Traditional Family Unit Research Paper

Everyone can picture the traditional family unit; a working father, a mother who stays at home tending to the children, two children: a boy and a girl, and a dog named Spot. However, this idea has not always been the same. From the early Native American tribe of the Navajo and Hopi with extended families (Roberts), to the modern times with single parent families and families with gay parents, the idea of a family unit has been ever changing. At first, during the times of the Paleolithic Era, the family unit was comprised of a small group of people usually around 10-30 people. This group was more or less not related, foraging the land for food and resources. These "hunter-gatherers" were not a biological family but a group of people with a similar goal, to migrate to new land in search of food. However, as people began to discover the science of agriculture, they began to settle and form cities and agricultural settlements (Upper Paleolithic: 30,000 - 10,000 BC). As the civilizations began to form, the family unit began to shrink. During the time of the Roman era, the family consisted of parent-in-laws and the nuclear family. Grandparents were generally included in the family unit, and in some cases, great-grandparents, which held the power within the family. Also included in the family unit, were the
Many couples in these states relocate to different states in order to legally adopt a child. However, some states do allow for a process called "second parent adoption," in which the biological parent's partner is allowed to adopt the child, without negating the biological parent's legal rights. This was started by the Nation Center for Lesbian Rights in the mid 1980s. States which allow for second parent adoption include Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington State and Washington