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Contemporary Family Structure
Family and family structure
Modern day family structure
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The Future of the Family A family, who lives together, eats together, prays together, and works together is a nuclear family. In the early 1960’s the term nuclear family was used to describe the start of the family that was suggested to be dominant in the culture of the time. Divorced and single parent families rarely received any positive attention. Today, social scientists estimate that less then 15% of US families fit the two parents, two offspring family. It’s important to consider that for a society to survive its population must reproduce, or the results are going to be reduction of the population. The young must learn to perform adult roles, values and attitudes. For this to happen we need a family that can teach us all this. Today fewer people are getting married. Marriage is understood as a social obligation and a path towards self-fulfillment. “Marriage today is a voluntary relationship that an individual can make and break at will,” says David Popenoe from “Break up of family” in USA Today magazine. If this continues, our population will reduce tremendously, families will scatter, and America will decline. For this particular reason nuclear families should be preserved. Further more, fertility declined in the US by almost 50% between 1960 and 1987. It was below the necessary rate for the replacement of the population according to Mr. Popenoe and still is today. Scientists dealing with vital and social statistics called demographers said that 25% of today’s young women will not be able to have kids and 50% will be either childless or have only one offspring. Some say that it is not essentially bad for the society tha... ... middle of paper ... ... this rule Ruti feels like she is loved and her parents wants her to stay together and help her with her problems. Traditional families have rules not to hurt but to keep a family in a good condition. No law, science research, or logical methods are going to help make this true. We have so much technology today that we don’t care about anything or anyone else as long as we get whatever we want. Our greed, ego, and our needs always get in our way. Just think about it, a nice family and kids that look up to you. Everyone wants it, but nobody is willing to work for it. We know this will improve the future, but you can’t expect your family to be perfect without working for it (no work no gain). Today’s society has become so lazy and careless that they don’t care about the future. I wonder what the future will be like.
...g children may be able to pursue other things that could elevate their happiness. There are plenty of other benefits, and birth control has already been provided in many countries (developing and developed) where it was previously inaccessible and women were mainly extremely willing and happy to use it; freedom and agency improves people’s lives. Population Z is not too far-fetched and similar versions of it already exist in certain parts of the world, as well as famine- and disease-stricken, war-torn areas that are far worse.
The article could potentially be considered outdated because it was posted roughly ten years ago. On the website, the author suggests individuals should have better access to birth control, the “morning-after” pill, and proper sex education that could drastically change the number of unintended pregnancies. If this were to happen, it could increase the knowledge of sex, pregnancies, and how to prevent it; however, making young adults more knowledgeable does not mean that we will lower the number of pregnancies
Families have changed greatly over the past 60 years, and they continue to become more diverse.
The idea of family is a central theme in Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry alludes to the Old Testament book of Ruth in her play to magnify “the value of having a home and family”(Ardolino 181). The Younger family faces hardships that in the moment seem to tear them apart from one another, but through everything, they stick together. The importance of family is amplified by the choices of Walter and Beneatha because they appear to initiate fatal cracks in the Younger family’s foundation, but Mama is the cement who encourages her family to pull together as one unit. The hardships of the family help develop a sense of unity for the Younger household.
It may not be the right time for the woman to have a child or she simply may not desire to had a kid. The circumstances, such as money, relationship or home issues, the woman is in could not be acceptable for a child to be brought into. Women could get pregnant by rape and she does not want to be remnded everyday of her rapist nor does she want to carry his child. The University of California at San Francisco conducted a study in which proved that women who were unable to get an abortion were twice as likely to be below the poverty level. Seventy six percent of women who could not have an abortion had unemployment benefits compared to the forty four percent of the women who did have an
THOSE OF US WHO grew up in the 1950s got an image of the American family that was not, shall we say, accurate. We were told, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet were not just the way things were supposed to be—but the way things were
Family and Demographic change is a very broad yet understandable and extremely variable topic. Ever since human first landed or should I say spread out to create larger families and to reproduce in order to keep humanity survive and evolve and to create a more sustained and developed civilizations. Through civilizations and generations the population of each generation begins to increase dramatically that’s of course without the deaths of war and hunger or even human demand. In early civilizations the birth rate was reasonably high as well as the death rates, but ever since the rise of human logic and medicine, the death rates tremendously decreased although the birth rate started to increase.
The film, “The Sociology of Families and Households”, examines families from a sociological perspective, as it discusses the ways in which the meaning of family has changed throughout history. To better understand how families have changed throughout several decades, the film discusses how structural functionalism, Marxist theory and feminist theory have played a role in defining what a family is, or was at that time in history. The film also examines a few key challenges facing families, such as divorce, single parent households, finding a balance between work and the family and the formation of stepfamilies. Conclusively, the film discusses how the changes in society affect how families function
Society seems to have many different opinions when it comes to relationships and families and what is ideal. The ideal family may not exist anymore. We now have in our society families that are complete that do not necessarily contain the traditional material. The traditional family, as society would see it; usually consist of a married, mother and father and usually children. Moms are supposed to stay at home while dads work the forty-hour a week job. However, in our 2003 world, families exist in a lot of non-traditional ways. A lot of families now consist of single parent families, or same sex parents and their children, or even couples that are unmarried but live together. And even now, if a family contains what society sees as traditional as far as having a mom, dad, and kids, other aspects are not traditional anymore. Women now have more opportunity in the workplace than they have ever had, therefore, many moms are career moms and dads are sometimes staying at home. Years ago, these types of families were given labels for being dysfunctional or abnormal, however, this label is not holding up as well as it did years ago. There are many non-traditional families that are raising children in a loving, nurturing home with a substantial amount of quality love. Quality is the key in any relationship between anyone. Society is finding out that it is not the traditional image that makes a loving family, but the quality of a relationship that people give to each other is what really makes a family. In the essay "The Myth of the "Normal" Family", written by Lousie B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach, they make references to the cultural idea of what a "normal" family should be and what i...
Most of these women have jobs with the remaining being in school and most of them will choose to have children at a future time in their life. Eighty-two percent of women that have abortions are unmarried, single, or separated. It has been proven that almost half of American women will have an abortion at sometime in their lifetime.
The television sitcom Modern Family produced by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd shows the many different types of a modern American family. According to Andrew Hampp, “The show is among the most-viewed scripted programs in prime time in its second season, averaging 11 million viewers during original airings and often ranked as the most DVRed program most weeks” (2). The television show is a frequently watched show and is liked by many viewers. Modern Family's storyline helps the families of viewers by being an influential and relatable show to different types of families. The show is about the lives of three different families that are all related. In the show there are Jay and Gloria, an intergenerational couple with two sons-- Manny (from Gloria’s previous relationship) and Joe, their new baby. Jay’s adult son Cameron is married to his gay partner Mitchell, and they adopted Lily from Vietnam. Finally, Jay’s daughter Claire is married to her heterosexual partner named Phil and they have three children. The show is influential to our culture today because it shows these different types of families and addresses controversial themes such as gay adoption, the different family connections and communications, intergenerational coupling, and acceptance of diversity within an extended family. The family is easy to relate to while watching because it is based off of real family situations.
The American family model traditionally included the mother and father with two kids, a boy and girl. In this 1950’s family model the husband is seen as the breadwinner while the mother is the homemaker. This model is exemplified in the Battleship advertisement where the father is resting from a hard day’s by work playing a board game with his son. At the same time the mother is doing the days dishes with some help drying from her daughter. Today however, these rigid stereotypical roles are no longer applicable to the members of the modern family. With increases in divorce rates and teen pregnancy combined with the shift in economic roles of the majority of families, the traditional nuclear family is a minority (Wetzel, 1990). The JCPenny
"A family is a small social group of people related by ancestry or affection, who share common values and goals, who may live together in the same dwelling, and who may participate in the bearing and raising of children. They have a physical or emotional connection with each other that is ongoing" (Vissing, 2011) and is the foundation of all societies. They can be formed by a grouping of father-mother-children or even more complicated combination of relatives. In the primary stage of family life in the United States, everyone from every generation lived together in one house. Subsequently, the idea of traditional family evolved and a married couple with children is at present, often called the traditional family. There are many types of families; however, this paper will focus on the traditional family. It will describe how the functionalist perspective, conflict perspective, and the interactionism theory apply to the sociological institution known as a family. It will explain some of the similarities and differences between the sociological theories in regards to families and how they affect the family members.
When the word “family” is discussed most people think of mothers, fathers, and other siblings. Some people think of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even cousins and more on the pedigree tree. Without family in people 's lives they would not be the same people that they grew up to be today and in the future. When people hear the word family they think about, the ones who will help them in any way they can whether it 's money, support, advice, or anything to help them succeed in life. Family will forever be the backbone of support. They are the ones who support their children during those life decisions. Family is not always blood related. Finally family is forever, family will never go away.
In order for society to meet the basic social needs of its members, social institutions, which are not buildings, or an organization or even people, but a system whose of social norms, mores and folkways that help make people feel important. Social institutions, according to our textbook, is defined as a fundamental component of this organization in which individuals, occupying defined statues, are “regulated by social norms, public opinion, law and religion” (Amato 2004, p.961). Social institutions are meant to meet people’s basic needs and enable the society to survive. Because social institutions prescribe socially accepted beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors, they exert considerable social control over individuals.