Preview

In Your Opinion What Has Happened To The Institution Of Marriage And The Family In This Country And How Can The American Family Survive In An Ever

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
259 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
In Your Opinion What Has Happened To The Institution Of Marriage And The Family In This Country And How Can The American Family Survive In An Ever
In your opinion what has happened to the institution of marriage and the family in this country and how can the American family survive in an ever-changing society? Can it survive?

The traditional family structure in the United States is used to be considered as a family support system involving two married people providing care for their family. However, the traditional family structure has become less common as we head into the 21th century. The changes among families in America has shifted to very powerful changes, including divorce and single-parent families, teenage pregnancy, and same-sex marriage, and increased rate of adoption. Social movements such as advanced technology, longer life spans, the freedom of increasing the use of birth control, women’s increasing engagement into the workforce, and a dramatic increase in divorce rates have restructured the American family’s life nowadays.
Moreover, the economy has grown over years and has changed the model of rights and expectations within marriage. As women’s connection to work force grows stronger, they have played an important role in influencing and controlling in family decision-making. When those rights are not respected, many women either do not enter into or what they consider insupportable family relationships; in which men do the same.
As American family society have faced many obstacles from the child bearing and education, the importance of intimate relationships, to the need for family guidelines; all of that take into account that the changing of American families will need to be gradually understood and appreciated if our society is to survive.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Sociology 210 Unit 4 IP

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages

    for some of the problems that plague our society today. She identifies some important and significant changes within the family structure since the 1960’s. Further, she includes factors that are responsible for this change. Finally, she expounds on the balance, and if in fact families are becoming weaker or simply different? She cites evidence to support her claims, and she proposes her opinions on what she feels will strengthen the family.…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    FCS 355 Spring Syllabus

    • 3566 Words
    • 16 Pages

    The American family has undergone many changes in the past few years. The course will trace historical events such as the Industrial Revolution, World War II, down to our current Technology Age and discuss how the family has been affected by these happenings. The family will be looked at from theoretical perspectives as well as practical perspectives. Students will be given opportunities to review journal articles, participate in discussion board postings, and look at the overall family life cycle to gain a comprehensive understanding of how the family affects individuals throughout their entire lifespan.…

    • 3566 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    1. The American family has changed so much over the past 40 years. Herbert S. Klein has written an essay on this matter titled “The Changing American Family”. He brings up a lot of interesting facts about changes in fertility and marriage in the population from the colonial period up to today.…

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Cjus 230 Final Paper

    • 4022 Words
    • 17 Pages

    Family Structure has changed noticeably in the United States over the past several decades. It refers to various family characteristics that affect relationships and how families function. These characteristics include family size, family disruption, and birth order. High rates of divorce, single-parent housing, the spreading of non-parent families and step-families, and the propagation of cohabitation now delineate in American family life. Changes in family structure can be devastating to a child’s well-being, and have the potential to contribute to juvenile delinquency.…

    • 4022 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Sociologists cite the weakening of the family as one of the causes for some of the problems American society faces today.” In my opinion, I agree that the challenges in America originates from the destabilization of families. Since the 1960’s there has been a tremendous change in society. Advanced technology has played a significant role in thinning the relationships in families. Additionally, new laws and learning methods has been introduced to propose a new way of raising children. America has become susceptible to issues that were condemn in the 1960’s.…

    • 590 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Before this era, it was widely believed and encouraged that children would be more successful than their parents, but this old-fashion notion was antiquated in this decade. The country began to tear as part of it moved forward while the other had no desire to progress. Not only was the country becoming fragmented, but so was the structure of the family. The once ideal traditional nuclear family included one working father and one stay at home mother who’d care for the children and do the chores. The traditional family life was rejected during this period of time. More women were working, divorces rate soared, out of wedlock births had become increasingly common, and much of the country was single. People even started living in communities of like people. Single Americans would rent an apartment in a single apartment complex and seniors would stay together in retirement…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ho Families Are Changing

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The present structure of the average family in America is changing, mainly due to the growing number of mothers who now work outside the home. The current mark of dual-earner families stands at 64 percent, making it a solid majority today. This alteration of the "traditional" structure of the family is a catalyst for other changes that may soon occur.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The last snapshot of the American family, taken by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000, looked markedly different from previous years. Divorced parents, stepparents, adoptive parents, unmarried biological parents who live together, gay parents, and single parents raising a child on their own- all add up to the most astonishing revelation: The "typical" family of married parents and their biological children accounts for fewer than…

    • 2036 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    3,320,000 (“America’s Newest Export,” 2004). DeBell (2001) offers a harrowing glimpse at the speed at which new organizations are emerging and old…

    • 4555 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Over the past fifty to sixty years the dynamics of the American family has changed. Families today face more challenges and often to respond in ways that may seem logical but that pose potential risks to their children. In the Sixties the average family consisted of a working father, a stay at home mother and on average, 2.5 children. But today the family structure has changed. In the book, The Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, the author states that when considering how families have changed over the past several decades, two prominent factors emerge above the rest, an “increase in maternal employment and an increase in single parenting.”…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The 20th century observed extraordinary changes in the structure and dynamics of American families. The remarkable shift began with the Progressive Era, which spearheaded the emerging concept of marital happiness, an idea that marriage should be composed of emotional ties between the husband and wife. The Industrial Revolution further reinforced these rising ideals with economic and technological transformations that encouraged people to choose partners based on emotional attraction than financial stability. In the 1960s, compassionate marriages gave way to individualized marriages – the formerly rigid familial roles that entrenched the father as the breadwinner and the mother as the caregiver evolved to more flexible and negotiable roles within a marriage. Throughout the majority of the 20th century, my own family’s changing dynamics and structures reflect the trends of U.S. families across the decades. Taiwan’s industrial revolution in the early 20th century and my parent’s immigration to America contributed to my family’s evolution from husband-headed households of many children and established domestic roles to my current family now. However, while my family’s transitions mirrored many mainstream patterns of American families, there are also very distinct traits within each generation that contrast greatly with the American model.…

    • 1523 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In 1950s, the “ideal” American family consists of a husband, a wife and two or more children. The husband is the breadwinner and the wife is the homemaker. This common image of family was deeply rooted in American’s society, so it is no wonder we find many families on TV show confirm this structure, like The Simpsons, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best. But Things started to change since 1950s that families like the Simpsons are no longer the majority. Households with four or more persons make up 40.2% of all households in 1960 while in 2011 the percentage is down to 26.4%. Meanwhile, families are becoming smaller compared 2.58 persons per household in 2011 to 3.33 in 1960. Unlike the family as the Simpsons, families tend to be built in other forms thus different types of families become more dominant, including one-parent…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Working Parents

    • 1134 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In the 1950s most families seemed alike. The typical or Nuclear family comprised a father, a mother and two or three kids living together in their house or apartment. The father went off to work every day, and more often than not, the mother stayed at home to take care of the house and the children. In 1960 over 70 percent of all households were made up of a breadwinner father, a homemaker mother and their children. [The History of Private Life: The Modern Family, 2001] Today, in the new millennium, families come in many shapes and sizes, from the "Typical family" to the "Extended Family" (Nuclear family plus grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) to the "Single parent family" (mother and children or father and children).…

    • 1134 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    One of the main institutions that can have the most impact on society is the family. The family by definition "a fundamental social group in society typically consisting of a man and woman and their offspring or two or more people who share goals and values, have long-term commitments to one another, and reside usually in the same dwelling place" (Mifflin 2000). In order to further elaborate on this institution we most look at the family on how it was before and how much it has changed to this date. One of main changes in the dynamics of families is the social changes in the Women's movement and the changes from a nuclear family to single parent homes.…

    • 2484 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    family

    • 425 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Since the 1950’s the “traditional” or “ideal” family consisting of a breadwinner-husband, a homemaker-wife, and two to three children has become less common, while other family forms such as dual-earner families, single-parent families, stepfamilies, and gay and lesbian families – among others – have become increasingly more common. While some scholars, pundits and policy makers lament the increasing diversity of family patterns and predict the demise of the family, others maintain that the family is a resilient institution whose capacities and functions are not diminished by its current diversity. The definition of family is falling apart in my opinion. Today families spend less and less time together. Most of the parents that is if there still together both work. That leaves the kids either at home by themselves or at daycare with some besides there parent. Most families don’t even have dinner together anymore. Family: Both parents and their children coming together and being with each other.…

    • 425 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics