Coming from a culture that embraces extended family I'll tell you that divorces within the family fracture the family worse than anything. On its own marriage extends your family because two extended families become one. Divorce ruins the whole thing. It's even worse the more relatives you have. More people are affected.

Extended families are stable because the social pressure to remain married is impossible to overcome for most people.

Most Americans have no idea how oppressive a full extended family can feel and simply think it's all unicorns and rainbows. It's not.