The 1950s: The Myth Of The American 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.

Most American’s have grown up with this idea of what a family is supposed to be, how it is structured and how it functions. Throughout time the idea’s have changed and evolved but the ideal “American family” is generally the same. A father, mother, a little boy and girl who live in the suburban’s with the white picket fence. There is this idea that the earlier American family was perfect, or near it. Every person in the family had their place and did their duties. Few toed the line and families stuck together no matter what. That may have been more accurate at a time, but the reason is far from just the idea that times where easier. Families stuck together because of strong religious prohibitions and community norms. This was a time where

Think about one of your favorite childhood memories. Is it when you first learned to ride a bike with the help of your dad? Or is it the time you and your siblings built a fort in the backyard and camped out overnight? Odds are that the memory that came to mind had something to do with your family. The family is such a tremendous part of our life. We learn vital skills that help us become better people and ultimately help us function in a society. That’s why the American Dream in the 1950s was entered around the family unit. People’s main goal was to nurture the family they had. Sixty years later, however, that dream has long been tainted and even lost. But why? Why has the dream that so many had changed?

With the typical AMerican family has many trends that researchers have documented such as Marriage that's a typical thing that is expected as a “American family. Also they like to focus on the dynamic of how the family is set up, is it a mom and a dad, or two moms, or two dads. I feel that a lot of today you get judged on your family

When recounting his childhood, Christopher Elliott, now 56, orates countless chaotic tales with a tone of tranquil reminiscence. Raised by a single father after his mother died in 1968, Chris grew up in Miller Place, New York alongside his 9 other siblings in the 1960s and 1970s. His unique family dynamic led Chris and his siblings to find independence and quickly develop a distinctive personality detached from societal expectations. The individualism found within the Elliott household was largely absent in other households across the nation. Many of Chris’s peers lived in a home modeled after the male breadwinner phenomenon Stephanie Coontz describes in her book Marriage, a History. The emphasis on cultural scripts within the male breadwinner family model suppressed individuality and that suppression ultimately played a role in the outpouring of support for anti establishment and alternative lifestyles in the 1960s and 1970s. Once it was time for Chris to establish his own family at the turn of the century, family life in America had largely abandoned the male breadwinner model in favor of family arrangements that tailored to the specific circumstances of each family, thus implying a certain prescience to the dynamic he grew up with in the 1960s. By exploring alternative families like the Elliotts in a period where strict family life was the norm, we can better understand alterations in the typical American family dynamic and the rise of the modern family.

Throughout our country’s past, it has been important for the government to safeguard the American family ideal. This ideal is of the perfect, nuclear family where everybody gets what they want and there is no worry of debt. The “American family” has set a standard of living that is not currently feasible for most in America, which leaves many striving for something they can not obtain instead of appreciating what they have. The satirization of the American family ideal in the film Little Miss Sunshine is the director’s way of telling their audience what really matters in a family, not the “perfect life”, but the support for eachother. We, as a society, see the nuclear family as “perfect”, however Little Miss Sunshine shows us that a family doesn’t have to be “perfect” to be good.

Many families owned televisions, and throughout the sitcoms they watched, the idea of togetherness was popularized greatly. Sitcoms such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver showcased “‘normal’ middle-class families” that were viewed as the norm for the nation (Berkin, 732). After the disorder caused by the Great Depression and the war, “stable households seemed to represent the strength and future of the country” (Berkin, 732). These nuclear families would serve as a beacon of

The US media has always depicted a traditional family consisting of a mother, a father, and children. Nowadays, there are few families that we still consider traditional. This concept is outdated and offensive to Americans who don 't have a traditional family. The US media needs to redefine the definition of the traditional American family. Divorced and remarried parents, extended families living together, and kids who never really had a family should also be included. This will increase the overall sense of happiness and well-being among children whose families don 't necessarily fit in with society.

America has been known as the melting pot of people and cultures. As such, it makes sense that there are variations types of American families. Though the media often only portrays one, the concept of the American family portrayed in media is vastly different from the reality. American households can fall under three types: two parent households, single parent households, and other families, each of which have their own sub-categories.

The stereotypical American family is all over television, magazines, and newspapers. Every day different people across America wake up to different family circumstances. The stereotypical American family- recognized as a married mother and farther and at least one kid, with a father who worked outside the home and a mother who remained home and looked after the kids and the family. Nowadays there are a big majority of single mothers and fathers. There are many differences with my family compared to the stereotypical American family. Differences such as my mother works just like my father works everyday instead of staying home, everybody takes part in chores instead of just the mother, my mother and father never married each other will raising me.

In conclusion, as a result of taking an inventory of popular American culture, it has occurred to me that the basis of American popular culture is related to convenience and quick self-gratification of needs and wants. Long gone are the days of slaving over a hot stove to provide home-cooked meals nightly. These days have succumbed to the fast-food restaurant chains because of the busy schedule of families. Because of the changes within the American popular culture, the idea of family has been redefined. Whatever the definition may be the importance of tradition and focus on loved ones must not be sacrificed.

In my life at the beginning you would be able to say my family had “ The Traditional American Family” my mother and father were together raising two children, one boy and one girl, a dog in a nice house in the suburbs. But like most other families apparently, my parents divorced, my father remarried and my mom raised us.

For Essay 4, I will be researching the myth of the nuclear family and the evolution of both familism and marriage in the 20th and 21st century. For decades, family has been the cornerstone of western culture, both as a priority and a necessity. When we hear the term "nuclear family," we typically associate it with the modern American family, which has one mom, one dad, and two kids all living as one perfect unit. This term was coined at the end of World War 2, and since then, divorce rates have skyrocketed, interracial and same-sex marriages have become more common and surprisingly, less people are getting married and having children. The myth of the typical American nuclear family is dead. The purpose of my paper is simply to inform my audience. I, myself, am curious to learn the reasons behind why people are less and less interested in having families and what caused Americans to shift their perspective about marriage. I have found a few sources that follow the evolution of the American family, many of which argue that the institution of family is now becoming unstable. However, I have also found sources who claim that the institution of family and marriage has and will continue to be a stable and

Combining the multitude of factors that contribute to family formation and structure parallels to mixing ingredients to make a soup that does not always come out with the same taste, as even with the same contributing factors such as race, gender, and social, economic, and political pressure, one family can greatly differ from another. The ideology of the nuclear family shape clashed with my family’s more extended and traditional family structure, and upon arrival to the United States from Korea, initially resulted in opaque gendered behavior and thinking along with muddled male and female constructs. As the family’s stay continued, the idea and shape of the nuclear family began to whittle away at my grandparents’ and father’s initial ideals, albeit at a different pace. As a result of my grandparents directing joining the workforce and contributing, the nuclear family ideals had little influence; on the other hand, my father, after growing up through schooling and having more in depth experience with American culture, was more affected, and the transition into the ideology of the nuclear family was nearly complete after having children. As my father came to be the main breadwinner of the family, the nuclear family shape and ideology was fortified and increasingly embraced, as my dad was pressured to provide, which promoted male dominance within the household.

For as long as I can remember, the ideal family household consisted of the male/father as the bread winner, provider, and head of the household, and female/mother, and children as members of this family. This image was embedded in us through our social class, our parents, our community, and the social media. The families of today have drastically changed, and are more complex in the family role. As time progresses, divorce rates are at an all time high, and single parent homes are even higher. To top it off we can’t turn on the TV or computer without seeing or hearing about gay/lesbian marriage or states legalizing same sex marriage. Over time the idea of what the model family was viewed as and the reality of what a model class consist of now began to clash. American families are becoming numb or more excepting of the detrimental changes that I have listed above, of the model African American family. Finances and infidelity are at the top of the list of reasons why the African American family is becoming non-existent.