How Has Family Structure And Ideology Affected American Culture

Family is the smallest unit of society. It is the basis for how society is constructed because the products of families are the members that constitute of the society. So how has family structure and ideology affected society? And how has the change in society affected the structure and ideology of the family in the America. This paper is going to summarize how we got from huge families farming in the wilderness to the private nuclear family entities of the industrialized America we know and greatly appreciate.
Family was the core of society back in the time of wilderness and farming. They tended to run large in size because farming, the major occupation of choice at that time, was a time-consuming, and tasking job that required more manual
Family members worked on the plantation they lived on. And every member who lived in a farming household was expected to contribute in some way, in order to achieve an optimal functioning household/workplace.
PURITAN FAMILY.
Puritan families did not think of families as private entities, but rather, as community factories that produced diligent and functional members of society. Thus, courts supervised families and if a family was not meeting the expectations punishments were given. These expectations covered, indeed, a much larger spectrum than the families we see today. Puritan families housed orphans, elders and infirm members of the community. It was a social obligation that well-governed families had to uphold. Another social obligation was to train children to fit the ideal image of the community.
Child rearing in colonial families was very strict, rigid and overriding. Children were the central focus in those families with such rigid training in conformation because puritan families believed that children were born of sin, and it was the duty of the parents to forcefully break the sinful will of the child either by physical beatings or by emotional
The majority of black Afro families worked as slaves for white people. They lived in tiny cabins that housed several more people than it could contain. They lacked proper sanitary disposal and thus lived surrounded by decaying feces or food. Often times the slave quarters were close to the where livestock were bred and insects would dominate the area easily spreading diseases among the population. Slaves had a higher mortality rate than their white counterparts as a result of their miserable living conditions and inadequate diet.
The lives of slaves were forlorn; they had to join the labor force by the age of six, whipped continually on their owner’s whim, sold and separated from their families. Slaves believed that when a member died it was a good thing because his soul would be free and it was an end to the unkind life they had lived on earth.
Despite the hardships, American Afro families used different methods to withstand the cruelty bestowed on them and strived to make a durable community strong enough to withstand the oppression by white power. Slave families had strong kinship and family ties that became extensive when family members were sold. When a new slave was brought into the slave quarters, they were welcomed with open arms and immediately treated like family. They had a strong sense of togetherness and