Changing American Families

Changing American Families

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

work. Meanwhile, mother finishes clearing the breakfast dishes and continues on with

her day filled with PTA, housework, and the preparation of a well-balanced meal

to be enjoyed by all when father gets home promptly at 6:00 p.m. This would have to be a

scene from "Father Knows Best", Leave It to Beaver" or that of a family during or

before the sixties. Only a small minority of contemporary families fit the mold of being

a "nuclear" family today.

Until about the 1960's most Americans shared a common set of beliefs about

family life, a family should consist of a husband and a wife living together with their

children. The father being the head of the family, earns the family's income, and gives his

name to his wife and children. Today, we exhibit a pattern of disruptions in marriages

and family structure, including single parent families and high rates of divorce.

Certainly divorce has to be stressful for our nation's children and adolescents,

leading the American family and the nation's future to a state of crisis. It is startling that

whether through their parents' divorce or never having been married, nearly every other

American child spends part of his or her childhood in a single-parent family. The increase

in the proportion of children living with just one parent has strongly effected large

numbers of children. By the time they reach age sixteen, close to half the children of

married parents will have seen their parents divorce. For nearly half of these, it will be

five years or more before their mothers remarry. Close to h...

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...ial and precious that rarely exists in

today’s society. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every child could experience that kind of

family happiness and harmony, never having to taste the bitterness of divorce?

Bibliography:

Brokaw, Tom. "New Realities of Changing Families," Good Housekeeping, Oct 98, Vol. 221 Issue 4, p106.

Congressman, William D. Ford, Annual Publication, September 1998.

Etzioni, Amitai. "The Day Care Generation," George Washington Review, Winter/ Spring 1997.

Glendon, Mary Ann. "Family in Western Law" 1987, p 117.

Hamburg, David. "The New Family" Current, Jul/Aug 1996 Issue, p59.

Kantrowitz, Barbara. "Step by Step" Newsweek, Winter/ Spring 1992.

Smith, Brian. FAMILY: “Children in Crisis" Fortune, Vol. 116, Issue 3, Aug 95, p42, p6.

Wallerstein, Judith, "Variations in theme" Newsletter, March 1998.