The Modern Family

Introduction
Culture provides a basic model with which to help organise society, and to predict the behaviour of others. There are different cultural formations; these formations depend on complex elements. In the modern world the term “family,” for instance, has divergent meanings. There may be one, or multiple individuals, involved in the rearing of a child; all with diverse roles and features, genders, or even interests in the child. We live in a diverse world, not just in the United States, but globally. Preparing children for a leadership role in this world also requires that we take into account individual micro- and macro-differences, celebrate those differences, and view the family as assisting in any way possible the positive relationship of the community, the schools, and other resources to help those children actualise (Kroth & Edge, 2007).
The Modern Family
There is no doubt that for a time, the nuclear family was of great benefit to society, culture, and the perpetuation of moral and ethical values. However, the question becomes, is the nuclear family a paradigm that exists only in certain television programs (e.g. Leave it to Beaver, or Ozzie and Harriett)? Historically, the family has had a strong role that has contributed to societal functions. While family systems are flexible, culturally diverse, and adaptive to ecological and economic conditions, they provide a base of interests to perpetuate the group and to pass on culture. Thus, the central idea of a family has changed; the key is that very evolution. The Judeo-Christian family originates in Genesis; Adam, Eve, and children. This reflects the idea of a patriarchal worldview in which there is one man, one woman, and they procreate to include children. In Rome,...

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...racters, aping dialog, etc. Others move into a mode in which certain images remain in their memory, but are extrapolated into normal household events. Because of this continual exposure – more time watching television than any other activity, the types of at risk behaviours, alternative views to the family, and even anti-family programs and images to which a child is exposed have increased (e.g. South Park, Beavis and Butthead, Family Guy, The Simpsons, etc.) (Funk, et.al. 2003; Sienkiewicz, M., et al., 2014).
Children now live in a transnational world – one in which immigration, migration, disappearing racial boundaries, and the concept of globalism shrinking the world are now regular parts of the media. As a shaper of society, the conundrum comes from whether the media shapes the role of the family, or the divergent and evolving family roles are shaping the media.