Stone Soup Barbara Kingsolver Analysis

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.

Many Americans believe that family values are only upheld when individuals belong to a “traditional family”, which consists of a working father, stay-at-home mother and their biological children. Any fluctuation from this ideal family model is considered “non-traditional”. In Barbara Kingsolver’s, “Stone Soup”, she shares her perspective about society’s negative vision of the non-traditional family. As a divorced single mother, Kingsolver suggests, “To judge a family’s value by its tidy symmetry is to purchase a book for its cover.” Similarly, Richard Rodriguez’s, “Family Values” also addresses the subject of family. However, his theme focuses on how immigrants and politicians view the family dynamic. Rodriguez believes that America severely

The essay “ Stone Soup” by Barbara Kingsolver and the essay “Once More to the Lake” by E. B White have a multifold of comparisons and a multifarious differences. In “Stone Soup” the fundamental issue is explaining that broken families are not actually broken. In “Once More to the Lake” the root of the story is that the father wants to carry on the traditions on with his that he has a child on the lake.“A tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past”(Tradition). Although White and his son are exceedingly close unlike Kingsolver’s family, they are both families and they both love each other to a great extent.

For example, Kingsolver defends the notion that families of nontraditional arrangements do not need to be examined, ridiculed or treated differently with pity or tolerance as traditionally married families when she says, “Arguing about whether nontraditional families deserve pity or tolerance is a little like the medieval debate about left-handedness as a mark of the devil” (Kingsolver 16). By this statement, the author clearly expresses her belief that nontraditional families are just as successful in their roles as traditional or married families, though evidence gathered has rejected Kingsolver’s argument. In an article by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian, the authors present the benefits of marriage as opposed to divorced or single parenthood families. Naomi Gerstel writes that, “advocates [of marriage] such as David Popenoe and Linda Waite assert that marriage is good for one’s pocketbook, health, happiness, sex life, and kids. Both men and women who are married tend to have higher incomes, more wealth, better health, and more property than those who are not.” The article goes on to describe the negative impacts of divorce and nontraditional families by introducing National Census statistics of relationships between married parents and their children compared with

In today’s society, family is often attempted to be organized within a social structure. Within this structure family typically is consisted of mom, dad, daughter, and son. However, many families do not fit into this configuration. These families may include same sex couples, separated or divorced families, extended families, or even blended families. Even though these families may be happy and healthy, to many they are not considered real families. Going along with the topic of imperfect families, both Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Rodriguez try to break down the traditional family structure through their writing. While Kingsolver’s “Stone Soup” and Rodriguez’s “Family Values” explore the ideas of different family structures and traditional American values, “Stone Soup” breaks down what an actual family is like while “Family Values” expresses the value of family in different cultures.

American novelist, Barbara Kingsolver, in her excerpt, “Stone Soup”, taken from, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, recounts the outrageous view that society has on divorced families/homes. Kingsolver’s purpose is to impress upon readers that it is okay for families to stem away from the traditional, “Dad, Mom, Sis, Junior”, family. She creates a persuasive tone in order to get rid of stereotypes and judgments of marital issues held by her readers and society. Through the effective use of anecdotes, appeals, and passionate diction, Kingsolver establishes her claim that blended families can get through life happy and perfectly fine by themselves or with close friends and family.

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.

In 1970, 40% of couples were married with children. 2013 marked a new low as only 19% of household were married with children. A nuclear family is usually described as a heterosexual marriage with the average of 2.5 children, became synonymous with the American dream philosophy in the mid-1940s. The nuclear family standard is rapidly on the decline in the United States. These declining number have a range of causes. The causes of the decline of the nuclear family are cohabitation, childfree couples, high divorces rates, and the introduction of LGBTQ families. The effects are increased self-fulfillment, serial monogamy, childhood psychological trauma and family diversity. Gay and lesbian marriages

Family. What do you picture? Two married parents, their son and daughter, and maybe a dog, all living in a two story house in a nice suburban neighborhood. And who should blame you for picturing that? It’s been drilled into our minds all throughout our childhoods. Through our families, the tv, the books we read. But is this really all true? 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce and of that 50 percent, 46 percent are families. So why is this “perfect” family ideal so widespread? Author Barbara Kingsolver tries to explain this in her essay: ‘Stone Soup’. She claims it’s because society is so traditional and primitive in the way we idealize what a family is supposed to be: two married parents and their children. But that’s not really the case anymore. The main idea of her essay is that the definition of family needs to be reimagined to define more of what a family means, rather than what its terminology implies.

“Stone Soup” is an essay written by a divorced women by the name of Barbara Kingsolver and in this essay she states that she is severely criticized at times for being a divorced woman and raising a child without a husband. In the essay, she says that instead of getting casseroles people treated her like she broke the family fine china. People thought that she did not try to salvage her marriage. Criticisms like these are not uncommon though.

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

Falicov, C.J., & Brudner-White, L. (1983). The shifting family triangle: The issue of cultural and

American families have never been as diverse as they are today. There is a constant changing definition of what we call “family”. We as Americans are straying further and further from the idea of a classic nuclear family. One of the biggest reasons is a dramatic rise in kids living with a single parent. In 2014, just 14% of children younger than 18 lived with a stay-at-home mother and a working father who were in their first marriage (Livingston, 2015). This research will address in depth why households are now more diverse than ever, what’s the normal family now, and why aren’t the laws adjusting to how the average American family lives today.

Divorce will lead to happiness. As odd as divorce leading to happiness may sound, it contains truth. Stone Soup, written by Barbara Kingsolver, contains her personal experience with divorce, and the effects divorce had on her family. Kingsolver uses personal experience, to demonstrate that divorce frees the families from bondage.

This paper will discuss the differences between families from the 1960’s and the families of today. There are many differences between the different times. I have focused on the parentage portion of the families. I explained what the ideal family is and how it is different today. I’ve also included ways that will help these families of today become stronger as a family.