Pretty Birds in Pretty Cages: Could the Nuclear Family Be the Reason We’re All Miserable?

I’ll never forget the day I first fell apart. It was just after I left my job as a software engineer to stay home and raise my children. Those first months are a blur, but one day still lives in my mind as if it happened yesterday.

I’d taken the boys out for a walk in a double stroller. The toddler was strangely silent as we walked and eventually the baby fell asleep. I walked the neighborhood as I had many times before, but this time I noticed it…the silence. I lived in one of those cookie cutter suburbs of Chicago, row upon row upon row upon row of houses, all the same but with different siding. Everywhere I turned there were homes, but not a single person could be seen.

I walked down every street that day, continuing as the silence began to grow larger within me, becoming a discomfort without a name. The streets were empty. No old folks. No cars driving by. No children playing in yards. No other parents walking their children. I strolled past not one, but two empty parks. I began to panic. Where were the people? Was I the only one alive?

Suddenly, I stopped on the street corner and screamed at the top of my lungs. I paused to look around.