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.