Overview:
This post kicks off the Flourishing Families series by unpacking how systemic breakdowns across the 12 Utilities—basic domains of functional support like access, availability, and emotional wellbeing—are shaping Americans’ decisions to delay or forgo marriage and children. Using the THX framework, we explore what people expect, what they actually experience, and why that gap often leads to opting out.
Key Themes:
The difference between expectation and lived experience in modern family life
Why family decisions are not purely economic, but emotional and structural
The compounding effect when multiple utilities underperform
Personal narrative as case study: solo caregiving and invisible labor
Preview of future frameworks: PERMAH, Prospect Theory, Admiration Equation, Micro-Moments
Featured Framework:
🧩 The 12 Utilities — A THX tool to assess whether life systems are functional, fair, and emotionally sustainable
Quote to Remember:
“It’s not that we don’t want families. It’s that we can’t afford to fail at them.”
Next in the Series:
→ The PERMAH Breakdown — How emotional erosion, not just structural instability, makes flourishing families harder to form.
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