Traditional Family In America

Before, characterizing the family was straightforward. Couples had a tendency to live together after marriage, with kids following not long after. Presently, be that as it may, things have changed. Characterizing the average structure of an advanced family is significantly more confounded, with less relational unions, rising separation rates and expanding quantities of common associations testing the present. Throughout the year's American thought of a family has changed in Declining birth rates, moves in marriage and separation levels, and single parent families.

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

The families in America are steadily changing. While they remain our most valued and consistent source of strength and comfort, some families are becoming increasingly unstructured. In the past, the typical family consists of a working father, a stay at home mother and, of course, well-rounded children. Today, less than 20 percent of American families fit nicely into this cookie cutter image. American households have never been more diverse. Natalie Angier takes stock of the changing definition of family in an article for the New York Times.

Healthy family systems, such as the traditional family, with a father and mother, was no longer the majority in America, in 2014. “Fewer than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage. This is a marked change from 1960, when 73% of children fit this description, and 1980, when 61% did.”4

Within a generation, America has seen drastic changes in the home. My mother was raised in an era where the nuclear family was the norm. Now, it has become largely acceptable for children to be born out of wedlock and into single parent homes. I’m guessing the question as to why it has become so widely accepted, is on your mind as well. June Carbone and Naomi Cahn have set out to see why this is happening in their new book, Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family. Carbone and Cahn are well-known for their work in the field of family dynamics due to their previous book, Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture; a book discussing the effect political parties had on family morals and values. Marriage Markets is essentially a sequel, using much of the same data while adding more contemporary findings. Using quantitative research methods, Carbone and Cahn were able to assess the changes America has seen in recent years. They have hypothesized that “economic inequality is remaking the American family along class lines, and families are not going through the same changes together” (Carbone 1). . Based on the reading, there is strong evidence that supports their thesis, including statistics from the Census. In the following review of Carbone and Cahn’s work, I will summarize the book’s contents and survey its major strengths and weaknesses.

Beginning in the 1970s, a cultural debate has raged over the function of the traditional family in American life, a debate that has subjected the roles of fathers, mothers, and even children to intense scrutiny. Freedom of choice, self-fulfillment, the emergence of blended families, feminism, the sexual revolution, and social rebellion against traditional family forms—all of these have facilitated a widespread cultural experimentation with different family structures. Feminist activists have argued that the traditional family is outdated and even damaging to adults and children. Some have even argued that women and children do not need men; in fact, families are better off without them. Advocates for radical marital change welcomed the

The idyllic American family has changed drastically over the years. What once was a traditional father-mother-child household has turned to a single-parent-child dynamic. As far back as time goes we can see the nuclear family, where the father is the provider and protector of the family and the mother cares for the home and children. Throughout past decades the nuclear family has waned considerably as we watch government step in to protect and provide by means of local police or National Guard and programs like WIC or welfare, and women are enabled to find their independence. Statistically, the nuclear family is almost non-existent, in an article by Blanchard-Fields, Hertzog, Stein, and Pak it states, “The traditional family model—the husband as breadwinner and the wife as homemaker—makes up only 7% of the families in U.S. society.”

The family structure in America is intertwined with the experience of poverty; that not only affect the people that are going through it but affects everyone and every country. Poverty is lack of basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, healthcare, education, clothing, shelter and influences how the families operate, how the child fits in and their roles.

One of the most romanticized family institutions in North American is the nuclear family. Although the nuclear family was created to appear as the ‘traditional’ and normative ideal, it has never been the reality for all families (Kimmel & Holler, 2011, 154). The nuclear family was created after the end of the Second World War when women were taken out of the workforce and placed back into their homes. “Men and women embraced this nostalgia, marrying and having children early, and divorcing little. The 1950s family model they created was almost immediately enshrined as the most ‘natural’ and healthiest form possible” (Kimmel & Holler, 2011, 185). In Kimmel and Holler (2011), they define the nuclear family of the 1950s as “a lifelong sexually exclusive, heterosexual monogamous marriage, based on affection and companionship, in which there is a sharp division of labour with the female as full time housewife and the male as primary provider and ultimate authority’” (Kimmel & Holler, 2011, 141). It is the family structure where women stay at home, do household chores and child care, while men work and be the sole breadwinner for the family. In North America, the ‘traditional’ family was characterized by:

Nuclear family is defined as “familial form consisting of a father, a mother, and their children” (Conley, 2015, p. 453). This type of family was considered the traditional family in American society in the 1950s. The traditional family was when the man worked outside the home and the wife stayed at home and tended to the home and children. Also the idea of the traditional family has changed, especially with the rate of divorce and single parents increasing. “The divorce rate has been steadily rising since the nineteenth century, as divorce became less and less of a social and religious taboo” (Conley, 2015, p. 456).

American households have never been so diverse. As a result of these changes, there is no longer one dominant family form in the U.S. Parents today are raising their children against a situation of increasingly diverse and, for most, constantly evolving family values. The idea of the modern family has evolved over the years because of the financial crisis which has caused both parents to look for work, parents are no longer staying together, and same-sex couples are presently able to start a family of their own.

Sunday morning, the mother is in the kitchen making breakfast for the family while the father is feeding the animals getting the children up to do their chores before breakfast. The children do their chores, eat breakfast with their parents and then get ready dressed to go to church. The mother after finishing cooking breakfast, gets herself cleaned up to get ready for church, as well has the father. Then off to church and then a Sunday afternoon spent with the family together, no electronics, no shopping, just together working on takas at home. Does this life exist anymore?

A traditional family is similar to the nuclear family and the text uses them synonymously in chapter 12. The text states that a nuclear family is a “familial form consisting of a father, a mother and their children.” In a 1950’s family a mother would stay at home with the children doing the cooking and the cleaning and the father would be the “breadwinner” and go to work to support the family. “In the 1950’s, 86 percent of children lived in two-parent families, and 60 percent of children were born into homes with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker.” In some states it was still illegal for interracial marriages as well. So the traditional or nuclear family would be either all white or all black. This was occurring in other countries

Mr. Cleaver comes home from a long day at work to his loving wife. He enjoys a nice home cooked meal as he talks with his two children at the dinner table—often about the troubles Beav has found his way into—in the sitcom Leave it to Beaver. A show that aired in the late 50’s teaching life lessons to its viewers and most importantly representing the ideal nuclear family. Needless to say, we have come a long way from the white picket fence and 2.5 children as the model representation of an American family. Today, families are modeled in all different shapes and sizes. Two parent, single parent, multiple parents, or even extended family members can be seen raising the children. These families have developed over the past 60 years due to many reasons. The societal changes occurring over time and economical effects on both micro and macro levels, and the evolution of gender roles along with many other causes have all played a role in developing the family. By the 1990’s, the census reported that only about 21% of married couples lived with their children. (Morgan 1996) In 40 years, the ideal nuclear family had dropped to 21%, and due to the rise in divorce rates during the 80’s, the percentage of stepchildren was projected to rise to 33%. (Morgan 1996) Now decades later, stepfamilies do indeed make up 1/3 of American households. With the growing changes in families and the people that make up families, many new concerns are being developed about the legal rights and