What Are The Challenges That American Families Face

Poverty. Unemployment. Potential foreclosure. Words all too familiar to Americans everywhere. The PBS Frontline documentary, Two American Families, is the heartbreaking, yet hopeful look at the struggles of two Milwaukee families, the Neumanns and the Stanleys, over roughly two decades, 1991 to 2012. While ideally the concept of meritocracy would indicate the efforts of these hard working families should influence their social standing, the reality of social stratification remains, with their wealth, power, and prestige, or lack thereof, used to cement their place, and primarily that of their children, in society.

The United States of America is a big, powerful and wealthy country in the world. The diversity of class, individuality, religion, and race are a few of the embellishments within the "melting pot" of our society. The blend of these numerous diversities is the crucial ingredient to our modern nation. America has been formed upon them, its inhabitants- the "average American"- have a single means in common; a single concept; a single goal; the American Dream. The Dream consists of a seemingly simple theory; success.

Firstly, Families are important in America, the lifestyle of Americans is based around family. Immigrants also have families, they often come to America to allow

This essay, The Myth of the Model American Family, is a discussion of the concept of an ideal family in the different perspective specifically social, cultural and economic. This is also an attempt to identify the structural changes in relation to the global development and the international economic crisis that immensely created impact on their lives. However, the discussion will limit itself on the different identifiable and observable transformations as manifested in the lifestyles, interrelationships and views of family members and will not seek to provide an assessment of their psycho-social and individual perceptions.

Affluenza has been found to be a family problem as well. “There is a tension between materialism and family values.” Family life is often viewed by parents as instilling competitive values in their children so they can compile the best resumes, go to the best college to get the best jobs to earn the most money. The number of families that are regularly eating together and going on a vacation together has dropped by a third since 1970. Overspending is one of the many conflicts that families face as well as the weakening of marriages. “The choices available to people in terms of products are so overwhelming. Whether you are going to buy a car or a bagel, there are so many choices. There’s a feeling when you’ve bought something that maybe you didn’t make the right choice, maybe you missed something. And it can’t help but carry over into

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.

Americans have an increasing variety of choices to make during everyday life. Although this abundance of choice appears to be liberating, it is actually overwhelming and creates a high amount of stress and pressure on Americans. The abundance of choices combined with the unavailability of resources to sustain these choices creates a large deficit of happiness in American society. The essay “When it’s all too much” by Barry Schwartz brings fourth the idea of an overabundance of choices in America leading to widespread unhappiness. “Date Line Delhi” by Barbra Ehrenreich entails on how the outsourcing of American jobs, both intellectual and menial, is affecting American society negatively. The third essay, “Mismeasuring Poverty” goes into how the government skews the “poverty line” in order to make it appear it has been consistent over time, when in reality it has increased significantly in the past few decades. The overabundance of choices available to people in modern day America combined with a lack of resources to aid in sustaining this amount of choice, creates an escalation in the decrease of quality of life in America and the overall downfall of the “American dream”.

The children are leaving for school just as father grabs his briefcase and is off to

Families acquired a new form and with it a myth of the American family was created. The myth of the American family is one where “father knows best, mothers are never bored or irritated, and teenagers rush to the dinner table each night, eager to

The Brady Bunch were the ideal families in the 1960's and 1970's, and in the 80's, it was Family Ties. When the 1990's approached us, television shows took on a whole new outlook on American Families. There were shows such as Full House, which was about a single father raising three daughters with the help of his brother-in-law and his best friend. Roseanne was also another show that showed the "dysfunctional" side of families. American Families keep changing, and they will continue to change in our future.

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.

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.

Post-World War II United States was a significant period of time when the lifestyle of American people changed dramatically. Long period of economic booms brought mass suburbanization and people purchased their own home appliances, houses, and automobiles. As a matter of fact, in the background of the change of American lifestyle, there were repeated technological innovations. Successful mass productions of goods accelerated buying activities, which promoted the economic development in the United States. This was the beginning of expansion of the middle class; some people get enough money to succeed in having a happy life in the United States with family. However, when the status of family in a community was considered, proper management of money was necessary to keep their lives. Handful choices of buying goods or products with satisfaction made American Dream possible, but buying activities changed the social status of people for better or worse at the same time.

Select a country outside of the United States and (a) describe what your source material say about the family as a social institution; what does the family provide for individuals and for the society. (b) What do your source materials say about the family as a social institution in the United States? (c) What is similar? What is different between the two countries? (25 points)

the way we act and perform is Family life. I will compare family life in early America to