining the family, it was the mass media that idealized the nuclear family form hi the first place.
   
5. Forcibly drive women back into the Reduce the wages of women to the absolute minimum. Strengthen, rather than relax, all union seniority provisions to assure that women are further disadvantaged in the labor force. The m* clear family has no nucleus when there are no adults left ai home. (One could, of course, achieve the same effect by reversing matters, permitting women to work while compellin| men to stay home and rear the children.)
6. Simultaneously slash the wages of young workers tc make them more dependent, for a longer time, on thei] families—and thus less psychologically The nu-li-;ir family is further denuclearized when the young leave I’.m-ntal control to go to work.
   
7. Ban contraception and research into reproductive These make for the independence of women and for ex-ii, imarital sex, a notorious loosener of nuclear ties.
8. Cut the standard of living of the entire society to pre-I”S5 levels, since affluence makes it possible for single people, divorced people, working women, and other unat-i.u hcd individuals to “make it” economically on their own. i in; nuclear family needs a touch of poverty (not too much, 11«i loo little) to sustain it.
9. Finally, re-massify our rapidly de-massifying society, by (existing all changes—in politics, the arts, education, business, or other fields—that lead toward diversity, freedom of movement and ideas, or individuality. The nuclear family remains lominant only in a mass society.

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