Just to clarify my last post, I should have said “It took a village.”  White colonists destroyed native cooperative communities that worked, and established isolated homesteads that depended on spawning lots of white brats to perpetuate their misguided way of life.  Fast-forward to the American rugged individualist illusion, where families hole up in suburban fortresses, showing a façade of success to the outside world, while struggling to make it and raise individuals single-handedly,  who will inevitably try to move on to live their own lives, or not.  Our culture replaced functioning co-op communities with dysfunctional islands all competing with each other.  Hippies attempted to recreate communal living, but eventually internal dysfunction or the need to rejoin the grid won out.  Reality (capitalism) trumps idealism.