Extended Families Essay

The television series, “The Walton’s” was about a family living through the Great Depression in the Blue Ridge Mountain area of Virginia. Their daily struggles through all of

The television shows from 1950 to the present are connected in many ways. The characters showed in the 1950s television show called Leave It To Beaver all have white coloured skin and portrayed as a happy, perfect family. As the decades increased, the nuclear families turned into blended families, and the television shows started to have coloured characters. The families started to have problems and social situations. The viewer sees the conflicts inside the family begin as the years progress. For example, in the 2000's we examined a television show called Arrested Development. The show portrays the characters as if they are troubled and have problems. The children do not listen to their parents but instead have

Full house is an American sitcom television series that’s about a widowed father named, Danny Tanner, his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis, and his best friend Joey Gladstone, who help Danny raise his three children, D.J, Stephanie, and Michelle. Full House came out around the late 1980s, unfortunately, due to the the increasing costs of producing the show the series was cancelled on May 23, 1995. As a young child, Full House may have seemed as your ordinary American sitcom that is about love, friendship, and family. But that is not the case in this show, as young adults and re-watching the show again, you may stumble upon the deeper meaning and messages behind the show that is significant to society today. Such as, Full house breaks gender stereotypes and it has strong, real, and important life lessons for children.

In the reading “A Little Commonwealth”, John Demos writes about the life, norms, and misconceptions of early colonial families. He gets his information mainly through censuses found from that time period. Many people today believe that the colonial family consisted of a large extended family with several generations under the same roof. However, standard colonial families were actually made up of small nuclear families (Demos, 62). Nuclear families contain a married couple and their children. Their modest homes were simply not large enough to house many generations and censuses show that 4 to 6 family households were very common (Demos, 64). This is very similar to families today with households that contain the nuclear family. However, today it is not uncommon to hear about extended families. In fact, it can be quite common.

In extended homes, part of a nuclear home to which other relatives have been added: grandfather, nephew, grandson, mother-in-law, mother, etc. In Mexico, it represents 21.5% of the total families. Mexicans are very conscious of their responsibilities to immediate family members but also the extended family such as cousins and even close friends. Extensive family involvement is important to the nuclear family, especially for the support in day to day life.

The word family has changed so much in the past century. A family back in the 1950’s was probably considered a husband, wife, and one or more children. Times have changed and families have become much different. The Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others book defines family as a, “Unit made up of any number of persons who live in relationship with one another over time in a common living space who are usually, but not always, united by marriage and kinship” (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 243). Families can be broken up into five different types. The first is the traditional family, which includes a mother, father, and their biological children. Next, is the blended family which includes

Everyone's experiences with it are different, some are favourable, and some are fallacious. Everyone has it, but no one’s family is synonymous. Family is strong and sacrosanct, but strange. The understanding of family varies between people and their personal experiences. In the play Only Drunks and Children Tell The Truth(ODACTTT) by Drew Hayden Taylor, one sees family defined in several legitimate but different ways.

What qualifies a family as a family is something that has been largely debated in history. In recent years, untraditional families have become more publicized and are seen everyday in both the media and in real life. An example of an untraditional family would be The Fosters from the ABC Family’s TV show The Fosters.

Extended family was when one spouse of a new marriage goes to live with the other spouse’s family, opposed to living on their own.

The traditional American family comes from the 1950s, when TV shows like Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet were released. They were the model to follow and create the family that the myth promotes. Parents happily married, nice house in suburbia, and a harmonious home are common traits of the model American Family. The myth of the American family creates a template for other families to follow; however, it only reflects to Caucasian families and creates a disappointment on today’s society.

Television sitcoms of the 1950’s through the 1990’s demonstrated the values and structure of the American family by portraying stereotypes. Since television sets became mainstream and entered almost every American home, the content of American sitcoms has reflected the culture of the times. Thus, as the popular American sitcoms of the 1950’s suggest, families living in the 1950’s were very tightly grouped and did everything together with roles of males and females clearly defined. In the 1950,’s women did the housecleaning and child care and men worked, providing for the family. In the sixties, women acquired more freedom in their lives. The 1963 Equal Pay Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act came into effect. It was the end of the baby boomer

The Brady Bunch were the ideal families in the 1960's and 1970's, and in the 80's, it was Family Ties. When the 1990's approached us, television shows took on a whole new outlook on American Families. There were shows such as Full House, which was about a single father raising three daughters with the help of his brother-in-law and his best friend. Roseanne was also another show that showed the "dysfunctional" side of families. American Families keep changing, and they will continue to change in our future.

As early as 1950, television families have depicted not only the way we live today, but also the way we ought to live (Tueth, 2003). Hence, television has continued to present comedies about family life that ranges from the didactic model of domestic conventionalist and gradually to non-conventionalist ways of life. By conventionalist, I mean the depiction of the “nuclear” family that consists of clear roles, responsibilities, and gentle lines of authority that flow from the wise dad and understanding mom to the obedient children (Kutalas, 2005). Examples of these types of shows between 1947 to 1990 that constructed more than 60% of family sitcoms included: The Cleavers, The Cosby Show, Father Knows Best, Family Ties, and Growing Pains

Family sitcoms have been the most popular and positively influenced television shows watched since the 1900s to today. Many of these shows have consisted of African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic families who all play a role that we as watchers look up to or perceive as the right way to run our household. Over time there has been an addition to biracial shows and family role changes throughout these sitcoms. For example, now observing single parent homes, homosexual guardians and even the changing of social interaction has both positively and negatively impacted real families who are watching.

Furthermore, Olive has both an extended, blended and multi generation family. Extended families are families that families that include aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, all whom live under one roof (F. Parker, personal communication, May 10, 2017). This proves that Olive’s family is an extended family because she lives with not only her Mom and Dad and brother, but also her grandfather Edwin and her Uncle Frank. Frank lives with the Hoover family because of his suicide attempt. Additionally, a blended family is a family that includes children of a previous marriage of one spouse or both (Webster, 2017). In the family, this is Mom’s second marriage and she