Essay about The Modern Canadian Family

Demographically, over 90% of the participants strongly agreed that fatherhood is crucial in our society. A little over 47% of fathers, that encouragement from the mothers of their children matters because of the obstacles they faced with finance, and their duties on the job. The final results of marital status statistics is over 80% married fathers, nine percent divorced, and six percent never married. One surprising statistic was 90% cohabitate with the mother and focal child (Glenn & Popenoe, 2006).

Traditionally, the U.S. family begins with a marriage, cohabitation and finally, children. However, the “typical” family is beginning to evolve very rapidly, just as in France and Quebec. In Quebec, it is more common to find couples living together that aren’t married than to find married couples living together. Surprisingly, only 3 in 10 families in Quebec are married couples with children under 25 living with them. In France, children tend to live with their parents until they’re in their early to mid-twenties. Quebec and the United States are generally evolving together. It is more common in present day to find couples living together that aren’t married, yet may or may not have children. However, in France, couples generally won’t marry until they’re in their thirties. My family is composed of the traditional American family: marriage, creating a home together, creating a family together. Although I was raised in an orthodox household, I was also raised seeing and learning from unorthodox living and parental situations. The role of family in the U.S., Quebec, and France nowadays are all transforming to purposefully cease all structure. Same-sex marriage is now legal in these areas, and this change has definitely produced the question of what is a “typical family” anymore. There is not a typical family anymore, there is only the family one was brought up in and one creates.

It is evident that the family structures have dramatically transitioned over the past 100 years. The “Leave it to the Beaver” family is a thing of the past standards and a number of variations have been formed over the years. In the United States, there are six particular kinds of family configurations that are recognized by the modern society. Some of these family structures are naturally falling into several categories. For instance, a single parent family living in a large, extended family set up. Even though these types of families differ in definition, the lines are not very clear when it comes to practice.

In 19th century, European settlers in Canada viewed family as central to the colonial project. Family members, community, church and state officials aided getting married and having children because they saw it as key to social responsible and nation build. Also, they believed marriage and parenthood helped individuals mature socially. (Officer, 2015) Before European migrated the most family were based on Kin- based extended of families.

Fathers today spend more time taking care of their children compared to previous generations. Even with these gains, today's mothers devote almost double the time that fathers do for child care.[2] While every situation is different, in most families there

Over the last few decades Canadians’ desire and need for children has drastically changed. As stated in “Canada’s Shrinking Families”, “[C]anadian families are shrinking as fewer children are being born than in previous decades”(Mitchell 1). More and more data and information has emerging on family life in Canada, for example according to “ Canada’s Shrinking Families”, “[T]he average family size has declined from 3.7 members in 1971 to 3.0 in 2006” (Mitchell 1). Canada’s continuously changing society has changed its perspective on the need for larger families. As a result, this creates great impacts on Canada and its citizens. The impacts of shrinking families in Canada are considerably more positive as it can prevent overpopulation, create more positive impacts towards the Canadian economy, and cause an increase healthy child development.

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

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.

The 1920s was a changing time in Canadian culture and this affected everyone. The most effect could be felt on the family, and how responsibilities, duties and roles had changed. Men were coming home from the war, they had now seen things never thought possible and experienced things that will forever change them; they came home different. Women were at home waiting, excited, ready to move on and build to their families and continue their lives. Young girls were excited to have their father’s home, to tuck them in at night and to sit next to their fathers at church on Sunday mornings. And then there were the boys. Boys lives changed dramatically around the time of the war. This became a crucial issue for both families and societies. A lot of time, money, and education was spent on the ‘crisis’ of boys and their development. The development of boys was altered by the war and can be seen in their relationships with their mothers, the toys and activities that were available to boy’s, and the advertisements that surround boys clothing during this era.

n the upcoming page’s I will answer the following questions. Why is family the most important agent of socialization? What caused the dramatic changes to the American family? What are the changes? I will discuss the differences in marriage and family, I will discuss how they are linked to class, race, gender, and personal choices. The purpose of this study is to explore the many different family functions and the paths that people are now choosing. I will give my opinion on whether these changes have had a positive or negative affect. I will finally discuss the trend of the modern family, back to pre-World War II family structure, how would that effect the strides that have been made in the progression of women rights.

Marriage has always been, and remains, one of Canada's most important social structures. Yet more and more marriages are ending in divorce. Canada's divorce rate is currently about fifty percent. Half of all children will witness the break up of their parents' marriage. Of these children, another half will witness the break up of a parents' second marriage, as well. (Furstenberg, Nord).

They say a woman becomes a mother when she finds out that she is expecting, and a man becomes a father the first time he holds his baby. After a month a baby is able to tell apart his or her mom and dad. For decades, psychologists and other researchers assumed that the mother-child bond was the most important bond in a child’s life. Within the last several decades scientists are increasingly realizing just how much dads matter. Just like women, fathers’ bodies respond to parenthood, and their parenting style affects their kids just as much, and sometimes more, than mom’s. When one person is at home with a new baby and the other remains at work, they can start living in different worlds and have less to talk about. The stay-at-home mom wants to discuss the baby's milestones and the working dad, while interested, misses their dinner conversations about the workplace. If parents can afford to take maternity and paternity leave simultaneously, it can benefit

The survey found that it was still very rare for fathers to take primary responsibility for childcare in dual-earner families, no-earner families or families where only the woman worked, showing again inequality in conjugal roles. Therefore Ferri and Smiths findings disagree with the statement, showing inequality in conjugal roles. Many women agree with Ferri and Smith that it is they rather than their

Family is one of the hardest words to define. There are many definitions and thoughts of what a family consists of. When one accepts the definition of the census family given by Statistics Canada then a family becomes “a married couple and the children, if any… a couple living common law and the children, if any… a lone parent with at least one child living in the same dwelling… grandchild living with grandparents but no parents present… Census families can be opposite or same sex and children may be adopted, by birth, or marriage and all members must be living in the same dwelling” (Baker 2014). With family being such a difficult term to agree on, the creation of a complex study of family life emerges. The factors that influence family life are put into three theory categories; Social Structure, Interpersonal Factors, as well as Ideas, Global Culture, and Public Discourse.

Access to paid leave is often identified as an issue that primarily concerns working mothers, yet paid leave is also critically important for working fathers. In a society that continues to evolve, it is even more imperative to address this unequal access with an increasing number of fathers who are serving as stay at home parents (International Labor Organization, 2014). Legislation that supports fathers having the support they need to prioritize family responsibilities can significantly increase the personal and economic well-being of their growing families (United States Department of Labor, 2015). Despite these advantages, the growing importance of paternal involvement with their newborns is not always supported in today’s society. The economic and social barriers fathers face may hinder them from taking paternity leave altogether, such as inadequate access to paid leave and outdated cultural norms about male breadwinners. According to survey data, most fathers in the United States only take one day of leave time for every month the typical mother takes (Harrington et al., 2014). This means that even in the twenty-first century, it appears to be more widely accepted for mothers to take off time from work to care for their families than fathers. Fewer than half the countries in the world provide men with access to paid leave to care for a new child, while virtually all provide paid maternity leave (ILO, 2014). Paid paternity leave and laws related to promote