Summary Of Stein's Critique Of Family Dynamics

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

Throughout the book, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the physical transition of the Joad family from a small close-knit group of people living a quiet life on a farm in Oklahoma, corresponds with the internal transition of the concept of family. As the Joads leave their farm and journey westward, they no longer live just within their own isolated unit. Becoming involved with other families as they migrate, changes their focus and by the end of the book, the family members each reach out in their own way to embrace all of mankind as a family.

Though generalization in nature excludes outliers and exceptions, it serves as a perfect method of exemplification in Rodriguez’s essay, as his argument involves not a specific situation or individual, but rather a national culture as a whole. Throughout the essay, Rodriguez states several themes of American society to support his idea that Americans have weak family values. The principle of departure from home is mentioned early in the essay. “The assurance of family–continuity, inevitably–is precisely what America encourages its children to overturn. Become your own man,” Rodriguez states (Rodriguez 310). Americans see dependence on family members as a terrible weakness. Therefore, committing an act like living with one’s parents during an economically difficult time, such as Rodriguez in fact committed, is frowned upon by society. Going away to study, and leaving one’s guardians is a sign of manhood and success. Ignoring the exceptions to this argument, such as the parents that persuade their children to study near home, or the children who come home with much enthusiasm, Rodriguez simply states what he thinks is dominant in American culture. He mentions particular examples that represent the weaknesses in American family life to make a generalization that allows his argument to appear much stronger. Later in the essay, he goes on to compare American values to those of the Chinese. A comment made by Rodriguez’s

As the family became immersed with the traditions of contemporary American culture, they began to forge conflicting identities and values,

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.

By telling the reader she did not live in a “perfect world”, but “an overcrowded and unhappy home,” Barry makes a personal connection (page 859). This personal connection encourages readers to continue to read, so she can make her political point. Barry combines personal and political best in the final paragraph of her essay, first by using a personal connection, “Mrs. LeSane asked us to please stand...and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Children across the country do it faithfully,” and then connecting the connection to her political argument, saying, “I wonder now when the country will face its children and say a pledge right back” (page

Your last name belongs to the family, and you can’t cut yourselves off from your ancestors.” To this, the young boy answers “Baloney!.” This particular argument not only highlights the cultural differences in their thoughts on the meaning of names but also the different definition of a family each culture has. In the Chinese culture, the family is centered around the veneration of the ancestors and elders are the ones who hold the power within the household due to their wise nature. While in American culture the family is commonly defined as only including the nuclear family members, the mother, the father, and their children. These values clashed during the argument between the grandfather and the child when the child not only disregarded the importance of his ancestors but also disrespected his grandfather to the point where his grandmother had to intervene and by stating “You mustn’t speak to your granddad like that.” The children further display their American interpretation of family when the boy tells the grandfather “This isn’t your home,” and then the little girl follows by stating “You’re just our guests.” This argument clearly displays the clash between family members of different generations dramatized by their

The essay “Us and Them” is a cautionary tale that shows the dangers and emotions attached to ever-declining family time. The reader find out that Sedaris is attempting to fill the void left by his own unsatisfying family life with the, unknown, help of his neighbors. The overall theme of this essay is family security. Sedaris “replaces” his biological family with another family and becomes noticeably distraught when his two families come in contact with each other on November 1st and ruin the façade he previously created. In Us and Them, David Sedaris shows the reader that a nuclear family does not guarantee a satisfying family life.

Poet and storyteller Robert Bly, considerable influence on American literature, in this excerpt from The Sibling Society (1996), Bly argues and states about change of our society and starts the interesting introduction in a strange way with hidden meanings to lead to his point of what it really means to be an adult in the modern society. This passage is not completely a book as whole and was put together partially for college student to read the main focus point of the author. Bly makes points back and forth in his essay of in the between “paternalistic” society and the “sibling” society that he observed and argues the differences. He blames the first generation because of their disrespect of authority to let down in traditional values that failed to provide a moral compass for the young. The strong point of this book is his description of a disturbing development in modern society that denies to become a fully adult. Admiration for elders has disappeared and forgotten, tradition has worn out, and families are being ignored.

There’s an old saying that goes, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present”, by Alice Morse Earle. The world has become a place taken for granted. Humans are beginning to wish they could live in the past, while others just want to skip over to the future but what ever happened to living right now? Or living in the moment? In the story, “The American Family”, by Stephanie Coontz, she discusses why so many individuals believe American families are facing worse issues now than in the past. She discusses how in the previous years, it was far worse and explains why those people are wrong to assume they are facing worse problems now. In addition, Robert Kuttner and his text, “The politics of family”, supports Coontz’ argument about the dilemmas facing the turn-of-the-century American families and gives the resolutions to those problems; such as talking out problems, women having the right to walk out of unsatisfactory marriages, and lastly, the emancipation for women.

In both short stories, it is evident that aged traditions possess the capability to construct barriers between the strong bonds existent in families. Traditions have the ability to turn

First, in order to critically analyze May’s thoughts, one most first consider the foundation on which the book is built. Homeward Bound does a great job of initiating connections between Cold War politics and the American families that stood during the 1940s and 1950s. Throughout the book, subjects that May explore are feminism, consumerism, Cold War, suburbia and gender. After its release in 1988, the book altered what Americans believed the Cold war to be. The author vividly describes family life during the post-war era by giving detailed accounts of early marriages, baby booms, high values of premarital virtue

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

The family structure is made up of individuals living together in intimate groups with the purpose of caring and supporting each other. Rules and boundaries, spoken and unspoken, are developed by the family members. Family rules and boundaries change and shift over time in order to evolve and grow as a family unit. Some changes are subtle, but some events force major change within the family system. This paper applies the concepts of systems theory to the family system in the movie Sweet Home Alabama. Reese Witherspoon (Melanie Smooter) and Josh Lucas (Jake Perry) star in this heart-warming film telling a story of a young woman who flees from Alabama to reinvent herself in New York City as a high fashion designer. She leaves behind

In The Way We Never Were, Stephanie Coontz suggests that society romanticizes past generations of family life and points out that these memories are merely myths that prevent us from “dealing more effectively with the problems facing today’s families” (Coontz x). Coontz proposes that researchers can take empirical data and create misleading causality for that data, thus feeding cultural myth and/or experience. Coontz believes that “an overemphasis on personal responsibility for strengthening family values encourages a way of thinking that leads to moralizing rather than mobilizing for concrete reforms” (Coontz 22). She calls on us to direct our attention to social reforms, which can be accomplished by avoiding victim-blaming