Family Structure In The United States

All children deserve a loving, safe, permanent, and nurturing environment. In the U.S. today many children do not have the family structure of two parents. Family structure is something that is built; it is the frame work and foundation of a child’s beginning; its interrelated parts that work together as a whole that makes the child develop. If parts are missing they cannot function properly or develop properly. The nurturing a child receives determines the adult they will become. Penn State or The State Penn? The reality that we are facing today is our children are the ones that suffer most from the breakdown in economy, divorce, teenage pregnancy, single parents etc. From birth children learn through conditioning whether it be classical or operant.
What type of conditioning are we giving our
are affected by the declining lack of family structure, however, the numbers are so high for Black children that if we don’t act fast it will be detrimental to our society as a whole. Family structure is important for children’s physiological well-being and it affects their development. According to Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, “Child care clearly matters to children’s development, but family characteristics — and children’s experiences within their families — appear to matter more” (Bock, 2006). From birth newborns are able to imitate the behavior of others and this is something that helps them to develop social relationships and social competence, how can they imitate someone that’s not there?
These broken family structures affects children’s cognitive development, communication development, emotional development, self awareness development, and sociable development just to name a few. Family structure is the foundation of who they will become, their personality, their temperament, their character. Their environment nurtures what they will develop