The Role Of The Nuclear Family During The Industrial Revolution

Firstly, a nuclear family is a family consisting of a man and woman (usually married) in a sexual relationship with one or more children. One reason for this type of family becoming less common is due to the rising number of divorces. Getting divorced has become much easier than in the past. 40% of all marriages end in divorce. There is much less stigma attached to divorce in modern society so people are less afraid to do it,

The concept of family has changed in many perspectives throughout the years. Nuclear families started back in the 1950s also known as ‘ideal families’. Today family comes in many varieties whether it 's nuclear, accordion, or extended families and even same sex marriage. One thing that is undoubtedly true is that family will always be the one that you have an unbreakable bond with. American families have evolved in many ways leading us away from what was known as nuclear families.

Edmund Burke once said," Make revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions." This comical yet straightforward quote can be related to a time in history called the Industrial Revolution. Throughout history there has been a political, economical, social and cultural revolution. These revolutions has had complex and long lasting impacts on people’s lives, one revolution that has forever changed history is the Industrial Revolution. The term revolution is defined as a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving. The Industrial revolution was a cultural revolution that impacted people’s lives forever.

Stephanie Coontz in “The Way We Weren’t: The Myth and Reality of the Traditional Family” emphasizes that the traditional and ideal nuclear family widespread in media and textbooks are false and far from reality. In fact, it is common to see more similarities to the traditional family consistent of “male breadwinner and nurturing mother” (1) today than in the past.

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Talcott Parsons’ (1956, pg. 309) believed that “the nuclear family is a social system” which consists of a straight married couple and around two to five children, “can be distinguished, and does function as a significant group” (1956, pg.308). Parsons believed that the family benefitted society in ways such as the teachings of gender roles and the overall structure of society: the male going to work and being the breadwinner, while the wife stays at home and cooks and nurtures the children. After the Second World War, the nuclear family was the most common type of family making the structure easily “distinguishable”. However, when we look at the postmodern society, we can see that there are many different types of families nowadays such

The ’50s boasted the archetype for the model family. As document H exemplifies, suburban families, coined the nuclear family, resided in ideal neighborhoods for raising the family, were

Today's nuclear family with mom, dad, 2.3 kids, and dog only came into being just after the Industrial Revolution (Swerdolow 15). This leads to the idea that perhaps the desengration of the nuclear family isn't necessarily a negative things, but more of a retirement of a one way of life in favor of a new one. Even if this is true, the current period of decline still spurns numerous problems and attempted solutions.

In her book Marriage a History Stephanie Coontz explains the male breadwinner family model and its dominance in family life during the 40’s, 50’s, and early 60’s. An illustration of the male breadwinner model is composed of a father, mother, and two children; typically a boy and girl close in age. Funded by their father’s well paying middle class salary, the wife and children live a comfortable life in suburbia and participate regularly in consumer trends. Perceived as the head of the household, the father was the sole financial provider. On the other hand the mother was the head of domestic life and was responsible for the children. The popular 1950’s TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet exemplified this family model. With regard to the male breadwinner family model, imagine having eight other brothers and sisters. Imagine growing up without a mother, and with a father who worked constantly. Then consider living this life alongside your peers who come from the “normal” male breadwinner families Coontz describes… How would your family differ from your peers? What would be your thoughts and feelings towards family life? More importantly, how would these unique circumstances change your perception of the nuclear family?

A nuclear family is universal and is defined as a two generational grouping; consisting of a father, mother and their children, all living in the same household. The idea of the nuclear family was first noticed in Western Europe in 17th century. The concept that narrowly defines a nuclear family is essential to the stability in modern society and has been promoted by modern social conservatives in the United States and has been challenged inadequate to describe the complexity of actual family relations. In this essay, I shall be assessing the views that the nuclear family functions to benefit all its members and society as a whole, from a

Times have changed; the nuclear family is no longer the American ideal because family needs have changed since the 1950's. This American convention of a mother and father and their two children, were a template of films and early television as a depiction of the American family life. Now seen as archaic and cliché by today’s standards, but the idea is common throughout many of the first world nations in the world. This ideal was a vast departure from the past agrarian and pre industrial families, and was modeled and structured as the ‘American dream’ father working, mother maintaining the household and children molded to be simulacra of the parents. This portrayal was not the standard; many communities throughout America had a different

Since the nineteenth century, in the western societies, family patterns changed under the forces of industrialisation and urbanisation. Another factor which has been involved in those changes is the growing intervention of the state, by legislative action, in the domestic affairs of the family. As a result of these trends, the modern “nuclear” family has been substituted for the traditional extended family. The increase of values such as individualism and egalitarism has influenced the patterns of

There were also needs for industrial society and from there, change/ structure of the family type evolved to meet societies needs to survive such as loss of functions in extended family, where industrial society took over some functions a family would perform for its members such as healthcare (NHS). And another was geographically mobile workforce; where the family had to move to places for jobs demanding their skills. But with extended families, they couldn’t take the whole family, just maybe the wife and kids etc. However, linking with the question, the functionalists view of the family was that nuclear families were the most dominant, but they change their views during industrialisation, believing that extended was the more dominant at the time for survival of the family to fit into society, but in today’s society, functionalists have changed their view once more, which resorted back to their first view of nuclear family being more dominant.

Ronald Fletcher also analyses the family from a Functionalist perspective but he denies that the modern nuclear family has lost functions to the extent suggested By Talcott Parsons. Thus Fletcher argues that even if the family is no longer a unit of production, it is a unit of consumption which can be appealed to by advertisers keen to sell a wide range of household appliances so as to maintain profits for the bourgeoisie.

For most of us, the family is considered as a well-known and comfortable institution. The perfect model of the ‘ideal’ family is still mostly considered to be consisted from two different sexes’ parents, and one or more children. Until quite recently, the sociology of the family was mostly functionalist and just in the last few decades has been challenged from various directions.